After playing through Sengoku Rance, I decided that I wanted more figures of characters from the game. I wound up getting Kenshin and Isoroku Yamamoto, and if Shikibu had a figure, I’d get that too. Sadly, she does not, and sadly, many other worthy characters from the game haven’t been so honored. Kotobukiya or Orchid Seed or someone should retool to make a figure of each female Sengoku Rance character; the world would be a better place for it.
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Back when I talked about Seena, I mentioned that the promo photos are sometimes misleading, that sometimes the actual figure looks better than what you expect.
The flip side of that, of course, is that sometimes the figure looks as bad as you expect. Or worse.
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My last figure review covered a figure that evoked mixed feelings, so I thought that for my next writeup, I’d look at a figure that everyone can agree is the very epitome of class, a figure that is, without a doubt, fun and appropriate for people of all ages.
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A couple of months ago, I was reading The Lord of the Rings, and one of the things that’s always struck me about J.R.R. Tolkien is how few books he ever had published. His bibliography basically comprises The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and several short stories. His most famous work is barely over a thousand pages in aggregate, shorter than many single volumes of contemporary fantasy series, and he labored virtually his entire adult lifetime on The Silmarillion without completing it.
That’s not to say that he wasn’t an active writer, though. Tolkien wrote prodigiously; the thing is, he constantly trashed his stories and started anew, coming up with new ideas, defining and redefining characters. One of his most famous characters, Frodo Baggins, was originally Bingo Baggins, Bilbo Baggins’s son. The character is refined over decades through numerous iterations and revisions until he becomes the Frodo that everyone knows from the movies. Despite the paucity of Tolkien’s published work, it’s safe to say that his characters are some of the most beloved in all of fiction and have, thanks to the films and the books’ enduring appeal, become pop-culture icons.
There is, however, another way to develop characters and ensconce them in the hearts and minds of the masses, one that doesn’t require a lifetime of toil. Start with a female anime character with big eyes, give her some attributes that hit on a variety of fetishes held by anime fans, get an associated video or a song up on the web, and chuck some merchandise out into the market. Then, when the inevitable anime and manga and video game tie-ins come out, you’ll be able to move more merchandise and sit back and watch panting fans drop thousands of yen on your goods. Character background? Don’t need it. Personality? Make it up as you go. Just be sure that it falls within one of the common, proven-to-sell archetypes. If it does, you’re good.
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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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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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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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