Yukina Himeragi from Strike the Blood

We’ll take a short break from all the lewd, explicit porno figures that we’ve been looking at and instead cover something that’s maybe a half step removed from being a porno figure. This is Yukina Himeragi, the lead girl of the poorly-reviewed anime and light novel Strike the Blood. Normally I prefer to buy figures whose characters I know something about, either with respect to their personalities or the source material that they come from, but in this case I have to admit I had scarcely heard of the character or the series. In all frankness, I really bought this figure for three reasons; her lack of clothing, her distressed expression, and her thematic resemblance to this Kuroyukihime figure, which I like a lot.

After looking over what Strike the Blood is about, I think that I’m better off not having watched it. It is apparently about a guy who happens to be a vampire and a girl who is sent to watch over him, and eventually helps him out by supplying her blood (and of course, developing into his romantic interest). The general consensus seems to be that Strike the Blood lies somewhere in that unfortunate position between mediocre and totally forgettable. It’s too bad, since the premise has some promise – there have certainly been some good vampire stories in pop culture worldwide – but it seems that like so many light novels that receive anime adaptations, there is a lot of room for improvement. Oh well. Personally, I think the best televised anime to involve body fluid sucking was Seikon no Qwaser, which was pretty silly but at least tried to do something interesting with its central conceit, and the best anime to feature vampires was of course Kyuuketsuki. Aside from the second episode, that is, which was just terrible.

This figure was manufactured by Chara-Ani and distributed by Ascii Media Works, making it (I think) the first figure I own from other company. It’s sculpted in 1/7 scale and measures around 16 centimeters in height. She does come with a circular pink base but somehow I forgot to include it in the photographs.

Yukina is apparently a strong girl and a skilled combatant, but you definitely wouldn’t know that just from looking at this figure. Here, she’s on her knees with her jacket shrugged off, her panties rolled down, and a fairly unnerved expression on her face. She looks quite vulnerable here, which may not be the most accurate depiction of her, but she still looks great.

Here is a closer look at her low-rise panties. She might want to go up one or two sizes. They do look nice, though, and the stripes add a splash of color to an otherwise monochromatic design. While this figure is obviously fan service-oriented, the producers of the anime seem to have no compunction against using Yukina’s sex appeal in their promotional materials to lure viewers and move merchandise. It certainly worked on me.

Her jacket is not all that interesting by itself, but the way it is flared out adds a bit more visual interest to a figure that might otherwise look a little staid – or at least as staid as a figure of a half-naked girl can look.

Here’s Yukina with Kuroyukihime. They are of similar size and obviously, feature a similar theme of having a girl in her underwear kneeling down. They make for a telegenic pair.

There’s always a bit of trepidation when buying a figure from a manufacturer that I have no experience with, but Yukina looks pretty good to me. We’ve been looking at SkyTube and Alter and Native and Amakuni figures recently and perhaps Chara-ani is not at that level, but I don’t see many problems here. Indeed, she doesn’t really look out of place when alongside Kuroyukihime, and Max Factory is obviously one of the better manufacturers in this field.

This is a pretty good figure of a character that I didn’t really know anything about. She’s pretty sexy and would obviously have a lot of appeal for those who prefer more petite characters. Her outfit is agreeably limited and her panties are appealing. And of course, she complements Kuroyukihime well. All in all, this is quite a nice figure.