Kasane Minazumi from Hanikami, Kanojo wa Koi o Suru

It is officially summer and summer means heat, fun – and swimsuits. Accordingly, we’ll take a look at this figure of Kasane Minazumi, the first cover girl of Piromizu’s doujinshi series Hanikami, Kanojo wa Koi o Suru, or Shy Girls in Love. Piromizu has illustrated a number of doujinshi and hentai series in the past, with the Amakano series probably being his best-known series. Now his work is getting a number of figures, and I’m very glad to see his art being recognized this way since I’ve been a fan for quite some time.

Kasane Minazumi appears to be the lead girl of Hanikami, Kanojo wa Koi o Suru, or Shy Girls in Love. This series appears to be just a doujinshi series and so the characters appear to have nominal backstories and personalities. From what I gather, Kasane is a serious, hard-working girl with a friendly personality – and she is, of course, rather shy. There appears to be a vocal drama CD where the voice actress Saori Hayami provides Kasane’s voice, and I’d guess that that would provide more insight as to Kasane’s character, but I have not heard it myself.

Incidentally, I think that the first work by Piromizu that I encountered was an eroge with the unusual name of Erect!, which came out way back in 2012. It’s actually about a group of demon girls who live in normal society and interact with the protagonist in various ways. I played it for a bit and it was a fun story with likeable characters and excellent artwork. I was always a little sad it never got any figures, but at that time it was becoming less common for eroge to get figures, I guess.

Kasane is sculpted in 1/7 scale and stands – or sits, rather – about 14 centimeters or so in height, not counting the base. She’s manufactured by a company called GOLDENHEAD, which I am not that familiar with, but apparently I do have their figure of USS Reno from Azur Lane around here somewhere and I probably ought to review it someday. They produced a number of versions of Kasane, and this one is the limited version which came with an additional winking face, which we’ll look at shortly.

Kasane is posed leaning back while sitting down, with a relaxed expression on her face that evokes the shyness denoted by the series’ title.

What doesn’t reflect that titular quality is Kasane’s swimsuit. Her outfit is a sexy but relatively nondescript blue bikini …

But the seat of the bottom is pulled way down, almost completely showing off her rear. This unexpected bit of impurity adds a bit of spice to an otherwise standard-looking figure.

The special edition of this figure comes with an alternate face with a winking face. It gives Kasane a more playful look with a more overtly joyful expression. Both faces look great and I can’t say I prefer one over the other.

She doesn’t need a base to stay upright but she does come with this translucent blue disc, which gives a pleasant seaside vibe. It’s a surprisingly heavy base; I own something like eight hundred figures and it might be the densest-feeling base I’ve ever handled.

Here’s the box that Kasane came in; this might be the first time a manufacturer has ever thanked me for buying their products. I thought that was a nice touch.

This is a really nice figure of a beautiful character. It is perhaps not the most exciting or stimulating figure – which is perhaps why I’ve been sitting on this review for four months – but it’s from an artist whose work I’ve liked and admired for a long time. That said, Kasane isn’t the only Piromizu-designed swimsuit figure that will be reviewed here, being that the next one is already in the queue.