Nymph from Sora no Otoshimono (Swimsuit Version)

Nymph swimsuit figure by Plum

In anime, certain physical attributes are frequently associated with particular character archetypes. Female American characters are often blonde, blue-eyed and buxom; quiet or smart characters often wear eyeglasses (or in Rei Ayanami’s case, have an attachment to spectacles). Another common juxtaposition involves the loli tsundere personality type. Being a loli implies certain physical qualities, of course: it necessitates short stature and an undeveloped chest, for a certainty, but many such characters also wear twintails, to the point that if I see any loli-looking character with twintails, I usually assume that she is a tsundere type. (Though I would have been better served had I made that presumption while watching Date-A-Live’s first episode, whose cheerful, frisky little sister character swiftly turned into a repugnant, poisonous little bitch.)

Sora no Otoshimono’s Nymph checks all those marks, but this particular figure breaks from orthodoxy in an unusual manner: loli characters are generally not known for the magnitude of their backsides but this figure gives Nymph a sizeable ass. It’s an unusual decision, one that doesn’t really respect the usual forms, but regardless, it looks great.

Nymph figure

Nymph is, of course, one of the main characters of the harem comedy Sora no Otoshimono, localized in the US as Heaven’s Lost Property. She is, as mentioned, a tsundere-type character, which means she’s a shrill, tedious bitch at the start of the show but becomes much more bearable as the series progresses. Moreover, she gets kicked around and mutilated as well, which I thought was pretty cute, and thus she earns a good deal more empathy from me than I would otherwise care to tender. Despite being the second angeloid to be introduced, she appears to be the show’s most popular subject amongst figure makers, with Ikaros and Astraea trailing behind and Sohara and Mikako being completely ignored, which is a shame since they are endearing characters in their own right.

In fact, this is not just the first, but the second figure of Nymph from Plum, a company that still doesn’t have an extensive record to analyze. I did buy their first Nymph figure and if I were the sort of person to draw conclusions from a sample size of one, I’d have forsworn buying any of their future products. (On the plus side, it was a fun figure to photograph.) However, their figure of God Eater Burst’s Alisa was pretty nice, and the promo photos for this newer Nymph figure seemed pretty good, apart from an unsavory green cast to the pictures that made her look seasick. More to the point, she looked like she had a great-looking ass, and I have to admit that’s really all it takes to get me to buy a figure. I’m shallow. I’m male. I’m redundant.

Just glancing at those promo photos, one might not expect this figure to be particularly large, since most figures of this type are made in 1/8 scale. Oddly, and happily, Plum elected to make this figure 1/6 scale, and it’s rather larger than I thought it would be. She’s 22.5 centimeters tall from the tip of her left toe to the top of her head, and she’s 28 centimeters tall overall, from the base to the fingertips of her right hand. The diameter of her splayed-out twintails measures about 24 centimeters in width – a bit more than the height of an average 1/8 scale figure.

This figure is termed the swimsuit version, with obvious justification. While I think that the school swimsuit is one of the most boring and unflattering swimsuit styles around, it is one of the most commonly-fetishized articles of clothing in anime culture, which I would guess stems from the fact that the typical wearers are very young, being universally of school age.

But as mentioned, Nymph sports a twist on the traditional design in that the seat is cut extremely high. Indeed, it rides quite deeply up the cleft of her ass, revealing most of her rear. Though perhaps not all that tasteful, it is done very well and looks really great. Special emphasis is placed on the curvature of each buttock, which is deserving of praise as not many figure sculptors give the backside the attention it deserves.

Aside from those naughty parts, Nymph’s sunny smile is also quite appealing, particularly paired with her frolicking pose – and with the way she’s pulling her swimsuit strap away from her body, giving us a little peek at the swell of her breasts. There’s not much there but it still looks very cute.

Nymph’s wings are nicely modeled, molded out of some translucent plastic material.

If, for some reason, you don’t like her collar, it can be removed. Her neck looks a bit spindly without it, and I don’t think Nymph is Nymph without her collar, so of course I prefer to leave it on her. I think it’s one of the coolest aspects of her character design.

One of the odder aspects of the figure is the way she mounts to her base. She’s leaping upwards, or perhaps about to land, which means she’s in midair. A lot of figure companies use long pylons or struts to keep a figure suspended in such a pose, and this figure does follow that course, but it’s implemented in an unusual way: her foot is sort of hollowed out and the metal pylon goes directly into her leg. It’s kind of ugly when you look directly at it, being that the bottom of her foot is missing, but it’s not really obstrusive or conspicuous during normal viewing. However, once you know it’s there, it’s difficult not to notice it.

A less obvious thing is that her feet look sort of small, at least to me. They’re not so small as to be obviously bothersome, but I thought it was noticeable. Her feet in the source artwork look larger than they do here.

But besides that, the proportions of the figure are very nice. The most obvious difference between this figure and Plum’s earlier Nymph is that this one’s head is appropriately sized, while the other figure’s head was monstrously large. She has a petite body build, as is expected, but her legs also have a bit of curvature, particularly on her thighs.

It’s a little odd that the three Nymph figures I own – this one, Plum’s earlier one, and FREEing’s bunny suit version – all prominently feature her ass, being that it never seemed to be a major element of her appearance in the anime. I’m not complaining, though; I rather like this trend and hope to see it continue. This figure is a vast, vast improvement over Plum’s first Nymph, which I’ve since boxed back up and put away in storage. Nymph’s beaming, friendly smile, her lively pose, and of course, her fine ass all contribute greatly to this figure’s charm. It takes a good bit of creativity and imagination to make a school swimsuit figure look really interesting, and Plum has pulled it off with aplomb.

Nymph from Sora no Otoshimono
This entry was posted in Figure Review and tagged , , , , , , , .

22 Responses to Nymph from Sora no Otoshimono (Swimsuit Version)

  1. Guy says:

    I was going to ask “Why is this figure so SFW, what happened, Tier-chan?!”
    Then I took a step back and realized how far gone we two are, that this is something we consider SFW, when most co-workers would clearly think we’re old perverts for this 🙂

  2. Ashlotte says:

    “loli characters are generally not known for the magnitude of their backsides”

    Someone needs to play more TERA! :p

    But yea Loli’s with big bums is my favorite for sure and while I’m not a massive fan of her face (Or the hollow foot) that is one spectacular ass!

    • Tier says:

      Ha, that’s true; I did forget about those. Though I do recall that one of the more unusual things about them was their large backsides and fleshy thighs. Being that I’m playing one other F2P MMORPG, I ought to give TERA another try.

  3. Wieselhead says:

    It often happens that loli or short flat chest characters have appealing backsides, or at least it is implied that they have healthy backsides.

    I love that this figure has more meat where it matters, her butt and thighs are killing me at the moment XD I could kiss the sculptor for that nice sight ;D The pose and the hand pulling at her bikini put so much life into the figure, you can really imagine her running happily on the beach., while all the males are looking at her ass *lol*

    I like Nymph a lot, at first she was not really likeable, only after she was crushed,her likeable sides came into focus. I was moved to tear as Nymph got her wings back in the second season.

    Well, I want the figure now and will try to get her somewhere.

    • Tier says:

      I really did not like Nymph at the start, either, particularly since I like Ikaros (and Sohara and Mikako) and Nymph’s appearance detracted from their screen time. But she got more likeable as the show went on. Oddly, I can’t remember if she did much in the second season, but then again, I didn’t care for the second season at all so perhaps that is for the best.

  4. Asa says:

    She’s pretty. I was quite tempted to get her myself, but I already have a Nymph, and I find her sitting pose cuter than this sort of standing one. Plus swimsuits… ehhh.

    Nymph is a rare type of tsundere loli, in that she’s… a real tsundere. Not just a tsuntsun pile of shit that plagues much anime of recent years, she has proper development in to dere cuteness. Quite a loveable character, and a nice design.

    (I also have to ask if you are aware of GSC’s current photo contest and if you plan to enter it, even though it is unrelated to this figure. Just timely to ask here).

    • Tier says:

      Yeah, now that you mention that, that does seem a bit rare; I detest the tsundere archetype, but what I really hate is the tsun aspect of it (when they turn dere, I’m happy, and I generally like the deredere archetype far more). As mentioned up above, I really, really do not like the little sister character in Date-A-Live; the show is a terrible mess of cliches and ineptness but I could still enjoy it (sort of) if it weren’t for her. I don’t know if she ever turns dere but I don’t think I have the inclination to find out for myself.

      Gee, I dunno … I find the idea of photo contests to be silly to some degree, particularly ones that are opened up to general voting, since that ensures that the winning picture is going to be one taken by a river at sunset, with the figure posed cuddling next to a cat. However, I’ve had this idea for a picture for three or four years; I can see what I want, but I’ve been way too lazy to try to make it happen. I think I’m pretty much burned out on Warcraft now – it’s hard for me to even log in – and so I’ve got some free time; the contest might be a good way to get myself motivated to make that picture.

  5. arcade says:

    Should have used Obama for this one as well, you usually pair him up with the girls that have nice asses.

  6. Tian says:

    She’s a tsundere? Looks like this is one of her deredere moments. I haven’t seen the show but this is the one with the flying panties right?

    I’m not terribly excited by this figure. The school swimsuit’s not working for me and her butt lacks some of that natural sag that I like to see. It looks a little too perfectly round to me, but maybe I’m just a crazy old man. It probably has more to do with the fact that I don’t have much of an attachment to the character. I can’t get enough Misaka Mikoto figures but they are extremely plain design-wise.

    That said, this is a great set as usual. What did you use for the backdrop? The light and airy look works very well with the figure. High-key style shots like this usually look great for figures that show a lot of skin.

    • Tier says:

      Yeah, it is; funny, I had completely forgotten about that scene until you mentioned it (and now I need to watch it again).

      Having an attachment to a character certainly gives a tilt to one’s opinion; whenever I review a character that I like from a US comic book, I pretty much expect that I’m going to be the only one on this site to really like it. I had given some thought to getting Sideshow’s Lady Death and if I had, I bet the comments would have been really reserved (or nonexistent). Me, I love Lady Death.

      The background is a big-ass printout of a sky picture I took (and processed the hell out of). I’ve made several attempts at using large prints of the sky before, with mixed success (oddly, I think by far my most successful attempt was my very first one, which was that old Plum Nymph figure, and my least successful was Alter’s swimsuit Nanoha, which was a real mess). The floor is just some gray-colored foamboard with a sheet of transparent acrylic on it (a badly scratched sheet, which I tried to hide without much success); I hid the intersection by blasting it with a helluva lot of light (I don’t really like it when people fixate on the number of lights I use, since it doesn’t really have any significance, but in this case, having a bunch of lights is really useful). I made some adjustments based on what I didn’t like from that Nanoha shoot (mainly softer lighting, no overhead light, and a wider focal length for most shots), but I think that the concept is better than the execution.

  7. Lykaios says:

    Yep, no doubt, I have become an ass-man officially. While I like the water effect and general pose….yeah…..we all know the reason why you buy a figure like this. For how overstated her butt is, the figure is surprisingly balanced overall.

    Maybe they could have arranged the water effect to better hide the mounting rod. But for me, it’s not that big a deal – it is a figure after all and certain poses are more limited than others in base mount execution.

    Nymph makes me wish my Alphamax Astrea was bigger. I need a bikini Ikaros now.

    • Tier says:

      Personally, I feel the same way; I’m sorta blasé with respect to chest size, other than that I dislike grotesquely large breasts, but I pay a lot of attention to a well-sculpted rear. Pity that that aspect of the body seems to get less attention from many figure makers.

      Yeah, I don’t think the hollow foot thing bothers me as much now, since I’ve got the figure on my desk and when you look down at it, you can’t really see it. It’s mainly noticeable when you’re looking up and the bottom of her foot is visible.

    • Tian says:

      Join the ass man army! Become a connoisseur of fine butts!

      • Lykaios says:

        So, as of right now, what’s your favorite butt out of all the figures you own?? I realize that can change depending on mood – just off the top of your head….

        • Tier says:

          I will presume you are asking me and not the Chicagoan, since he has his own website and stuff. Gee, let’s see. Cammy ought to be there for sentimental reasons but I’m not sure that her sculpt quality holds up as strongly now as it did back in the day. GSC’s Rin Tohsaka needs to be there, as does Kotobukiya’s 1/6 scale Asuka (which I’ve never photographed, but every other figure site on the internet did). I’d probably put Volks’s Senhime on there, too. Native’s Collet has to be there. However, I’d probably say my favorite (as of right now) is FREEing’s Amane Shiratori. Maybe that’s an unconventional choice but I really like her pose and of course, it is a really, really huge figure; in fact, I’d probably put most of my other 1/4 scale FREEing figures way up there as well, just because of their size (and while FREEing doesn’t always do a great job with paintwork or faces, they generally do alright with butts, and the costumes they pick typically emphasize the backside very nicely).

          • Lykaios says:

            Woops, it was a direct response to Tian. But I wanted both to answer….I will ask Tian on his site specifically some other time.

            Thanks!

          • Lykaios says:

            Oh, and BTW, I had to go back and look at your old shoots and net pics to refresh my memory. Nice and unique picks – I see what you are saying, I would not have thought to consider them.

  8. Pingback: The week in figures: June 22, 2013 | Makigumo

  9. Steve says:

    Sorry to revive an old article, but I’m just thinking of getting her and I wonder if she’s a leaner? Being not Alter and my unfamiliarity with Plum’s figures, her bending over forward on her knee is what worries me a lot because I intend to display her out of the box the whole time. Thank you ^_^.

    • Tier says:

      It’s all good. Unfortunately, she is a huge leaner, though her body is actually sturdy and I don’t think her leg has warped (at least, not on my copy). However, the place where she is affixed to the base is really weak and the metal rod that holds her into place is now leaning away. I haven’t yet thought of something to reinforce it but it’s definitely significant.

Leave a Reply to arcade Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *