As good as Ping-Yi is, I felt that Jin-Lian would be the true prize of the series. With high expectations comes the possibility of bitter disappointment, but I felt that SkyTube could pull it off, seeing as how they have become one of the preeminent figure manufacturers in the hobby. And pull it off they did; after seeing Jin-Lian with my own eyes, I can confidently say that this is one of the best anime figures ever made.
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Apparently I haven’t reviewed a Tony Taka-designed figure since Freesia, which is confounding since I think I have at least a dozen Tony figures in hand and in the review queue. Clearly there is much work to do; we’ll start by taking a look at Ping Yi, a figure from SkyTube’s ostensible premium line.
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Mangagamer released the English-language – and uncensored – version of Purple Software’s Hapymaher last week and being that this figure of Yayoi was released ten months ago, now seems as good a time as any to take a look at it. Another justification for doing this review is that Native recently released their own take on a heroine from another Purple Software game and though I skipped over that figure, it’s interesting to compare how these two characters turned out. And well, the quirky characteristics of this figure are reason enough to do this review now. I’d imagine we might not see another figure like this again.
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Fads come and go. Over ten years of collecting girly anime figures, I’ve seen series like K-On!, Black Rock Shooter, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and Ikkitousen have their day before fading off into memory. However, there is one series that has never seen its star dim and that, of course, is Fate/stay night, and all its myriad slash-random word spinoffs. The coterie of sexualized heroines have always found an appreciative audience, regardless of the ludicrous interpretations of their historical backgrounds. A Saber figure was one of the earliest figures that I owned, there is a veritable (and assuredly metaphorical) boatload of Fate-series figures in my review queue right now, and their ranks will only grow in the years to come. I have little doubt that should the universe someday collapse back into an infinitesimal singularity, the last atom to go will be the injection molded tip of Saber’s ahoge.
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Archeyle isn’t the first, nor the second or third, Vertex figure I’ve purchased but somehow it’s the first one to be reviewed here. Oddly, it’s also one of two half-naked blonde elf girl figures to be released at the end of July. You really can’t go wrong with happy, thong-wearing blonde elf archer girls … can you?
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We have for our examination today the latest and greatest from those inscrutable minds at Rocket Boy and Native. Unfortunately this lady has no name, being that she is simply given the title OSHITSUKE; doubtless lowbrow observers will snicker at the phonology but true collectors are certainly possessed of more refined sensibilities. Her sobriquet is perhaps more properly rendered as Oshitsuke Musume, which means something like Pressing Girl, which of course is basically what she is doing, at least in one of her poses. We will just call her Oshitsuke today, which doesn’t really make much sense but it’s not our fault that Rocket Boy did not give her the dignity of a name.
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Mai Shiranui has been a favorite muse for figure manufacturers for well over a decade now, and for good reason; she is one of the earliest female fighting game heroines and stars in one of the most long-running game franchises, with The King of Fighters celebrating its fourteenth core game release in 2016. Her exuberant personality and agreeable appearance are also obvious explanations for her enduring popularity. Curiously, she’s scheduled to get at least three – and perhaps four – figure releases this year; quite a respectable quantity for any character. One is a large 1/4 scale figure from Chinese maker Infinity Studio; it’s of rather unconventional design being that she appears far more realistic than the anime-style designs that have represented her since her Fatal Fury days. Another is an exorbitantly-priced 1/6 scale figure from Gantaku, which looks to be very much in the same style as Alphamax’s polystone figures, before they switched gears and become a purveyor of high-quality pornographic PVC figures. The third – which hasn’t been shown off yet – is one that will supposedly be done by Kinetiquettes based off of an illustration drawn by Stanley Lau. But of the ones that have been sculpted, this one – by Amakuni – is in my view the best of the group.
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Native has been so prolific that there are days where I get one of their figures in the mail and am not immediately sure what it is. This inundation of porno figures is of course due to them being not just a producer but also a distributor for a number of relatively new manufacturers, such as Rocket Boy – who are the minds behind the figure we’re looking at here, named Dva. This Dva unsurprisingly has no relation to the likely more-famous Dorito-gobbling teenaged mech jockey from Overwatch but is instead based off of an illustration done by Ban!. He’s a talented artist with an easily identifiable (and sometimes well-imitated) style – and a pronounced predilection for penises. That proclivity carries over to the figure, which indeed comes with not one, but two penises, both modestly and agreeably packaged in an opaque black baggy, which is where they will stay, at least in my collection. I try to provide a comprehensive overview of the figures I photograph but in this case – and in any other case where actual schlongs are depicted – we ain’t having that, and those interested in that sort of thing will need to go elsewhere to satisfy their curiosity.
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Yamato never got a lot of love from figure collectors. Most of their products aren’t particularly well-remembered and nobody seemed to mourn their demise; indeed, I don’t think many people even noticed, nor was it really acknowledged when they briefly came back as Arcadia. I’ve always liked Yamato, however; I have quite a few of their figures and I also own a number of their 50-centimeter dolls and Macross variable fighter toys. In fact, one of the first figures I reviewed for this site – nearly nine years ago – was Yamato’s Shunya Yamashita-designed Rei Ayanami. It’s a figure that I still like a lot, and when a spiritual successor to it was announced, I was quite pleased. Flare’s catalog comprises a continuation of series and themes that Yamato used to feature in their own products, though I’m not certain if the two companies are actually connected in a business sense (I’ve heard that Flare actually has some affiliation with Alter, though I’ve never seen that corroborated anywhere). Regardless of who they are, I’m glad they’re around, for while Yamato may not have been amongst the most respected of figure makers, I missed them.
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My interest was piqued when Bikini Warriors was announced, being that I have a thing for scantily-clad female battlers. My enthusiasm was dampened when I learned that each episode would be less than five minutes in duration; I anticipated that viewing the show would be both pointless and disappointing. However, having watched the series, it actually works out okay. The truncated run time actually works in its favor as it excises most of the inconsequential filler that constitutes most contemporary anime. Each episode of Bikini Warriors generally comprises a brief action sequence – typically lewd in content – a silly joke that lubricates the progression of the encounter, and then a quick wrap-up, with none of the tedious exposition and anesthetizing monologues that pervade so many anime series. More shows ought to follow this model. The Fate/stay night anime adaptations, for example.
The purpose of Bikini Warriors is, of course, to move merchandise, and that’s why we’re looking at this figure here. This is the Cleric, who didn’t actually appear in the television commercial-cum-anime, but that’s okay since she still looks good and really, that’s what counts here.
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