With snow armageddon spreading across the entire east coast, I had some time to shoot some photos, so here’s a look at a figure that was released a few weeks ago. Risty is one of the original Queen’s Blade characters and is thus one of the franchise’s more prominent representatives, but this version is a bit atypical compared to its counterparts.
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There are numerous figures of Gurren Lagann’s redheaded sniper, and they generally take one of two approaches: most, like Gift’s and Kotobukiya’s, emphasize her cuteness, but a few, most notably Alter’s version, depict her as a gunslinging badass. This particular figure undoubtedly belongs in the second group.
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Think of all the weird things that one instantly associates with Japanese culture. Wacky television game shows. Green tea-flavored Coke. Tentacle rape. What culture on this planet could spawn these things but the one that made eating raw fish not just mainstream but fashionable?
So when I saw this figure, it didn’t even faze me. If you’re at all familiar with Japanese pop culture, you take this sort of strangeness as a matter of course. Actually, the first thing I thought was that this figure looked really cute. Really shy. Like she’s hiding a secret. I guess that’s one way to put it.
Incidentally, if anybody reading this is looking for May Parker, this is not the Spider Girl that you’re looking for.
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While Ga-rei Zero’s storyline follows Kagura’s maturation, Yomi is the most important character in the show. She is the only character to appear in each of the anime’s episodes and she is the epicenter or instigator of every major event that occurs. While Kagura is a simplistic, one-dimensional character who exists in the anime mainly because she exists in the manga, Yomi is far more complicated and nuanced. She is a dedicated hunter of evil spirits, a confident and expert warrior, a mentor, sister, and surrogate mother to Kagura, the heir to her family’s legacy and leadership, a ruthless psychopath, a sadistic murderer, a physical and emotional cripple, and a teenaged girl searching for her life’s path. Kagura’s loss of innocence is a core component of the plot, but by the series’ end Yomi has tallied the longest butcher’s bill, and has lost so much more than her friend.
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I’m a bit surprised that Ga-rei Zero hasn’t received more love than it has. It’s got sassy sword-swinging schoolgirls in short skirts, strong lesbian undertones, solid animation, gore in plenty and an impressive body count to accompany the violence. It’s exactly what I’m looking for in an anime series.
Actually, I guess maybe it isn’t that surprising that Ga-rei Zero hasn’t received more love than it has.
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When I look at Alter’s lineup, there aren’t any figures that I’d consider bad. Oh sure, they’ve got quite a few figures that I don’t particularly care for, but they are supreme with respect to quality, and you can see it in every figure they make. On the flip side, consider Taki Corporation; they don’t have a single figure that I like and their works are distinguished only by their misshapenness. Then take a maker like Kotobukiya; they’ve been around forever and they put out pretty good figures. I can’t think of any that stand out, though; there are a number of Alter figures that I knew I was going to buy as soon as I saw them, but I can’t think of any Kotobukiya figures that I can make the same claim for.
Daiki Kougyou, however, is a different sort. While Alter is consistently superb and Kotobukiya is always solid and Taki is reliably bad, Daiki Kougyou’s figures are all over the place. They’ve crafted masterpieces like the miko version of Kanu Unchou, which can easily go toe to toe with anything Alter’s ever chucked out. And then you have figures like this, where you scratch your head and wonder what they were thinking. Further, while Alter, Taki, and Kotobukiya all tend to adhere closely to the original character designs, Daiki Kougyou often eschews convention and offers its own spin on existing characters. For example, many of their figures are sculpted by Toshirou, whose style has its own inimitable idiosyncrasies, and they have an upcoming figure of Ikkitousen’s Ryomou Shimei as re-imagined by Shunya Yamashita, who of course has an easily-identifiable and distinctive flair. They’ve also made a figure of Sei which is unusual in that they didn’t bother giving her a left arm, and her face looks a little bit like Dr. Julian Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
So when I look at this figure of Haruhi, it’s a bit surprising to me that it comes from Daiki Kougyou. It looks more akin to something that Max Factory or Good Smile Company would make, since it’s a very faithful representation of the character. It’s also an amazing figure, and while I think miko Kanu is the best figure that Daiki Kougyou’s ever made, Haruhi is right up there as well.
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Here is yet another manifestation of Kanu Unchou, the preeminent poster girl of the Ikkitousen franchise. Some people – probably a lot of people, actually – would say that Kanu is ridiculously overrepresented and that the plastic used to manufacture Kanu figures could be better used elsewhere. Like on that Black Rock Shooter girl, for instance. I wouldn’t be among them, myself; I like Kanu, I’ve liked Kanu since she first appeared in Battle Vixens. I initially thought Hakufu and Kaku Bunwa were going to be the series’ main characters, so I’m quite happy that Kanu has received the love that she has. While there are about a billion figures of her out there, this version of Kan-san is a little bit different than the rest.
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My long national nightmare is over! I had preordered Yoko back in spring from a retailer that listed June as her release date. June came and went, as did July and the rest of summer and half of autumn. Finally I said the hell with this and ordered her from OtakuFuel. That reminds me, I probably ought to cancel my original preorder.
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As everybody knows Amiami is now accepting orders from international customers. I order most of my stuff from Hobby Search and HLJ, and seeing as how Amiami’s prices are quite a bit lower than either of those two stores, I was curious as to how good they are. I planned to order MegaHouse’s Aldra since she was on sale, but seeing as how they had one Kotonoha figure left, I tossed her in the shopping cart as well.
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Fashionably late, as virtually all Alter releases are, Yagyu Jubei is the latest release from what is perhaps the premier manufacturer of scale figures. She comes from the property Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls, and I’m not entirely certain what that’s supposed to be; the website lists a few upcoming books, but I’m guessing it’s mainly a franchise built to peddle character goods. The original character designs appear to be done by NiΘ, who has also done character designs for Nitro+ H-games like Demonbane and Zoku: Satsuriku no Jango, both of which have also gotten the figure treatment from Alter.
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