The week after New Year’s is the saddest week of the year: the lights go out, the trees get thrown in the garbage trucks and hauled away, the sales go quiet, and it’s months before the next fun holiday. Nonetheless, 2015 has dispersed into the ether of yesterday but before we look forward, I will observe my annual ritual of decreeing which five figures I liked the best from this past year (only a week and a day late). As I always say, the ranking here is based solely on my own preferences, with absolutely zero regard for whether a figure was popular with the masses or came from a popular show or was made by a popular manufacturer. Popular opinion does not move me much.
#5. Matsuri Tougetsu from Comic Aun
The fifth spot is always fungible; I generally like most of the figures that I buy, since I’d obviously not spend my own money on them if I didn’t. But why not celebrate one of the raunchiest figures around by placing Matsuri here; she’s an excellent figure, huge and unapologetically lewd. I’m not a big fan of the hairbuns, but this figure obviously needs to stick to the Chinese motif. Alphamax’s rise to prominence is one of the two best recent occurrences in figure collecting (the other, of course, being the weakness of the yen).
#4. Excellen Browning from Super Robot Wars
For the fourth spot, I’ll go with another Alphamax product, albeit from their mainstream line. This figure is not that much more modest than Matsuri, though, as she’s all but naked. Add to that fact that she’s big – 1/6 scale – blonde, buxom, and American and this is definitely a fine figure.
#3. Mu-12 from BlazBlue: Alter Memory
It never seems quite right for this list not to include an Alter figure but happily, they released one last year that I liked quite a bit. Mu-12 is a fantastic representation of the former antagonist from BlazBlue. Like every other figure on this list, this is a big sculpt, made even larger by the elaborate base, and the character design is very attractive. For me, this is the most memorable figure that Alter has released in a while.
#2. Annabel from Tony’s Heroine Collection
Daisy was my favorite figure from a couple of years ago, and Annabel is a superb figure as well. Any other year, she probably would have been number one on this list. But this year, I’m going to go with something a little bit different, something that’s, well, not even Japanese.
#1. Kerrigan from StarCraft II
Surprise! Heh. Usually this slot might be taken up by some doe-eyed anime girl in thighhigh socks, but not this year; this year I’m going with this figure. StarCraft holds a special place in my heart, as do many of the games of its era, and no character from the series is more notable than Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades. This figure is a spectacular version of one of the most famous – and infamous – characters in video games. And it is, of course, very large. Amongst all figures released in 2015, it stands preeminent in my esteem.
I like Matsuri Tougetsu. But in my opinion, it miss Hell seducer in your top 5.
Yeah, that was a really awesome figure. It would’ve been in the top … maybe seven or eight, I think. I really hope we get more figures with themes like that, either from Black Berry or Dragon Toy or someone else.
Yes, like you, I love gothic, sadomasochism, monster and skeleton theme. Most beatiful figures are Skytube but they don’t develop these themes. But Dragon toy still makes beautiful figures.
Yeah, most companies seem to not go for that sort of thing, which is pretty unfortunate. The gothic/fantasy theme is a lot more popular amongst Western figure companies but virtually none of them do erotic or sexually-themed figures, which is doubly unfortunate.
Holidays are gone but Wonder Festival is just around the corner to cheer me up I guess.
[waiting intensifies]
I presumed a couple of heavy knights like Selvaria or perhaps Celia from Dwell / Vertex taking the top spot, so I was scrolling down and down and, I was like, oh my! Yeah you got me.
Happy new year Tier, hope you have big fat loot in 2016, and possibly a new presidential doll!
I wonder what we’ll see at Wonder Festival? I must admit that I’ve barely paid attention, probably because I don’t know where to find the magazine scans anymore (and also because there are so many Japan-exclusive figures, it seems). I didn’t actually get Dwell’s Celia; the really sad thing is that I’m very tempted to get the A+ figure because I think it has the nicest body style, but man, it’s an A+ figure,
Thanks! Haha, I’ve actually looked around for a Hillary Clinton doll, on the presumption that she has the best chance of any person right now to be president … I haven’t yet found such a thing, but I have full faith that some enterprising company (probably in China) will come through for me.
Can’t believe matsuri came in number 5 😛
She wasn’t originally on the list at all! I was going to put Max Factory’s Psychic there, or maybe Amakuni’s Asuka. Then I was like, I can’t leave Matsuri off this list. If she had more typical twintails instead of the manapua buns, I’d have ranked her higher.
interesting ranking… it has personality… I’m quit bad with alien ladies, but she apparently has a very good paintjob, ehhh thats a heavy price (๑°o°๑). You know whats funny? when I thought about your post earlier, without knowing the rest of the figure, I was like “I bet the alien has a nice ass” I just checked … it has one attractive backside ;D
Haha, indeed better than GSC figures from 1-5, all I see there recently are Nendoroids nonstop anyway â”(￣ー￣)┌.
I really like the butterfly girl, overall expression and vibrant colors make it very appealing.
Excellen Browning has a pretty face I’m surprised that she is 1/6 I had a different scale in mind. Mu-12 has an excellent butt, I like the stylish presentation of the figure anyway, personally I do enjoy figures with a pretty face, on this figure it’s mainly hidden unfortunately ;D I’m still happy you could enjoy this ALTER figure,
She’s Kerrigan! The most famous alien lady in all of video games, maybe. Well, depending on one’s generation, I guess. And she definitely does have a very nice backside, even after her infestation and stuff XD
Yeah, I notice GSC has gone bigtime on nendoroids this year … and Max Factory is doing those weird 1/12 scale figures, which I guess are supposed to go with Figmas, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me; if I were going to buy figures that small, I’d just buy Figmas.
Butterfly girl is awesome XD I’m really looking forward to Freesia, though I’d hoped that her panties would be smaller, at least in the back. Mu-12 is really nice, and I’m happy to see Alter doing some nice figures – and now that I think about it, I guess I should be getting two Alter figures this month (Matabei and delinquent Saber, if she doesn’t get delayed). It’s been a while since that happened. I guess I also should unbox Black Heart one of these days, too (I’m a little salty that nobody’s making a Green Heart, and I wonder if there are any Nintendo fans wondering where their mascot character is, too). This was actually a pretty good year for figure collecting, I think … though you wouldn’t know it by the pace of updates here, I guess.
Haha sorry, I always have been a lame Gamer ;D
They just waste important figure capacities in my eyes, both!
I bought one figfix just to sell it a week later, it’s just to small for my eyesight.
I was interested in Matabei since she was announced, but always wasn’t sure if her butt was … yeah, shapely enough XD I nevertheless ordered her last week. Apparently her back is supposed to look great.
I also like Green Heart for obvious reasons (￣▽+￣*)
Well, don’t be too hard on yourself, I nevertheless also thought that I received lovely figures in 2015.
Ha, indeed! I guess they must be really popular, though, the Figmas maybe moreso since I see them adapting a bunch of unexpected characters.
Green Heart is lovely, even though Vert is sort of a really stereotypical representation of an American girl. So is Iowa from Kantai Collection, I guess. Hopefully one or both get figures in 2016.
Alphamax/skytube wins in terms of number.
Annabel is great, easily the best Tony’s heroine from Kotobukiya. They did better with her than Daisy in my point of view, or maybe it’s just she’s blond. Hopefully Freesia the next fairy girl will still be on your 2016 list.
My personal No.1 2015 is Freeing’s 1/4 bunny girl Laura Bodewig. Never got one of these 1/4 bunnies before her. They are surely stunning. Kaitendo’s 1/6 Sonico swimsuit is sweet too, wondering if you also got any one of these.
I agree! It’s pretty amazing how they’ve become a top-shelf figure company. I didn’t get Laura, though I really wanted to; I really like her leotard compared to most of the other FREEing bunnygirls. I really don’t have that much space for figures that are lying down, though, especially figures of that size. I haven’t gotten a Sonico figure in a while and I don’t think I plan to, partly because I have so many, but mostly – really, almost entirely – because there are so many freaking Super Pochaco figures and I really don’t like that massive tub of suet, and as a result Sonico’s image suffers in my eyes.