We took a look at The Literary Type a couple of weeks back, but that wasn’t the only figure that Native released last month; they also shipped this figure, on the same day no less. This character is named Dame Valerie and is based on artwork done by Shinsuke Inue; it depicts a young female knight caught in a rather compromising position.
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As Hemingway wrote, my descent toward becoming a degenerate mobile gamer occurred in two ways: gradually and then suddenly. For much of the last thirteen years, I’ve spent most of my gaming time playing World of Warcraft, to the complete detriment of other games as well as the updating of this site. However, I’ve since acquired a distaste for both the game and its creators, fueled partially because of the deteriorating quality of the game and also by the recent revelations regarding the conduct of Blizzard’s employees. It’s difficult to remain sanguine about a pack of men whose behavioral maturation process can be traced in a direct line from the crib to the frat house.
I began playing Azur Lane during its global launch in August 2018 as sort of a respite from my grievances with Warcraft’s gameplay systems, and I started playing Epic Seven a year later for much the same reason. Both games gradually eroded my enthusiasm for playing Warcraft and consumed more of my gaming time over the successive years. When Shadowlands launched late last year, I felt that it was time to throw in the towel; it’s now been ten months since I played World of Warcraft and I feel much the better for it. Epic Seven is my primary game now, and those who are familiar with it know that it carries with it its own rage-inducing idiosyncrasies, but as yet I find myself unable to muster the same level of negativity towards it, even during its worst moments, as I felt for much of the last few years I spent playing Warcraft.
This discursive diatribe actually has some bearing on the content of this site. Some of my favorite figures are ones from relatively obscure visual novels and eroge. That’s due primarily due to the distinctive and attractive visual designs of their characters, and I think many mobile games – particularly gacha games – appeal to the same sensibility. Certainly it’s a major reason why I play both Azur Lane and Epic Seven, and it’s why I’m curious about similar games such as Arknights and Counter Side.
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Today we’ll look at a Korean figure from a Korean gacha game: Eileene from Seven Knights. I vaguely remember downloading Seven Knights a long time ago but I didn’t spend more than a few minutes with the game. From my admittedly limited research, the game looks somewhat similar to games like Summoners War and Epic Seven, though the graphics seem very dated, somewhere on the level of the original PlayStation in quality, with the chibi styling of its characters particularly reminding me of Final Fantasy VII and Tactics. There’s apparently a sequel out, which looks far more modern and ditches the chibi artwork for a far slicker, modern, and more realistic aesthetic reminiscent of Korean MMOs such as the Lineage, TERA, and Black Desert series.
A couple of additional notes regarding Eileene: she also appeared in the mobile game The King of Fighters All Star a few months back, which is kind of an odd and nonintuitive pairing, but mobile game collaborations often are, seemingly. There’s currently a Seven Knights anime airing on television, but I do not know if Eileene shows up; my guess is that the principal cast are original characters, though I’m not sure about that. I haven’t followed any anime series in years and I’d be interested in hearing if this show is any good.
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We’ll resume our look at Daiki Kougyou’s Walkure Romanze girls with Akane Ryuuzouji. Oddly enough, Akane was not a principal character in the original visual novel, but her good looks and agreeable personality have made her a fan favorite. Another strange thing is that in the anime and the original game, she’s incorrigibly infatuated with Celia Cumani Aintree, to the point that she’s nonfunctional when proximate to her. Nonetheless, she has become popular enough to receive elevation to main character status in the fandiscs Walkure Romanze More & More and Re:tell, where she develops her relationship with main hero Takahiro Mizuno and, in the time-honored tradition of visual novel characters, has sex with him. So does her mom, actually.
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After looking at Bertille a few days ago, we’ll continue our examination of Daiki Kougyou’s Walkure Romanze figures by taking a look at Ayako, the elder girl of the series. This figure was released in July of 2017, after Celia, Mio, Bertille, and Akane, making her the most recent of Daiki’s lineup to be released. She was an odd candidate to receive a figure adaptation, being that she was very much an ancillary character in the original visual novel and anime, and lead girls Noel and Lisa hadn’t yet gotten figures (Noel will be getting a figure version early next year, whereas apparently nobody loves Lisa). That said, she actually got another figure, sold on Native’s store, which came out just the other week; that one is pretty lewd, with her having her ass way up in the air. I didn’t buy it, unfortunately, so this one will have to suffice.
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Daiki Kougyou’s figure of Noel Marres Ascot went up for preorder last week, fully half a decade after their Celia Cumani Aintree figure was released. Let’s take a look today at the hotheaded and aristocratic Bertille Althusser, the third figure to be released, way back in September of 2015.
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This American Fourth of July holiday occurred this past weekend, which means that summer is in high swing, and that means that this is as good a time as any to begin Blonde Bikini Girl Week (though given the pace of updates here, it’s more likely to turn into a fortnight, or a month). We will obviously be looking at various figures of blonde female characters in swimwear, and we’ll start with Celia Cumani Aintree, one of the heroines of the eroge-turned-TV-anime Walkure Romanze.
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Arc Systems Works has been pushing the BlazBlue franchise hard in recent times. Notably, the fifth and most recent console iteration of the game – BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma Extend – is due for release in the North American market in just a few days. In addition, its ofttimes incomprehensible plot has been extended by a dizzying array of multimedia: spinoff games – including, rather incongruously for a fighting game series, some visual novels – manga, light novels, and a poorly-received anime series. Concomitant with this expansion is the sort of product push that the better-known Guilty Gear series never received, comprising a variety of wall scrolls, stickers, hugging pillowcase covers, and of course, figures such as this one. This isn’t even the first Mu-12 figure to hit the market – that distinction goes to FREEing’s version from well over a year back – but being that the last time Alter made a figure of an Arc System Works character turned out quite well, the redundancy is not at all unwelcome.
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Despite its age, Lineage II has been a popular source of inspiration for figure manufacturers. Thus far, Good Smile Company, Orchid Seed, and Max Factory have made figures of its characters. That’s gratifying to see, as Lineage II has some very attractive character designs. It’s not atypical in that respect; this may be over-generalizing, but I’ve long thought that Korean MMOs – a group that also includes TERA, Aion, Blade & Soul, and Scarlet Blade Online – have some of the best character designs in video games. The Kamael is the latest such figure to be released, and it’s the third Lineage figure to be produced by Max Factory; we’ll be looking at them in reverse order.
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Arc System Works’s BlazBlue is the spiritual successor to Guilty Gear, and on the whole both series are quite similar. Both are fast-paced 2D fighting games; both feature a colorful cast of eclectic and memorable characters; both feature awesome instrumental rock and heavy metal soundtracks. However, there is one area where BlazBlue diverges from its forebear and that’s in how it has been marketed. Guilty Gear is by no means an obscure series but it has always been something of a niche game; furthermore, its popularity has always been keyed by the game itself. With BlazBlue, however, Arc System Works is evidently trying to expand its appeal beyond its core fanbase. The most obvious attempt is its recently-concluded anime adaptation, titled BlazBlue: Alter Memory. BlazBlue has also been the subject of a heavy merchandising effort, including the usual telephone cases, telephone cards (often depicting Noel being molested by Rachel, or vice versa), soundtrack collections, and dakimakura covers – Arc System Works released the first dakimakura cover of Noel Vermillion way back at Comiket 76 in summer of 2009, and apparently she’s getting another one next month, and several other characters (including Jin Kisaragi, which surely made the ladies happy) have gotten or will be getting immortalized on a pillowcase. And of course, BlazBlue has gotten a variety of figures, including one of protagonist-turned-antagonist-turned-protagonist-again Mu-12, which is what we’ll be looking at here.
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