A pirate hat, a gun, big breasts and a skimpy bikini; sounds like the makings of a particularly fine anime figure, no? Well, in this case, the sum is perhaps a little less than the total value of all its constituent parts, but even so, a figure manufacturer would have to struggle mighty hard to screw up a figure of Isuzu Sento when she’s dressed like this.
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A brief perusal of the preorder listings at any figure retailer will confirm that the Fate/stay night merchandise machine continues to hum unabated. And by that that we really mean the Saber merchandise machine; once upon a time there was just a single blonde British girl in a blue dress with a big sword, but since then the one has been cloned into a veritable multitude, with at least a hedonistic Roman emperor, a late shogunate-era swordsperson, a teenager in a Japanese school uniform, and a delinquent-looking girl with a ballcap comprising the products of this mitosis (and I’m sure there are more). There are so many that I’ve sometimes thought about featuring all the oddball Saber figures I own in a series of reviews which would be dubbed Weird Saber Week – though given both the languid pace of reviews here and the sheer quantity of qualifying figures, Weird Saber Year might be a more appropriate name.
Meanwhile, most of the remainder of the expansive cast of Fate/stay night has scarcely received any attention from figure manufacturers. Rin Tohsaka is certainly a victim of their disregard; she appears to be the number-two girl, and perhaps the number-two character (Archer and Lancer fans might dispute this) of the franchise, and yet as far as the figure hobby is concerned, the distance between Saber and her is so vast as to render her runner-up status irrelevant. Over the last half-decade or so, she’s basically gotten one notable figure (which would seem due for a re-release by Good Smile Company any day now) and a few nondescript swimsuit figures. But now, with this figure we can add one more to her insubstantial score. However, I would guess that it’s not the figure that many Rin fans might have been hoping for. I certainly don’t feel that way, though. I mean, if I were to wonder what sort of outfit I’d like to see Rin in, this is pretty close to what I would have imagined.
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We looked at Illya last time, so logically, today we’ll be looking at her counterpart, Chloe (sometimes romanized as Kuro, which I think sounds better and is thematically more appropriate, but nobody consulted me). We’ll keep this review brief as almost everything I thought about Illya applies to Chloe as well, so we’ll just touch on the high points.
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As it is way too hot in this part of the world, we’ll look this week at Illya and Chloe von Einzbern, two girls who are dressed to beat the heat. They’re a little young-looking but that shouldn’t be anything too unusual for fans of contemporary anime. As the tradition here is to feature only one figure per post, we’ll start with the white girl and then take a look at Chloe in a couple of days.
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The exchange rate is tanking – thanks UK – but the business of purchasing figures continues apace. I’ve left off a bunch of exclusive figures since I’ve lost track of most of them, but I may wind up getting them down the line, if I remember to order them. In the meantime, it’s been a fairly busy month due to real-life stuff but reviews should be continuing soon.
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The third panty fairy in Kotobukiya’s lineup is Freesia. She is evidently the youngest of the trio and thus it is appropriate that she was the last to be released – just a couple of months ago, in fact, so this review isn’t too late. Certainly not as late as Annabel’s, anyway.
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A few years back, Kotobukiya released Daisy, which became one of my favorite figures. Since then, they’ve released two more panty-clad fairy girl figures, also derived from Tony Taka artwork. They are generally referred to as sisters, though they don’t actually look much alike; Freesia, the shorter, younger-looking sister was released just over a month ago, while Annabel, the tallest of the trio, was released last year. We’ll look at Freesia shortly but today, it’s Annabel’s turn.
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We’ll take a short respite from reviewing hentai figures and instead look at this figure of Black Heart – not the demonic villain from the Marvel Comics universe, but the Sony-themed goddess from the Hyperdimension Neptune video game franchise. Compile Heart and parent company Idea Factory have made a number of anime-themed RPGs, most of which have languished in obscurity, but they hit it big with the Neptune series, which has since spawned numerous games, a mediocre television anime, but surprisingly few figures, meaning that any time we get to look at a figure from this series is a special moment.
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We’ll continue our exploration of hentai figures with this one, the debut product from the company Rocket Boy. Some depictions of vampires, demonesses, and succubi – such as Darkstalkers’s Morrigan and Viper GTS’s Carrera – present them as feminine, full-figured seductresses. This is obviously not one of those renderings.
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The conventional wisdom would have it that Japanese anime and tentacles go together like politics and corruption. As is often the case, the veracity of this stereotype is overstated; these days, even in adult-oriented media, there aren’t really that many tentacle-centric anime series and games. This is also true regarding figures; despite the name of this site, I don’t think I’ve actually ever reviewed a figure that incorporated tentacles as a central feature of its design, and that makes this post a watershed moment in the seven-year history of this site.
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