I’d meant to follow up my Doujinshi and Doll Stuff post earlier, but I wanted to wait till I received the doujinshi that I recently ordered. Now that it’s all here, I can show off some of the stuff that I’ve bought. No doll stuff is included here, though; I had intended to photograph Rei and Asuka (the original Medicom Real Action Heroes dolls) doing lewd things with each other but I forgot about it. I’ll give a quick review: decent likenesses, kinda sucky for playing around with.

A lot of this stuff is from Comiket 78. Comiket is a huge convention and hentai books comprise only a fraction of what’s exhibited there, but I still like to think of it as the greatest celebration of cartoon porn in the galaxy. This is my small homage to this wonderful thing.

I was thrilled to learn that FREEing planned to follow up their version of Kenshin with my favorite Sengoku Rance girl. I got my preorder in right away and counted down the days until her April release date. Of course, figure manufacturers delight in my disappointment, and so Senhime got punted back one month and then another. In a happy bit of serendipity, the delay threw her right into Amiami’s 15% discount sale, and given that she was relatively pricey, I guess I don’t mind.

Senhime is manufactured by FREEing in 1/5 scale. This is my first figure from the manufacturer and looking over their lineup, it looks like they do a lot of larger-scaled figures, which I surely approve of. They’re probably best known for their 1/4 scale figures of characters from Lucky Star and Haruhi Suzumiya, and having seen those elsewhere, I was reasonably confident that Senhime would look pretty good.

Senhime’s size is apparent despite her kneeling posture. Measuring about 20 centimeters tall to the top of her head, she’s already level with many 1/8 scale figures. She’s 35 centimeters tall overall, necessitating a shelf or space with an extra bit of clearance.

I own a lot of figures, but I think Senhime is the first I’ve bought that doesn’t come with a base. She doesn’t need one, of course, but many manufacturers toss one in even if the character is kneeling or sitting down. I usually don’t bother with it for such figures so I don’t mind this omission.

Paint is a mixed affair. There are visible dots and specks on her clothing, but her hair is an attractive shade of violet and the golden accents on her armor look nice. The biggest problem is her clothing. Some of my favorite figures feature realistic clothing but in this case, Senhime’s dress looks very much like a chunk of painted plastic. The yellow parts of her dress are reminiscent of a child’s plastic raincoat. I’m not certain whether the brown parts of her pauldrons are supposed to be wood but if they are, they look about as wooden as Lego blocks from the forestmen set.

As befits her h-game origins, Senhime’s clothing can be removed. It’s sort of a cumbersome process, with her dress detaching in three parts. I also found it a bit difficult to get her arms locked in all the way.

There’s a very peculiar aspect of her design, and that’s the detachment point at her waist. I’m not really certain why she can be separated like that; there are a lot of figures that need to be bisected to remove a skirt, but Senhime’s not wearing a skirt. The lower part of her dress wraps around her hips rather than fitting over them in one unbroken piece, and you can’t even reattach her torso without removing that piece. As far as I can tell, all this does is add an ugly join line above her underwear.

Speaking of join lines, they are readily apparent on her clothing and normally, I’d deal with them by not putting clothing on the figure. However, Senhime’s design makes that problematic; when stripped down, her head looks disproportionately large and her neck looks peculiarly long. I surmise that her neck is that long to give some clearance for her hair while she’s dressed, but personally, I think they should’ve shortened both her hair and neck. And shrunk down her head. It’s a shame since she’s got a pretty nice body otherwise.

Oh, and before anyone asks, I made certain to push her head in all the way. This is as far down as it goes.

Her dress suffers as far as sculpting quality goes, its plastic appearance exacerbated by the lack of texture or extensive wrinkling. I like her feet, though; actually, her legs look fine, her stockings featuring some subtle shading and the requisite wrinkles.

While Senhime has a number of technical flaws, aesthetically, I like her a lot. She radiates a sense of nonchalant competence and serene confidence, matching her personality. The flare of her violet tresses adds a bit of drama to the figure and gives those collectors with a purple hair fetish – myself included – something to fixate on. The length of her spear is very impressive, and her repose effects the sense that she knows how to use it.

Overall, I’d say this is a decent figure though admittedly, there’s a sizeable tilt in my assessment due to Senhime’s status as my favorite character in Sengoku Rance. I am going to be favorably disposed towards anything bearing her likeness regardless of its flaws, and FREEing’s figure is certainly not without flaws. If they’d done a better job on her body proportions, this would be one of my favorite figures of this year. As they did not, much of my fondness for this figure is due to my fondness for the character. I suppose that’s not an entirely negative thing, as I often know very little about the characters whose figures I collect. I’d say that I’m reasonably satisfied with Senhime, though I’d hoped for better.

This isn’t the only Senhime figure I’ve recently received, and with Alter’s brunette Senhime due to ship in a week or so, I am henceforth declaring the start of Senhime Week. Yeah, I probably won’t be receiving the third Senhime until after a week’s time, but that’s fine; I’m American, I don’t know how to count. Heck, we use a temperature scale that sets its most significant points at -459, 32, and 212, so fudging the duration of a week comes naturally to me.

One thing I forgot to mention: I’ve been told that the thing above her bust somewhat resembles a turd. I hadn’t even noticed the thing prior to that being pointed out to me, but having been so informed, I find it difficult to avoid looking at it now. Odd how that happens.

Up to the tizzop

People are surprised when I tell them that I collect dolls, and what is perhaps even more surprising is that I’ve been collecting dolls for far longer than I’ve been buying anime figures. I don’t play around with them much – most are stuck in a drawer or in a couple of cardboard boxes now – but I do enjoy buying them and dressing them up. More recently, I’ve begun collecting doujinshi, and with most of my June preorders yet to ship I thought that I’d take some time to share these things.

Perhaps my favorite doujinshi is Grindcore. This book was published by Gin no Hoshitei, the circle of Akito Tamiya. He also did the artwork for the h-visual novel Zanjibaru, which I liked a lot. Zanjibaru incorporates some strange fetishes, such as belly expansion, massive insertions, and larva birthing, but this book is fairly straightforward tentacle sex. What makes it hot is that it seems that Nanoha is the one plugging up Fate with tentacles.

This doujinshi is mostly black and white, with several colored pages in the middle.

Gin no Hoshitei has also done a sequel, or at least a book that is identical in theme, called In Search of Sanity. It’s more of the same and it looks great.

Have you ever seen anyone take as much joy in their work as Nanoha does here?

Moving on to another Fate Testarossa doujinshi, this one is from the circle Type-G. This one’s a pretty fun book, and there’s an English translation floating around out on the internet so I can understand what’s happening.

And here’s the followup book, which has Fate getting banged by some faceless guys.

This one is by Studio PAL. I randomly came across one of their works – a Dragon Quest doujinshi – on the English version of DLsite. I went ahead and bought it and was slightly disappointed to find that it was in PDF format, which is a bit unwieldy to view compared to a directory of JPEGs. However, I really liked the artwork, so I was happy to learn that they’ve put out a number of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha books. This one is called Mahou Shoujo Dai Pinch, I think, and has Fate being accosted by some evil dude. Anyone know who this metro-looking purple-haired wanker is?

Unfortunately the Fate part is pretty short, and the rest of it shows a brief sexual encounter between Teana and Subaru. At least, I think that’s who they are; it’s not in color and being generally unfamiliar with the Nanoha characters, I rely on hair color to help identify them.

There sure are a lot of Nanoha doujinshi out there. This one’s from Cyclone, and despite what it says on the cover, is entirely black and white on the inside. It’s basically just an omnibus reprinting of several of Cyclone’s doujinshi: 840, 850, 860, and 865. Very nicely drawn, though being Japanese-illiterate it’s difficult for me to tell what’s going on. It seems that Fate gets mind-controlled in one of these books, because she beats up and rapes Nanoha. I think, anyway. It’s a couple hundred pages long, which gives it good value for the money.

Taking a quick break from the porno stuff, this book is titled Daughters of Mogthrasir. At least, I think that’s what it says. What’s a Mogthrasir? Wikipedia has the answer. Back when I was a kid, I wished that I had a machine that could answer any question I wanted to ask, and now, we have Wikipedia! Is technology not wonderful? Unusually (for me), this book doesn’t involve any sort of sexual activity. I pretty much bought it because I liked the cover. And Muv-Luv. For someone who knows almost nothing about Muv-Luv, I sure do buy a lot of Muv-Luv stuff.

Uhh, no idea what that says on the cover. I plugged it into an auto-translator and it comes back with “Sandome no Make Sen Torawa Reno Hime.” No idea what that means, either. Anyway, this book is about my favorite Sengoku Rance girl, Senhime, and is by the circle Veronicanoha. She doesn’t seem to have many doujinshi out there, so I’m glad that this book has some very nice artwork. I wish that I could read Japanese, since it seems that she’s either recounting a fantasy of hers to Rance or she’s describing something that actually happened. I’d like to know which it is. Maybe I ought to try learning Japanese one of these days. I studied engineering in school, and half of it was in bloody Greek letters, so it can’t be that hard for me to learn a foreign language, can it?

Punching this book’s title into the same translator gives its name as “Deriketo Bangaihen Kaki Kudashi.” It translates that as “Delicate Bangaihen Oyster Evacuation,” which I am thinking is not an accurate interpretation. Also, this book is for adlut comics! I guess I shouldn’t make fun of that typo, their English is certainly far better than my Japanese. Anyway, this book involves a couple of cheerful girls who share a guy. It’s full of happy sex which is a bit of a difference from most of the books that I bought.

All right, that’s enough pictures of porno comics for now, let’s move on to the doll stuff.

I got this doll a few months back after seeing some pictures of it on Akibahobby. Right after seeing those, I googled the name and got HLJ as the first hit. Happily, HLJ stocks some of Yamato’s limited edition items and they had this doll in stock. I went ahead and ordered it, which I suppose was their last one, since it’s showed up as discontinued ever since. The doll is named Risa, and Yamato has a few other dolls in the series named Miu (who looks pretty cool) and Miki (who looks utterly terrifying). I wanted a name that sounded a bit more like a porn actress’ name, so after some consultation with friends I renamed this doll Simone.

This doll is part of Yamato’s vmf50 series line, and they sell a bunch of clothes on their website. Most of the options look like hooker suits, so it’s pretty obvious what sort of demographic Yamato is targeting. For example, there’s this swimsuit which is basically see-through. Then there’s this outfit and this one and that one. Straight up ho-wear. Well, maybe not that last one. Or maybe it is, I dunno. I like them all, though.

I don’t have a lot of clothes for this doll; I got the transparent swimsuit (a real pain to put on her), the gym outfit she’s wearing now, and some underwear. Most of the clothing options are relatively expensive and sell out quickly, so I’m not all that inclined to buy more stuff.

I also got these hooker boots for the doll. The vmf50 body is somewhat anatomically correct (no anus though) and I did get a request to display it, so here it is:

As the product name suggests, this doll is about fifty centimeters tall, putting it somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 scale. It’s too big to easily display right now so I usually just keep her in her box, like a vampire.

The first dolls I bought were Blue Boy Toys’ Cy Girls. These were licensed versions of Takara’s Cool Girls dolls and are in 1/6 scale, like most action dolls. They came with a bevy of guns, holsters, and accessories and generally were sold for around thirty bucks back in the day. The two here are Electra (brunette) and Bloody Rose (orangehead). They were part of the third group of Cy Girls and I got them back in 2003, if I remember right. If anyone thinks the Cy Girls name sounds familiar, it’s probably because there was a forgettable PlayStation 2 action game based on these dolls.

Bloody Rose is wearing her original clothing but Electra is wearing a suit from Triad Toys. I’ve got a bunch more Cy Girls but I ran out of time while shooting these photos so they’ll have to wait till a follow-up post.

My newest doll is Deunan Knute, the heroine of Appleseed. This doll was manufactured by Hot Toys. I had wanted it for a very long time but could never quite afford it, but I had an opportunity to acquire it not so long ago and jumped at it. She comes with a ton of accessories – rifle, handgun, sword, watch, holster, sighting system – and a bunch of hands. The hands are the weakest part, I think – they mount using some very narrow pegs, which seem quite fragile. In fact, I snapped one while taking these photos. Fortunately I keep super glue around for such contingencies, but now I can’t pose her right hand. Regardless of her delicacy, this is a great, great doll. Maybe I ought to give Deunan her own review because she looks fantastic.

I’ve got a couple of male dolls, most notably the president of the United States. This doll was manufactured by a company called DID. The president came with some extra hands, an American flag, a blue necktie, a watch, and a work stool (no idea why). He also comes with two different heads – one shouting, one calm-looking – but it’s a real pain to swap them; the plastic of his neck isn’t very elastic, so it’s very difficult to fit it over the thick neck post.

This is how the president makes love. Though Deunan definitely has the upper hand here because none of the president’s extra hands are shaped to hold a gun.

Why is the president pointing there? Well, because I don’t remember where I stashed his hands so I can’t swap it out. And besides, this president is a fan of booty; he’s not afraid to show that he knows what he likes.

I’ve got more doujinshi and more dolls, but since this post is already running long I’ll break it into a two-parter. Stay tuned!

Up to the tizzop

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.

In the game Sengoku Rance, Isoroku Yamamoto is a captain who has been coerced into serving House Ashikaga. As Ashikaga’s territories are adjacent to the player’s starting location, Yamamoto is one of the first commanders you can defeat and coerce into joining your own army. I tend to keep her in my main force even though I haven’t had a lot of luck using archers, particularly towards the end of the game.

Isoroku is depicted as a gentle, duty-minded person intent on extending her family line. Unfortunately, being that she is the last of her family, that means she needs to squirt out a baby. Rance – the titular main character of the game – eagerly volunteers his services as the prospective father, but Isoroku declines due to the impropriety of birthing a half-gai-jin heir. Such concerns do not deter Rance, who resorts to manipulation, seduction, and misrepresentation to get his way.

Rance shows off his ventriloquist steez.

Many of the characters from Sengoku Rance draw their names and backgrounds from medieval Japanese history, but Yamamoto is instead based on a Japanese naval admiral. The real Yamamoto served as commander of the Combined Fleet during World War II and was one of the architects of the zerg rush that clobbered the American battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor. After enjoying a period of unprecedented dominance in the Pacific, his forces suffered a crushing reversal at Midway. Yamamoto, not knowing that Americans were listening to his Vent channel, was subsequently assassinated by US Army Air Forces pilots over Bougainville Island.

The mission to kill Yamamoto was performed by pilots in P-38 Lightning aircraft, one of the most distinctive-looking fighters ever made. Curiously, a few decades later the Japanese game developer Capcom would release a game called 1942 in which players took control of a P-38 and went about blowing up Japanese ships. One wonders how the American public would react if a major American game company made a game in which you controlled a Taliban insurgent and ran around shooting NATO soldiers.

Anyway, on to the figure. This figure comes courtesy of Kotobukiya and is built in 1/8 scale. She’s a bit under 20 centimeters tall to the top of her head, although her ponytail adds a bit more height.

I normally don’t take note of a figure’s box, but Isoroku comes packaged with multiple twist ties holding her in and scads of plastic. Wire cutters are a useful thing to have while trying to extract her from her packaging. Fortunately, she’s pretty easy to set up once you finally free her; you stick her ponytail to attachment points on her head, butt, and lower right leg and then work her bow and arrows into their proper positions. I do not see any pegs or anything that secure her armament to her hands, so this is one of those figures that you don’t want to knock down or bump. She comes attached to her base; her right foot is even held down by a metal screw.

Incidentally, I overlooked that third attachment point for her hair so her hair is looser in these photos than it really should be.

Unlike some of Volks’s figures, Kotobukiya’s version stays fairly close to the game design, and they’ve done a very nice job of it. Isoroku is given a rather unemotional, business-like expression, which I think works pretty well being that Isoroku fights to secure the future of her family rather than because she gains thrills or joy from battles and victory.

The paint is quite good, with no major problems. I do think that it would have been better if they had used a brighter red for her eyes. Some of the gold outline on her clothing is a bit sloppy, particularly on the bottom edge of her trousers, but you’d have to be looking very closely at the figure to notice it.

The sculptor did a very good job of detailing her clothes, from the two little puff balls dangling off the front of her shirt to her three-pointed hair ornament to her two-toed tabi socks. I particularly like the detailing on her sword, which has a little square link on the end that you can move around.

The only aspect of this figure that I dislike is the base. She’s mounted on a transparent pink plastic slab which is hideously incongruous to the more muted colors of the figure. It’s also got House Ashikaga’s emblem on it, which is sort of annoying, as I like to kick around House Ashikaga first thing when I play the game.

I actually got this figure about a month ago but didn’t get around to unboxing it until just the other day, but now that I look at her, I think that this is a really cool figure. Isoroku wears perhaps a bit more clothing than I usually like, but other than that, she looks great, and I hope that Kotobukiya keeps on making Sengoku Rance figures.

I don’t recall seeing many reviews for this figure out on the internets. The only one I can think of is Ashlotte’s review over on Tsuki-board. It’s an excellent review with awesome pictures. Pay no mind to his slander of Senhime, who is indisputably, incontrovertibly, indubitably one of the two most awesome female characters in the game. For real yo. Anyway, go clicky. Right now.

Up to the tizzop

Let’s talk a little bit about lust. If you collect anything, chances are that there is a holy grail item, something that you greatly desire but is nearly impossible to acquire. Maybe it’s an out-of-print edition of a book, or a rare and valuable trading card of some favorite athlete, or a pretty, limited-run postage stamp. These treasures add a definite zest to collecting, igniting passions, squelching common sense, and obliterating the checking accounts of collectors fortunate enough to add these things to their troves.

For me, Volks’s 1/4 scale Uesugi Kenshin statue is the prize that I’ve had my eyes on for years. I never expected to own her; for one, Volks’s wares are notoriously difficult to purchase outside of Japan, and for another, Kenshin was sold only as a resin kit. There was no way I could afford the model, and I do not have the requisite equipment or skill to assemble and paint it anyway. My only hope would be to buy a prepainted recast – and E2046 hasn’t stocked this item in a long time – or for a prepainted, preassembled kit to magically present itself. The late, sorely-missed Heisei Democracy mentions that such an item was in fact sold at the winter Wonder Festival in February 2008 – for an astronomical price.

So time passed, and I didn’t think much about this Kenshin figure, since there was little point pining away for something unobtainable, until one day, on a whim, I spent some time browsing through Yahoo Japan’s listings. And I saw this figure. There were a lot of reasons to hesitate – the price was insane, I would have to go through a middleman which means an even more insane price in addition to requiring a considerable amount of faith in someone a hemisphere away, and the possibility of losing the auction, which presents its own unique set of problems. But hesitation never really entered my mind; after all, this figure is it. This is number one, my prize, and who would deny that magic had occurred? All it would take to acquire this figure would be to meet the price. But Gott im Himmel, what a price.

Besides the cost, there was, of course, the issue as to whether the item was authentic. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about placing such a large bid if the item were fake, and lacking any comprehension of Japanese, my ability to verify that this item was what it appeared to be was necessarily limited. Google Translate did decipher enough of the listing to convince me that the seller was advertising an authentic item, and a quick check of his selling history showed that he specialized in selling limited-edition Volks items (principally Dollfie merchandise from their various doll events). That wasn’t much to go on, but given that some of the doll clothing he was selling was even more expensive than Kenshin, I figured I had all the assurances that I was going to get.

The two deputy services that I’ve used are M-World Service and Shopping Mall Japan. SMJ requires you to place a deposit which restricts your maximum bidding limit and so I could not use them. I’ve commissioned M-World Service several times and they’ve always been great, but I still felt a twinge of anxiety. After all, this was a pretty big sum of money, certainly the most cash I’ve ever dropped on a figure.

So how much did Kenshin cost?

Including the commission fee, Paypal fees, and shipping, just a bit over $765.

Yeah, I’m crazy as hell.

In one context, that’s around what a Dollfie costs, and those have of late become almost commonplace. In another context, for something that in my view is at the pinnacle of the hobby, the financial hit isn’t too bad; if I collected wristwatches, or automobiles, or Neo Geo games, I’d have to spend much more money to assuage my craving.

On the other hand, that’s a helluva lot of scratch to drop on anything. I could have bought a half dozen other PVC figures. I could have bought two of Daiki Kougyou’s 1/4 scale Saber figures and had them form a beach volleyball team. I could have finally purchased a Playstation 3 and replaced my first-run Xbox with an Elite unit.

And yet, you can’t defer a dream forever, can you?

Uesugi Kenshin is the leader of Uesugi House in AliceSoft’s superlative pornographic strategy game Sengoku Rance. The game has been almost completely translated by Yandere Translations, leaving only text that could not be written in English because of technical reasons. They’ve done a marvelous job, and having played through the game a couple of times recently, I think it’s the best game I’ve played all year. Kenshin is one of the more powerful offensive captains that you can recruit, and is also the only female love interest that completely flusters the title character. She is honest, straightforward, and fights for justice and peace.

Kenshin is also quite fond of eating.

Looking at this figure, I’m satisfied that this is an authentic item. The quality is undeniable and looks almost exactly like the sample images provided by Volks. Kenshin also comes in a huge clamshell box reinforced by metal rivets in the corners and secured by a metal latch. That’s enough to convince me that this figure is realer than Real Deal Holyfield.

In person, the first thing you might notice is her size. As I mentioned, Kenshin is sculpted in a colossal 1/4 scale. Including her base, she stands a mighty 39.5 centimeters tall. Add in her hat – which I forgot to take pictures of – and her height increases to 50 centimeters. This is a huge, huge figure, one of the largest I own. Kenshin positively dwarfs Saber Lily, who isn’t all that small a figure herself.

Kenshin needed a small amount of assembly after unpacking. The trickiest thing to position was her sword, which is large and heavy and supported by a thin metal rod. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about gluing down parts since I like being able to re-pack figures in their boxes if I have to transport them, but I didn’t have much choice here. She also has a hat, which I don’t like much; it makes her look like a Klansman, which I don’t find all that attractive. You can check out her hat here, in the images towards the bottom, if you are curious.

I have a few of Volks’s PVC figures, and their quality has been uniformly questionable at best. Happily, Kenshin deviates from this track record. Her paint job and sculpt are bloody incredible. I particularly like her eyes; they’re locked in a piercing gaze framed by long lashes, her head slightly cocked. I’m not sure why her clothes are falling off, but they look amazing anyway.

Her pose evinces confidence and sexiness in equal measure. Her hair swirls to the left, which along with her disrobing add a strong sense of dynamic movement to this figure.

I wonder what she’s doing with her left hand?

Another aspect of this figure that I love is that she has relatively realistic body proportions. Her head isn’t oversized and her limbs aren’t unnaturally skinny. Her neck is large enough to support her head and while she has a slender, sexy physique, she still looks like she can throw down in a fight.

I also like the details of her anatomy, including how her toes are individually defined, how there’s a small roll of flesh in her side where she is tilting her body, and how the lower part of her rib cage is hinted at.

Wait, what did you think I was going to talk about when I said “anatomy?” Y’alls are some perverts.

I’ve had this figure for only a day, but I think it’s already my favorite. And why not? I’ve been looking at it and looking forward to it for years. Sometimes you don’t always get what you desire, but when you do, it’s one helluva happy time, and I’m still sitting here saying, “Daayum.”

Up to the tizzop

We have here another jumping girl from the figure-making masters at Alter. This time it’s Sen-hime from the Alicesoft erogame Sengoku Rance. This is the second Sen-hime figure I own; I’ve reviewed the first one, and while that one is built in a mighty 1/6 scale, Alter’s offering is a more conventional 1/8 scale.

She still manages to occupy quite a bit of space though, thanks to her polearm and her swirling hair. I’m unsure how her hair arcs towards the front while she leaps forward, but it looks good anyway. In fact, all of Sen-hime looks good, which comes as no surprise. To me, the pose is the most appealing aspect, evincing a strong sense of movement. Her face complements the pose, defiantly telling the world that she’s such a badass that she doesn’t even need to fight off the snakes trying to eat her. In fact, she doesn’t even need to look at them; they’re literally beneath her notice.

Speaking of the snakes, normally I don’t care much about bases but this one is particularly nice, adding a bit of peril to an already dramatic figure. I’m not sure what kind of snakes those are, as they seem to have a third fang embedded where most reptiles would have a tongue.

This might be my favorite figure from Alter; it’s either this or Haruka or KOS-MOS. Purple hair and a big weapon is an unbeatable pair, and combined with her ersatz impression of Desmond Howard’s Heisman pose, there’s a lot to like about Sen-hime. I’m definitely very happy with this figure.

Back to the tizzop

Another character from the acclaimed erogame Sengoku Rance, Nanjyou Ran appears to be one of the game’s principal female love interests. This particular figure is in a solid 1/6 scale and was designed and sculpted by Volks.

I got this figure from E2046 at the same time as Sen-hime. I am not familiar with Sengoku Rance, being unable to speak or read Japanese, but I’m guessing that she is supposed to be the more energetic of the two. Like Sen-hime, the painting and assembly is exquisite; she’s a bit more clothed, and her colorful jacket and sleeves are flawless.

As with Sen-hime, this is one of my favorite figures, and they look perfect together. She was a bit expensive, but she was undoubtedly worth the expenditure.

Up to the tizzop

I got this figure about a year ago from E2046. The original garage kit was designed and sold by Volks, and this figure is a prepainted, pre-assembled resin kit, 1/6 scale in stature. I felt a little bit of trepidation before buying it as the price tag was near twice what I’d pay for a PVC figure from Alter or GSC or anyone, and I definitely had no assurances regarding the quality control of a Hong Kong-based recast company.

I was very happy to find my expectations surpassed. The paint is superb and the fit is flawless. I love the metallic sheen on her stockings and her dismissive expression, as if she knows she can kick your ass while half-naked.

Her weapon is rather large and makes it a bit hard to display her. Then again, she deserves her own space.

Senhime looks beautiful, and this figure is one of my favorites. I’ve since bought a number of prepainted figures from E2046 and they’re all excellent, but Senhime stands out as one of the best.

Up to the tizzop