Kouhai-chan from Arms Note

After a long string of featuring figures of girls in leotards, we’ll switch things up slightly and look at a figure of a girl in a racing swimsuit instead. This girl is Kouhai-chan from Ryousuke Fukai’s illustration series Arms Note. Kouhai-chan is the second scale-size figure in this series, following Bionic Joushi Kousei and some Figmas, and like the other characters in the series (some of whom can be seen in this Pixiv article), has no given name, letting us wonder about her background.

Arms Note has no particular backstory as far as I know and so we will move on to the particulars of this figure. Kouhai-chan is sculpted in 1/7 scale and stands about 27 centimeters tall, though her upraised arm and her gun are obviously major contributors to her overall height. Aside from her carbine, she also has a pistol which is a loose part, but it’s obviously meant to be placed in her thigh holster. This figure is manufactured by Amakuni, as was Bionic Joushi Kousei, but it appears that Kadokawa may produce the next figure in this series, one which has its character wearing a bunnysuit.

Anyone who’s been into this hobby for a while has likely seen dozens of swimsuit figures, but Kouhai-chan’s look is striking nonetheless. A core element of this figure is Kouhai-chan’s deeply tanned skin color, which is actually a little darker than shown here, being that she’s brightly lit up by photographic flashes for these pictures. Kouhai-chan’s dark skin tone and bleached blonde hair is not an uncommon combination – there’s at least two other figures (Wing’s Muramasa and Alphamax’s Gal Sniper) that have been recently released or have recently gone up for preorder that feature this motif – but it looks good anyway.

Kouhai-chan’s facial features are huge and expressive, perfectly conveying her sense of joy. What she might be so happy about is left to the viewer’s imagination, though. The exposed fang lends a girlish and irreverent aesthetic that, after some contemplation, might seem wholly incongruous with the arsenal she is packing.

She’s wearing a competition swimsuit, and that in itself is a little unusual; off the top of my head, I can’t think whether I own another figure wearing competitive swimwear. What I think makes this figure unique is how well the swimsuit is modeled here. The design of her suit – the color blocks, the pinstripes, the logo – is very crisp and precise. The way her suit hugs her body looks quite realistic. Perhaps the most eye-catching facet of her suit is its glossy sheen, making it look like it’s really made of some sort of sleek, high-tech material rather than merely being painted plastic. One aspect I appreciate are the high cut of the leg openings – I much prefer this look rather than the low-leg design that seems very common these days on swimsuit figures.

The unusual part of this figure is her weaponry. I suppose the viewer can concoct some reason in their own mind as to why she’s waving a gun around while dressed for a swim meet. I’m not sure if her guns are based on real-life firearms but they look good either way.

Here’s her pistol in its holster.

Kouhai-chan’s sinuous curves are on full display, showing off long legs, muscular thighs, broad hips and a very slim waist, altogether giving her a lithe and youthful presence. Her pose, with one flank stretched upwards and the other bent, showing off the swell of her hip, is clearly one of the most attractive traits of this figure.

One curious part of her design that I didn’t immediately notice is that while her upper torso is relatively slim, her hips and legs are rather more substantial – indeed, the top of just one of her thighs looks to be almost as wide as the span across her shoulders. People who enjoy thick thighs might appreciate that detail.

Amakuni’s Kouhai-chan is a superb figure, one of the best released this year, I think. (Having spent the last fourteen months of the COVID pandemic essentially sequestered in my home, I’ve largely ignored the passage of time and it feels a little unreal that 2021 is already almost half over.) She’s got a lot of things going for her, and a lot of the things she has are executed extremely well. I hope that future Arms Note figures – whether they be from Amakuni or Kadokawa – are as good as this one.