So it’s been quite some time since I’ve updated this section with news or reviews; truth be told, since I got back from vacation I found it really hard to find time to work on the photos and to write the reviews. Work is full of projects and my attention is split between the baby, car and figure collecting. But I’m trying to get back in to the groove now and have started to work on figure reviews again – with that, I present to you the newest figure in my collection, Seena Kanon!

I wasn’t expecting to write about Seena, as I was working on the review for Hattori Kiriko as well as some other figures. But I’ve been procrastinating so much that there have been a bunch of reviews on these other figures already. I was also planning on putting out my Momohime review, but reviews for her have been popping up like daisies lately. So I thought I’d work on Seena’s review first as I haven’t seen any reviews of her yet.

When I first saw this version of Seena, I knew it was an instant winner and pre-ordered her without a second thought. My only gripe is that she’s the first of a set of four(or five- I forget) swimsuit figures that will be released by Max Factory in the near future. And if you’ve been following my reviews you’d know how I hate having incomplete sets. But if Seena is any indication of the quality that this line of figures will be, than I don’t think I’ll mind at all!

I think Seena is the best of all the swimsuit figures in this recent line-up by Max Factory, her pose and facial expression are really cute and she radiates a very carefree attitude. Just looking at her can (and will) make you smile, if she doesn’t, then you’re probably dead inside or a robot.

Seena is captured in 1/7 scale and sculpted by Nanko – I honestly didn’t pay much attention to her scale when I pre-ordered her, so when I received her I was a bit surprised by her size. From head to toe, she’s roughly 24cm tall, so in real life she’ll be around 168cm. I’m not sure how tall she’s supposed to be, but that seems like an average height for a girl – finally a figure company that can do basic math!

I’m not usually into swimsuit figures as I find them rather boring with not much to show. Seena has a very simplistic pose, but one that I find very interesting. She seems to have been captured in the midst of a light stroll at the beach and looking over with a gentle smile. Simple yet captivating! It’s hard to stop looking at her nor find any excuses to say she’s a boring swimsuit figure. Kudos to the sculptor – but oddly enough the sculpts of the rest of the line-up seems a little dull in comparison.

Seena sports a youthful short hair, sculpted as if wind is blowing through it. I’ve been staring at the Orchid Seed Seena for so long that I almost forgot she originally had short hair. Plus she is normally seen with a hat on so it’s a little refreshing to see her hair like this. The hair sculpt is also a little more detailed when compared to the other Seena figures I’ve seen – there appears to be more layers/depth here than the others.

Seena’s bikini is very simplistic, but effective once again with its sculpt and colour scheme. The red and black combination works very well and there’s a little heart logo over the left breast. I’m not familiar with the series, so I can’t say if that logo is associated with Seena in anyway or if it is just a design the artists put there. I like the subtle details in Seena’s bikini, as you can see in the pictures, from the little wrinkles to the edges where the straps connect.

Max Factory also did a great job in hiding seam lines, look at the pictures carefully, can you see the seam line where she separates? I know I can’t! Seena atually separates just below her bustline (like many other figures) in order to take off her skirt. Take into account these are shot using a macro lens, which usually picks up the smallest of imperfections! I’m also glad her breasts aren’t abnormally large but proportionally shaped.

Seena has a great body sculpt with many fine details that are missed on a lot of other figures – you can easily see the contours of her body without having to play around with lighting much. I like the way her torso is sculpted, especially with her stretching slightly backwards showing off her abs.

Seena also have a nice set of legs to go with her body, when I was viewing her pictures on my camera’s LCD, the almost looked real to me. Her legs are unusually long, but that’s the norm with anime figures, not that I’m complaining! One very minor critism would be her toes, without nail polish it looks a little bland. But then again, painters usually mess up on painting nail polish so I guess I should be greatful.

The base is nothing fancy, but at least Max Factory made the base look like sand. Not just a boring white square or circle base *coughtakeahintaltercough*. Subtle details like this really adds to the display value of these figures.

One of the defining features of a bikini figure will have to be the body and ass. Why wear a bikini if you’re not going to show off your assests? It’s common knowledge that anime figures usually receive a less than impression sculpt on their rear end – usually they’re as flat as… well, let’s just say flat! I think most of the figures now are steering away from that stigma, and Seena is no exception. I wouldn’t say her rear end sculpt is extremely perky, but it’s proportional to her body and just round enough that you can say “lookin’ good, Seena!”.

The skirt, as I’ve mentioned earlier, is a cast-off. Separate her just under her bustline and her skirt flips right off the top. I love the design of her skirt though, it’s flowing slightly upwards as if by motivated by wind with the left side opening exposing her leg / hip. It’s rather sexy, if you ask me, exposing just enough to make you think. So even if the skirt is a cast-off, I’ll be displaying her with the skirt on.

If Seena is going to lose any points, it may be the bikini bottom at fault. The paint work on the black line isn’t as smooth flowing as her bikini top, and the sculpt that empasizes the bikini “digging in” to her skin appears a bit like a seam line. But it’s probably the macro photo talking, as you won’t notice this much when looking at Seena in preson.

Speaking of seam lines, I really don’t see any on Seena nor mould lines on her body. I’m not sure about the mould of this figure, but it seems like one piece from her torso down to her feet. She is rather light for her size too, and you’ll know why when you pick her up. Her body appears to be mostly hollow, at least that’s what it sounds like when you tap on her body. It’s like tapping on a plastic tube… *tappa tappa tappa*!

Speaking of a lack of mould and seam lines, this figure is also one of the cleanest figures I have in my collection out of the box! The paint work is clean with minimal overlapping (mainly due to her only having a bikini on), but the figure also lacks paint contamination. There are no black spots on this figure nor scratch marks. Of course, there are some tiny paint transfer from her cast-off skirt, but that’s expected. Maybe I finally got lucky and received a “clean” figure, but I don’t think other collectors will see much deviation from this.

It seems like Max Factory has a pretty good standard when it comes to the assembly line, in fact, my Miku VN02 and Yoko Rittona also seems pretty clean.

Overall, I’m looking forward to the rest of the swimsuit line-up from Max Factory for these Shining Wind figures. Although if I’m only to get one, that one would be Seena. People normally say “save the best for last”, but in this case it looks like Max Factory dished out the best first. Her size is also fairly generous at 1/7 scale – can’t go wrong with this “boring” bikini figure!

Now I’m usually pretty stiff when it comes to a creative background, so this time I thought I’d try something different. You know, to actually use a background! XD I guess I have Tier to thank for the little motivational push. But it’s not just Tier – I browse around pictures on MFC and the amount creativity the community has never ceases to amaze me. =)

So here are some lame attempt at Seena photos with a beach background, hence the warmer filter setting in the photos. C&C welcomed!

Here’s another figure that I had purchased back in December 2009 but didn’t have time to do a review till now. I’m so back logged, it’s not funny – the evil companies keep coming out with new and great figures that I can’t catch up! But it’s my goal to review all the figures I have in my collection; oh yes, so it is written, so it shall be done…

I was introduced to this figure when I was browsing around HLJ and saw that she was up for pre-order. Actually I was introduced to Yoko’s character this way. I was (and still am) new to collecting anime figures and I’ve been out of touch with any anime series since Love Hina. So that’s been almost a decade that I’ve been out of the loop!

I usually start with some character background, but since I don’t know anything about Yoko (for shame), I’ll just write my filler on something else – her name. Her name really confuses me as I’ve seen it as Yoko Rittona, Yoko Ritona and also known as Yoko Littner. I’m guessing one is the Japanese version while the other is the English variant. But usually Japanesse goes by lastname first, so is her family name Yoko or is it Rittona? Ack! @_@ But since most people call her Yoko, I’ll just go by that for the rest of the review.

HLJ advertised that this was a sexy figure and a must have – well, I guess I can partially agree with that. She sure is sexy, that is until you look at her face. This is the number one complaint about this figure, is that her face look really really weird (i.e. like a man). At first I just brushed it off, I thought of it as mass hysteria and people were just jumping on the bandwagon as usual. But when I received the figure and had a good look at it in person, her face does look a little strange from certain angles. But I don’t mind as much and still think she looks pretty (enough). I don’t even think people will look at her face anyway!

All was cool until I started taking photos of Yoko, however. I’m serious when I say this, I had chills run down my spine when I was taking photos of her face from straight on. It looked like she wass giving me the evil eye, and that grin of hers just creeped me out. Her face seemed devilish under the lighting and she was just taunting me. And the fact that I was taking these photos alone in the basement in the middle of the night didn’t help things either. I had to take a break and go upstairs to recompose myself before heading back down to continue on.

After getting past the odd facial structure, we come to the good parts – parts where I would focus for the remainder of the night. Yoko is sculpted by Hagii Shunji in 1/6 scale, she’s a rather large yet solid figure. She stands about 28cm head to toe, a really decent size to show off her “real version” body. This figure is the sculptor’s take on what Yoko would look like if she was a real person. It’s definitely an interesting attempt compared to all the anime-like Yoko figures in the past, and since release, I think it sold fairly well. But I’m only saying that from what I see in community comments and the number of reviews out on her already.

The breasts aren’t overly huge and seems fairly proportional to the rest of her body. You can see some detail of her rib cage as the body leans towards the right. Her waist is slightly wasp like, but not too much, which makes her look a little “buff”. I mean, she should be, if she’s carrying that anti-armour rifle around all the time, right?

The details in her pants gives off a bit of “camel toe” impression, maybe that was done by the sculptor to help emphasize some ecchiness? Her legs are pretty thick and they feel very solid, especially the right leg. It definitely feels heavier than the left leg since it’s the only thing supporting the entier figure up. It seems to be doing a good job as I haven’t seen or heard any reports of Yoko leaning so far – she’s been released for almost half a year. Her strong legs reminds me of Xena: Warrior Princess for some odd reason. It just popped into my head as I was writing this.

The pink stockings look really nice and adds a lot of sex appeal to Yoko. The way it’s painted is almost pink-pearl like and it has a semi-transparent feel to it. Sculpt of the wrinkles around her thigh and knees look great too – there are so many nice details about this Yoko, too bad the face is kind of scary looking straight on. Yoko retains her large anime-like boots, particularly the zippers, even though this is supposed to be a “real image version”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen boots in real life with zippers as large as these. They look kind of cool though.

I love Yoko’s pose, and the sculpt of her chest area, particularly the left side of her body. You can’t say you’re mouth doesn’t water when you see it…

The pink sling adds a feminine touch to Yoko’s character, and the way the sling runs between her fingers is a representative of that too. It’s like she’s saying she’s a girl, but she’s still tough! I found that her gloves are a little too glossy though, I think it would’ve provided a better contrast if it was matte. Her pants, sling, boots and stockings are already glossy enough.

From what I’ve read, her weapon is supposed to be an anti-tank / anti-armour rifle. It does look intimidating, but it looks more like a regular sniper rifle to me – bit of a half breed between a .50-cal Barrett and a PSG-1. The rifle definitely could’ve used more “oomph”, I think it’s too thin looking – maybe it’s an anorexic rifle? =P I’m not sure what the specifications are for this rifle as I’ve never watched Gurren Lagann, but it seems like her scope has different modes of views. Looks like it has three rotating modes, normal, night vision, IR/heat? I’m just guessing out of my ass here… lol

Yoko comes with an alternate hair attachment with sunglasses, just remove her original bangs and put on the new one with the shades and you’re golden! Just becareful not to drop Yoko from shock as you take her bangs off – you know, that scary face and all. Really, I’m just poking fun – I think her face is alright, but maybe the problem is that it’s sculpted a little too long. I do like her with the shades on though, it adds some personality to her looks. I just wish the glasses were designed a little more fashionable – it looks like a run-of-the-mill shop/safety glasses. =( That said, I do prefer Yoko with the glasses on and I’ll be displaying her this way.

As I’ve said, Yoko’s been out for about half a year already, so there are a number of reviews out for her, I feel so left behind. LOL Of course there’s Tier’s review and Rico’s review. I also saw one at howdoyoufigure.net and a random Google search took me to Spicy Otaku. I’m sure there are more, but I guess I don’t get around much.

All in all, I really like this Yoko and she’s a really great figure. But just remember – don’t look directly into her eyes!

For those that aren’t in the know, Love Hina started out as a manga series (by Ken Akamatsu) and later developed into an anime series. Narusegawa is the main female protaganist in the series and at the time I thought she was pretty hot, albeit a little sadistic in the way she’s always kicking Keitaro’s ass. I can’t say it wasn’t entertaining, however. Hell, I even dated a girl (for a short while – thank God) that was a little like that. The way Narusegawa beats on Keitaro is a little reminiscent of The Girl from My Sassy Girl. Man, I love that movie! Good job, Hollywood, on butchering the beautiful plot line in your Americanized 2008 rendition.

I can’t remember what the catalyst was that triggered my search for this figure. I mean, it’s been quite some time since I’ve heard the words “Love Hina” and it was practically purged from my memory. I think I probably saw it as one of the random posts on MFC, but when I saw the name Narusegawa Naru, my mind said, “Oooooooh yeah!”.

I was surprised that there aren’t many Narusegawa figures around, given how popular this series was. When I searched for Narusegawa figures, this one by Max Factory was one of the best I saw (if not the best). I was also surprised to find some still floating around the net at the release price, especially since this figure was initially released in 2005 and has long since stopped production.

This figure of Naru is based on the Love Hina: Spring Special OAV, where she wore the leafy bikini. I really don’t recall the pink tank top and uber short jeans though. Whether if it was originally there or not, I find the top and cast-off jeans a nice touch.

The most noticeable difference of this figure compared to the character art is the fiery red hair. I’m not too sure what prompted this design when Naru’s hair is brown, but I can’t entirely say I mind. The hair looks pretty good on Naru and matches the blue and green colour of her outfit. The hair is also partly translucent, which I found great to take pictures of (shown at the end of this review). There are also very subtle glitter in part of her hair, which I didn’t even notice until I looked at the macro photos on the computer.

I can’t say the face is exactly like the original artwork, but it’s rather close -maybe it’s the colour of her hair? But you can look at this figure and know it’s Naru and at the very least the facial expression captures her personality.

The paint application is done quite well with subtle shading throughout the entire figure. The skin tone is smooth and the leaf bikini is solidly painted with a slight texture to it. While the texture and shading on the leaf bikini does make it look leafy, my beef with it is the glossy coating which makes it too reflective thus plastic looking. A matte coating would’ve yielded better results. The same goes for the jeans, clean paint job, but too glossy for a “fabric”. One thing that Max Factory did very well, however, are the nails. With exception to the pinky toe, all the pink “nail polish” are actually painted on the nail fully. No partials coverage nor overlap on to the toes and fingers! If you’ve read any of my other reviews you’d know messy nail paint work is one of my pet peeves about these collectible figures.

The cast off-able jeans is split into two pieces, front and back. It fits fairly well and isn’t so loose that it’ll just fall apart, but it does have a significant gap on both sides which is quite obvious. The pink shirt is also removable, which is less obvious but it’s quite loose. A minor tap on the shirt and it can fall out of her hand. Naru comes with a plug-in piece (the tips of her fingers) that sticks into her hand should you wish to display her without the pink shirt. The paint and material is quite different from the rest of her hand (and body), so it looks odd when you look at it. But it’s a small piece in a more obscure part of the figure so admirers may not even notice it unless you point it out to them.

As I’ve said earlier, this take on Naru has her with fiery orange hair. It’s really not as bright as seen in the pictures, but due to the slightly translucent material and the lighting, it brightens her hair up quite a bit. There is a bit of shading detail in her hair, which is always welcomed, the top part of her hair is more solid while the ends become lighter and more translucent. The hair is also well sculpted with clean, long flowing lines.

With the jeans off, Naru’s leafy bikini bottom is revealed. You get two leaf ties/ribbons to plug in to the sides of her waist to get complete the bikini look as per the original artwork. What I really like Max Factor did was sculpting the bikini as separate pieces then attaching it to the figure. It’s not all part of one mold, which often causes paint overlap and mold marks. This also adds to the realism of the outfit, but that’s a double-edged sword, as the body contains very slight gaps. It doesn’t look like the bikini (especially the bottom) is pressing into the skin, rather it has cut out chunks of her body tissue and embedded itself into her body. Well, pictures are worth a thousand words so have a look below and you should see what I’m talking about.

I rather like this pose of Naru’s, it shows her cheerful personality but best of all is the way she’s swinging her hips out. It makes for creative rear shots – especially with more dynamic lighting. I think the rear could’ve been sculpted with a little bit more roundness, but at least it’s not flat like many other figures are known for.

One last thing about this figure that I want to point out is that from top to bottom, you can see a slight seam line from the mold, it’s not easily noticed, but it’s there. Also on my figure, on her right hip is a round mold mark that wasn’t cleaned / smoothed out. I’m not sure if it’s like this on other figures or not Looks like the mark on the right leg is from the mold, I took a look around and saw that the Naru at How a Girl Figures has the same mark too. But if you have the jeans on you won’t see it – you can see the small circular mark in the below images.

This figure was fun to take pictures of, the pose is inspiring and it got the hamster wheel turning in my head. So without further ado, here are the fun shots!

And my two favourite shots, I can’t decide which I like more – probably the B&W version.