It’s the fiftieth preorder outlook post! That number is not of any particular significance other than that people like round numbers like that, but I really did not think this site would be running long enough to get to the fiftieth such post. Nor did I expect that when I sat down to write this post, there would be over twenty figures listed in my notes; it seems like a dozen appealing figures have gone up for preorder in the last few weeks. Therefore, I’m cutting this post to the first ten on my list and I’ll write about the remainder in a week or two.
April 2017
Akeno Himejima from High School DxD BorN
I believe this is one of the first figures to hit the market from Grand Toys, which I think is some sort of successor company to Griffin Enterprises. That’s not exactly an encouraging circumstance but I’m willing to give a figure from almost any new company a look. Looking at the promo photos, it looks a lot like a Griffin figure but it does have the virtue of having a full castoff option, which is a little surprising; even figures from blatant fanservice series often shy away from featuring full-frontal nudity, but Grand Toys seems to be going for the adult market, a bit like Alphamax did when they reinvented their product catalog. Akeno wasn’t my favorite character from the series but I do like the design of this figure a lot, and the price isn’t too exorbitant for a figure with of this size and design.
Rias Gremory from High School DxD BorN
Obviously all of the factors regarding Akeno apply to Rias as well. Akeno has the advantage of standing upright but I like Rias’s character more, which I think is the more important consideration.
May 2017
Ai-On-Line from Tony’s Heroine Collection
This appears to be the next of Kotobukiya’s fairy girls, though this one isn’t just clad in panties like the first three. There is s a noticeable seam in the side of her skirt, though, so maybe it’s removable. She looks a ton like Miku Hatsune, which is a little weird and also a bit off-putting, as I have no need for another Miku figure in my collection, but I’ve ordered her anyway since I liked the previous figures so much.
June 2017
Celia Cumani Aintree from Walkure Romanze
It’s another figure from Walkure Romanze. Most of Celia’s previous figures had her flashing a friendly smile, but she looks fairly stern here, despite the attractive castoff options provided by the sculptor. I’m not a huge fan of the helmet and I don’t think it’s removable, but as a fan of the series and Celia, I’m pretty sure I will be getting this figure.
Kunoichi from Bikini Warriors
This is a figure of one of the characters from Bikini Warriors’ second team. She doesn’t really look like a kunoichi to me but then, I suppose the typical conception of such is mostly a fictional thing, anyway. Like most of the figures from the series, she’s only available from a proxy service or a specialist retailer, but that’s not particularly unusual these days, I guess.
Maya Suma from Issho no Shiyo
Here’s the sort of figure we’re seeing more and more of – a character from a hentai publication drawn by a well-known artist. The artist in this case is Saitom, who has had quite a few of his character designs adapted into figure form as of late. This figure looks great – and that’s really all I have to say about her since she literally only appears in a few pages in a comic anthology.
Sakuya from Shining Blade
It’s another Tony figure depicting one of the Shining series girls in a bikini. Quite a few of them haven’t interested me but I really like Sakuya’s design. She seems to come with a different outfit which I don’t care too much about, but her basic black swimsuit is very attractive.
July 2017
Akane Indo from Homare Artworks
I didn’t expect anyone to ever make a figure of one of Homare’s characters, but I’m very glad that someone did. I would’ve preferred that they would have sculpted one of his female warrior characters but this is good, too. That this figure is 1/5 scale just makes it that much more appealing.
Ayako Hiiragi from Walkure Romanze
This is the third Walkure Romanze figure sculpted by Toshirou and the fifth one manufactured by Daiki Kougyou. I already own their Celia and Bertille figures so I might as well get this one, too. To be honest, I don’t think that the resemblance between the figure and the game and anime artwork is all that apparent here; I really did not recognize who this character was when I first saw the preorder page, but I suppose that’s not a big deal. I wonder why Noel and Lisa have been frozen out by figure makers? Noel got a ton of screen time in the anime and she seems reasonably popular so her lack of figures is puzzling.
Renge from T2 Art Girls
It looks like Alphamax is also getting in on Tony’s fairy girl series. Hopefully Renge won’t look too out of place with Kotobukiya’s figures. She does look really good, as most of Alphamax’s figures do, so I have no qualms there.
I still have nine more figures on the list, so a second preorder post will go up soon. The next two figures in my notes are “Snow” and “Yukio” and I’m trying to remember who those are …
I, too, am very interested to see what ex-Griffin (Griffon?) are able to achieve.
As for your next two figures, I’m taking an educated guess:
Snow – http://myfigurecollection.net/item/15689
Yukio – http://myfigurecollection.net/item/464891
What do I win? lol
Ha, you’re right on both. Uhh, you win an incredibly late response to your comment! XD I’m still kinda hoping Griffon rolls out that oddball 1/2 scale Aegis they were suggesting that they’d produce, but I’m guessing that figure is long dead. Yeah, I guess it actually is spelled Griffon, it seems I spelled it right in the sidebar. I guess that shows how long it has been since I bought one of their figures.
Griffon’s Akeno (The first figure in this outlook list) appears to have turned out reasonably good, the only drawback being the barbie crotch.
Their next scheduled release would be Kiddy Phenil, a girl from Silent Möbius. The latest available pictures are from an exposition, provided by Moeyo. In these, the figure looks very much like Griffon, if you know what I mean… Imho it still remains to be seen in which direction they’re developing.
That’s a pretty big drawback in my mind. I guess I’m not too surprised since DxD is still kind of a mainstream property (I’d also be shocked if a To Love-Ru figure ever came out with full frontal nudity) but it’s unfortunate since usually the panties don’t look realistic if they’re removable, but if there’s nothing under them, then there’s no reason to remove them.
Ha, yeah, I think I know what you mean; I’m envisioning something with that big black oval base that they seemed to use for almost all their figures (I’m hoping that they’ve moved on from those by now). I’m hoping for good things in the future but I’m not necessarily expecting good things.
That “Grand Toys” branch of Griffon announced a lot of figures which put quite some emphasis on showing off the female physique. Obviously they had the idea to install something like Alphamax did with their Skytube brand. However, if they continue to shy away from giving full detail, I wonder why they chose to launch this label in the first place. They must be aware what other manufacturers have come to release by now. Heck, even A+ have recently begun to give their girls some definition down there.
If they don’t improve on the notorious Griffon quality, and at the same time continue to give us barbie anatomy, there will be no reason to buy their products. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Yeah, it doesn’t make a lot of sense; I guess maybe the figures would still be desirable if they can approach SkyTube’s level of quality (which I’m still pretty amazed by, considering what Alphamax’s polystone stuff looked like) but nobody expects Griffon to be able to do that. For my part, I’d only be interested in whatever wacko 1/2 or 1/3 scale figures they do, and only if they do one of a character that I like.
I’m always happy to see which figures you’re interested in. That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone mention the opening montage shot from any of your preorder posts. I really appreciate that you find some various (usually hilarious) depictions rather than just throwing up stock images of the various characters.
Haha, thanks XD I remember when I was first putting these together, I thought I might just use headshots from the promo pictures of the figures, but then I thought it’d be much more hilarious to use game CGs and such, since it’s sometimes not obvious just what kind of activities these characters participate in when seen in their actual source material.
I seem to have fabricated a post to this in my head rather than actually doing so, so a much belated “Congrats!” on a big round-number outlook.
Yours and my Spidey-senses are spot on with the Grand Toys figures, so much so that I noticed a few days ago that a Japanese retailer was listing them under “Grand Toys/Griffon” and on MFC “Griffon” is the manufacturer with “Grand Toys” being the classification….so basically Griffon [as if anyone really doubted]. The good news is that they’re not dead so maybe I can finally commit to one of those really big figures they’ve been experimenting with (mostly from Oreimo thus far).
I suppose the Ai-On-Line figure is considered by many to be an effective continuation of the Fairies series but to me, fairy or not, Renge best embodies that overall style so thus far I’ve only committed to her. I have no doubt that I’ll regret my choice to forego the Ai figure when you eventually showcase her here but, between the two, Renge has stolen my heart.
Silly feather or not, that Celia rendition was very exciting for me. Sure, it’s Dragon Toy so it’ll be cast-off but *finally* we get a figure sporting that stellar armor! My only regret is that I preordered her ages ago only to realize this very morning that a black armored version is coming out as well. Oh the humanity….
I jumped on that Sakuya figure too, largely because of this writeup. The highly unconventional swimsuit already had me but that there are two quite different ones put me over the edge.
Thanks! Haha, yeah, I wondered how those giant figures turned out, and what I would do if they released a figure of a character that I really like. Thus far they haven’t, thought that giant Aegis figure that they teased would have tested my impulsiveness (I’m guessing that figure will never see the light of day so my bank account is safe for now). I did see that they’re releasing at least one 1/4 scale figure that I would want (Escalayer – mildly surprising that they’d do a figure of that, since it’s a really old game, but I guess they did already make one figure of her a long while back) so I’m interested to see how that looks.
Yeah, I think I like the black armored version of Celia better than the standard one. I still wish the helmet were removable but the darker armor makes her outfit a little more eye-catching.
I remember when Tony bikini figures were pretty boring but Sakuya looks fantastic. It’s pretty great how there are scads of Tony figures that I’m interested in now; if the market is going to be oversaturated with something, I’d prefer it to be with these sorts of figures rather than say, Black Rock Shooter or Vocaloid figures or something.
We’re still waiting for the second part of this preorder outlook! ;-P
Blaaaaaaah … I’m looking at my notes and I see names like Kanna Yuzuki and Jam Kuuradoberi and I had to google those figures to recall what they look like (well, the Kanna one I remember, I had just forgotten the name). Maybe I’ll just pick the dozen most recently-announced figures that I’ve preordered or am interested in preordering, being that the list has grown huge again already.
I’m not sure if you got Homare’s Akane Indo, but just in case you didn’t know, there’s now a tanline version of this figure up for pre-order.
The initial release figure (The one in your article above) seems to have turned out reasonably well, or so I’ve heard. Not quite as detailed as their Nurse Miyuu, but Lechery at least have moved away from using those weird psychedelic eye decals which quite a lot of their recent figures had.
In fact I did, I was thinking I’d review it next. Her or Sasara anyway, but I have those Muv-Luv bunnygirls and Yayoi in the mail so maybe they’ll be next instead. Who knows.
I haven’t opened up Akane yet but she looks pretty good through the window of the box, I think. I haven’t looked at photos yet either, but I’m hoping she’s turned out okay as I really do like Homare’s art style.