Amongst anime hobby companies, Tamaki Kousaka’s popularity as a muse is everlasting. This isn’t always a good thing; the esteem in which she’s held by figure makers occasionally seems excessive, and a large segment of the collecting population greets each release of a new Tamaki figure with a collective rolling of the eyes. However, I pay no attention to that; I like Tamaki, and I own a bunch of her figures. It’s actually been over a year since I reviewed one; in other words, it’s been too long since we’ve looked at her. To remedy this insufficiency, we’ll look at one of her newest figures, which squeezes her into her Dungeon Travelers fighting outfit. We’ve seen this before; Kotobukiya made a figure of her in this outfit, but while that figure exemplified why, for a long time, people generally regarded Kotobukiya as a maker of mediocre figures, this one, by Kaitendoh, is quite a bit nicer.
Kaitendoh has been around for a while, and I actually reviewed their first figure, which also happened to be one of Tamaki Kousaka. In retrospect, it’s a pretty poor figure (and those pictures are pretty awful, too). Strangely, while Kaitendoh hasn’t ever attained much respect in terms of their overall product catalogue, they’ve employed some fairly distinguished sculptors. That first Tamaki figure was sculpted by the same guy who sculpted this much better-received Tamaki by Max Factory, and this Tamaki was sculpted by Ken Yokota, the guy who sculpted Good Smile Company’s Rin Tohsaka. He also sculpted Retia Adolf, which is a good figure but not one that’s likely to get anyone’s testicles quaking in joy. In other words, I had no idea what to expect before receiving this figure, but my expectations were aligned on the pessimistic side.
However, one aspect in which this Tamaki surpassed my expectations is in size. She’s listed as 1/6 scale, so I had hoped she’d be big, but I didn’t think she’d be quite this big. She’s about 28.5 centimeters in height from her base to the top of her head, and about 32 centimeters tall in overall height, including her sword handle. I’ve got several other 1/6 scale figures on my desk – including Daisy, Alleyne, and Iris – and Tamaki is substantially larger than all of them.
This figure is mostly ready for display right out of the box; the only thing to do is to remove some plastic sheeting and put her sword into her hand. One curious element is that this particular figure has no breast-baring castoff option; we’ll talk more about that in a bit.
Tamaki is, of course, one of the main girls from the To Heart franchise. To Heart is one of those peculiar properties that hasn’t gotten a core release – that is, either a visual novel or an anime or manga adaptation – in quite some time, but still remains a mainstay in output of hobby goods. To some extent, this has caused Tamaki’s personality to be subsumed by her visual appearance. Notably, the design of her face tends to vary depending on whether the figure maker wants to present her as a caring, loving older sister or as a lascivious, man-eating sexpot. Here, Tamaki has a friendly look, with big, limpid eyes and a warm smile on her face. It might appear a little odd, clashing as it does with her fighting pose, but there have been so many Tamaki figures with so many different looks that this sort of expression doesn’t seem inappropriate.
While her facial expression is reserved, her outfit certainly is not. She’s dressed up in her samurai costume, which comprises thigh-high boots, matching gloves, war panties, and a top that is clearly inadequate to the task of restraining her breasts. It’s a lovely outfit, one that I like a great deal. Incidentally, this isn’t even the most skimpy outfit worn by the characters of To Heart 2 Dungeon Travellers; that distinction probably goes to Lucy, who is basically nude in one of her costumes.
Tamaki is generally depicted with an assertive bust size but this figure makes them quite large indeed. It’s reminiscent of the older Max Factory figure in that respect, though they’re perhaps just a bit smaller in proportion here.
As mentioned, there’s no explicit castoff feature with this figure. That came as a surprise as I had seen some pictures of this figure appearing topless; apparently the version of this figure in a white-colored outfit featured a torso with bare breasts, but this one does not. That other figure also had a different head, which has an open mouth. I didn’t like it nearly as much as this one, and to be honest, I’m not really that disappointed about the lack of explicitness on this figure, either; I really like how her bikini armor looks and thus wouldn’t want to remove it.
Her hip armor is removable, however. She separates at the waist so that it slides off her hips. Her head is also removable, though there’s no point in doing so with this version of the figure, aside from removing her plastic packaging wrap.
Kaitendoh’s figures tend to fail to impress in terms of manufacturing quality, but I was surprised at how nice Tamaki looks. Her paintwork is clean and precise. The matte look of her bustier and belts give a nice contrast to the glossy sheen of her boots, gloves, and panties.
Her body is also sculpted quite well. In particular, her body has a soft look that is enhanced by the tightness of her costume.
Anyone with a fetish for armpits – I know you all are out there – will be pleased with Tamaki’s pose, which depicts her with her arms raised high. It’s not clear what she’s doing, exactly, but as far as dynamic anime fighting poses go, it looks pretty good, if not entirely practical.
Speaking of practicality, I’m really hoping that leaning isn’t an issue with this figure, being that she’s quite substantial and all that weight is being supported by one leg. Unusually, that one leg fits into her base very loosely; if you happened to turn this figure upside down she’d fall to the floor. Kaitendoh does use a metal rod to support her foot; it slides into a socket in the base, so hopefully the rest of her leg is also reinforced.
As a samurai, Tamaki is equipped with a large katana. It also looks quite nice.
It’s made of plastic, unsurprisingly, but the parts that are supposed to be metal do have a realistic reflective quality; you can see the back edge reflecting Tamaki’s hair here.
I’m really impressed by how nicely Tamaki turned out. She’s huge, which I almost always prefer when it comes to figures, and she’s got a very sexy outfit. I’m even more impressed that Kaitendoh made a figure that looks this great; their earlier figures have kept expectations tempered, but hopefully they can continue to make high-quality figures. There are a lot of Tamaki figures out there, but this one is definitely one of the better ones.
Incidentally, there’s an Orca Toys figure that looks quite similar to this one, with much the same pose and the same outfit. However, she looks quite a bit more aggressive, and I think that one will feature a topless castoff option. I’m not sure whether I will buy that one or not.
Japan the country of big boobs, at least in anime well and Hitomi is also not small in the chest department. All my time watching animes made me like the bigger sizes, many shows feature busty girl characters, even more nowadays.
I had to giggle as I saw the cute villain in Captain Earth with her really big nice rack, it should be a show for younger teenagers I think, yet they have such a sexy woman among the main characters. On one hand I see this with critical eye, but well on the other hand this makes me happy (￣▽+￣*)
Tamaki is the icon of curvy anime culture characters, even wih Sonico around she’s still popular every year. I only have Max Factory’s version, her gentle appearance is just great, I also got u sed to her very large breasts.
Kaitendoh surprises this time, no I actually liked ER Nurse Miyuu too ^^
They gave Tamaki a nice look all around, the soft meat on her hips, thighs, butt and breasts looks really convincing,
I love how the clothes grab tight into her lower half, she is super sexy. The clothes are also awesome the glossy purple color accentuates her skin revealing areas very well.
Im surprised that the skin texture appears so smooth and flawless often your have some shiny spots here and there when something was rubbing against the body.
In a real fight her breast gear would probably malfunction, but for some posing purposes it is pleasing for the eye.
Lovely pictures of her, number 22 is my favorite, I like her look as a whole, maybe more without armor parts I think 😉
Yeah, I like bigger too, at least when it comes to anime. But not ridiculously big; the Max Factory Tamaki was pretty close to that, but this size is good.
I have not seen Captain Earth yet; I am really far behind on anime watching. Assuming you’re talking about Moco, she definitely does look really cute. Maybe I should give this show a try.
They did a really nice job with Tamaki, I’m very happy with the way she turned out, particularly as their first Tamaki was not really that great in retrospect. I’ve got a couple more of their figures here in the review queue and I don’t think they look nearly as good. Well, maybe Mikado might, but I don’t think Alvis does.
Yeah, I’m not sure whether I prefer her with or without the hip armor. On the one hand, the hip armor covers up more than I would like, but then again, she somehow looks a little unbalanced without it.
In anime the effects of gravity are more forgiving ^^
Also no monster boobs for me please although this is a relative term, sometimes the illustrators turn crazy.
Yeah Moco, a lovely villain girl with an evil smile. it’s a bit of a waste that she is always wearing the same outfit, though. A bit more variety would be nice, on the other hand I would go crazy after seeing her in a more feminine casual way (￣▽+ï¿£*)
Captain Earth itself is good actually I really enjoyed to watch the last three episodes in one go. Much more than Bones last big project. The growing bonds between the team are nice.
Captain Earth is one of the better shows this season, I watched some crappy shows this time in relationship to the few shows I watch this season.
Ah, well, that is good to know. Yeah, there wasn’t a ton that I liked this season, though I guess I didn’t try out much. The few that I was interested in seemed to turn into overly-pretentious melodramas or fanservice shows, which I probably ought to like more than I actually do.
Oh well, she seems amazing. I really, really, REALLY love her pose and from you photos (gorgeous as usual, by the way) she seems really detailed and very well done. I’m having hard time her imagining how big she is, especially when you say that Daisy is smaller than her. I mean, I own a Daisy figure and she seemed pretty much a giant to me, so I can only try and imagine. I do love big figures, and she’d make a great piece for everyone’s collection I think.
I was thinking about to get her too, but then I’m so scared about leaning that I decided against it. I have something similar to an OCD for figure leaning, which makes me obsessively check my collection like 5 times a day, but that’s just me being silly. LOL
Anyway, I think she’s definitely one of the best Tamaki figures I’ve ever seen! 🙂
Tamaki is about as tall as Daisy when you factor in the bases, even though Daisy’s base is nearly two inches tall. Tamaki’s head is a lot larger too, which makes her look even bigger.
Yeah, leaning is a pain; I’ve got a few figures with significant leaning problems. Probably the worst is Plum’s second Nymph; I knew that was going to happen but I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about it. I’ve also got Max Factory’s old Croche figure, which has now snapped one of its base pegs due to leaning. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that, either.
I agree, Tamaki has a ton of figures, but this one is one of my favorites. I guess in my collection, it’d be a three-way tie between this one, Max Factory’s, and Gift’s (and admittedly, I like Gift’s figure in large part because it’s so huge).
Sweet shots. It surprises me quite a bit that Kaitendoh did such great job on this. But then the large scale probably helped some. It feels like they have made quite a lot of Tamaki figures. The characters they choose are not always that “main stream” from my point of view and I haven’t got anything from them so far.
I like the way her outfit gets so tight against her body and that makes it so plumpy, which I like. I guess to get it fully cast-offable there has to be a second torso, looking at the pictures of the white version. Maybe that’s limited to the white one?
Yeah, I’m surprised as well; it doesn’t show any of the hallmarks of a Kaitendoh figure. I tend to associate them with that candy resin stuff, but it seems like they’re not using it often anymore (or at least, they’ve spun off those figures onto that Lechery label).
I haven’t looked at the white version but I’m sure that it must have gotten a separate torso; her top is so tight to her body that I can’t imagine it being made removable. Her head also detaches; there’s no real reason for her head to come off unless they bundled a second upper body. This seems to be getting somewhat more common; MegaHouse’s Irma did so and I think Amakuni’s recently-released Lucifer did, too.
I’m not a Tamaki fan at all, but I do like that with this figure, it looks like she could burst out of her outfit at any time. Figures like that are always great. And though her waist looks a tad too narrow, her anatomy isn’t outlandishly silly. Some figures of chunky girls look like bad Photoshop jobs…
They are! The sculptor did a great job giving Tamaki a soft look. If you had a recent figure in mind when talking about chunky figures, I think I know which one you’re talking about …
I had this Super Pochaco from Vertex in mind. Most of their sculpts are decent, and then you have her…
To Heart is a sleeper series among my lineup. I’ve never indulged in the franchise save for the figures for which I’ve more than made up for my lackluster participation in its other facets. Tamaki, along with the rest of the girls, is a compelling design and, so long as figure makers want to dress her up [or down] in as many variation as they can think of, I’m inclined to keep expanding my Tamaki lineup.
I’m not sure if I’m an “armpit guy” but I do like well-defined musculature and your approach to lighting, as always, accentuates every delicious detail…and well rendered armpits are typically a good litmus test as to the attention to the overall care given to the sculpt.
While I do have [and like] both color variants of Kotobukiya’s rendition of her in this outfit, I’m still tempted to indulge in either this or the similarly compelling variant coming from Orca Toys. My only other figure with an armored crotch is my “Peppermint Complex” Ryomou so I clearly need to beef up my ranks.
Tamaki is sort of an interesting character in that figure sculptors seem to do whatever they want with her design. I don’t actually remember too many figures that have her in her normal school uniform, which I am guessing is what she is most commonly seen in in the VN and the anime series. It does keep her appearance fresher than other characters (like Miku).
The crotch plate is definitely a mark of class. It’s funny that this is not the first, but the second figure I’ve photographed this year with this important bit of protection (Mu-12 being the other). The Orca Toys one does seem compelling as well, particularly if one is looking for a more stylized design; I like this version but it does stay pretty close to her Dungeon Travelers appearance (which is typical of the sculptor, I think).
Upon closer inspection, the Orca Toys variant is far too ample for my tastes where as this one, while pretty chesty, is much more my style. I had either forgotten or not noticed Mu-12’s nether armor. I’ve got her as well so I guess I’ve got an official theme going!
Yeah, it’s definitely pretty busty, and her boobs are sorta spherical-looking too. That is a good theme indeed; I figure much of anime fandom revolves around fetishes – body shapes, hairstyles, glasses, clothing, so why not crotch plates?
I’m not into the figures from Kaitendoh for some reason. But she looks really curvy and sexy. Your photos look so crispy and colorful that I’m really getting to like her. Maybe I should give Kaitendoh another try.
I would not blame you; their figures don’t always impress. This one is a notable exception, though; she came out really nice, quite a bit nicer than I thought. I liked the sculpt but I thought the manufacturing quality would be slipshod; happily, it’s actually excellent.