I hadn’t thought very much about it, but I haven’t ever reviewed a figure from the Taimanin series, even though I’m generally a fan of the series. Actually, this is the first figure I’ve bought of a character from the franchise, but it’s a great one to start with, I think, as Yukikaze looks fantastic.
Yukikaze Mizuki is one of the principal protagonists from the Taimanin world, starring as the eponymous heroine in a series of video games and anime episodes. The series reprises many of the conventions of the series: in particular, female ninjas clad in skin-tight clothing battle against demons in futuristic Japan, only to lose and suffer a variety of indignities and deprivations. The anime adaptation follows the bad ending of the game, in which Yukikaze performs an undercover mission as a prostitute, subsequently enduring a litany of confinement, degradation, and abuse. More unique to the series is a heavy netorare theme, in which Yukikaze forsakes her boyfriend Tatsurou for the wiles of her captor. NTR isn’t really my thing but it is what it is; these days, NTR is about as common in hentai as isekai is in mainstream anime.
An unusual development in the series is that the original eroge has since spawned a variety of gacha games, each of which appears to exist in its own timeline. There’s even an all-ages (charitably speaking) gacha game called Action Taimanin that excises the rape, torture, and general unpleasantness endemic in the primary games in favor of an action-style game in the vein of Honkai Impact and Punishing Gray Raven. There’s also a turn-based RPG game called Taimanin RPGX that is receiving an English-language adaptation sometime soon; apparently this game does retain the more graphic content that Taimanin fans are no doubt used to.
This figure of Yukikaze was manufactured by Amakuni and released in October of 2021. It is sculpted in 1/6 scale and stands about 26 centimeters in height. The figure presented here is the standard edition, which lacked some of the display options afforded by the limited edition; that version had an optional different head and I believe it had exposed nipples as well. The head showed Yukikaze’s tattooed tongue, which is an element I really don’t care for, and therefore I didn’t buy it (notably, the anime and I think later games in the series discarded the slave tattoo on the characters’ tongues).
Yukikaze is standing in a simple but proud pose, showing her cool and confident personality. She’s wearing her standard Taimanin uniform, consisting of a black leotard, supplemented by thigh-high boots and elbow gloves trimmed with some sort of fur-like material. Her leotard is cut high over her hips, revealing her trademark tanlines. Not present are her weapons, a pair of pistols.
Her hair splays out behind her, giving a sense of volume but also obscuring the view of her back. Two additional hair tails sprout out from her head, resembling whip antennae to some extent.
That said, there’s not a lot to see from the rear; Yukikaze’s backside is relatively modest in size and shape.
The details of the figure impress; I particularly like the paint gradients visible on her hair, particularly in how the darkened tips frame Yukikaze’s face.
Yukikaze isn’t wearing a lot of clothing, but I like the variety of finishes present on her uniform. Her leotard is glossy black, while her gloves and boots are done in a lighter satin gray, trimmed with metallic red. Cutouts filled with fishnets add an element of interest to her look.
I like Yukikaze a lot, though I’m not entirely sure how high I’d rank her as far as Taimanin characters go. I did enjoy the OVAs, though the animation quality dipped noticeably after the first episode. Still, the content was pretty good.
The Taimanin franchise has gotten several figures over the years, but I think this is one of the best. The technical execution from Amakuni is on point, the size is good, and Yukikaze has a great design. This figure certainly does her justice; hopefully Amakuni or a similar high-quality manufacturer continues to produce figures from the series, as I’d love to own a figure of Asagi or Ingrid.
Yukikaze best girl. Biggest disappointment for me was that the anime episodes showed her pregnant, but we didn’t get any real scenes with her that way.
I hear you; I think the biggest disappointment for me was the big dropoff in quality from the first episode to the second and third, I felt like the animation took a big nosedive and the sex scenes were not quite as interesting. That was also the case with Hell Knight Ingrid too, now that I think about it.
I like the Taimanin series quite a bit, as it’s an interesting dark fantasy setting with a futuristic touch. Not every hentai of it is great and doesn’t really cover everything from the game/manga. Some sexual stuff shown is rather cruel when you think about it, but not that I would especially mind as it’s not very violent and to be honest the great character designs are hot and I don’t feel bad about seeing them ork-handled XD. The prostitution scenes are not so hot for me.
Yukikaze is not my favorite character with her petite proportions, but I have nothing against her, she is cute and likeable. I like Asagi or Rinko a lot more for obvious reasons.
Anyway this figure looks honestly great, beautiful hair, a great suit with shiny, matte and fishnet mesh materials make it visually very appealing.
And she has some apparently very nice tan. Amakuni also did pay attention to the face. It’s a little surprising to see no cast off option or horny face as exchangeable part. But I actually prefer this kind of adaptation and I wish there would be more figures from the series like that here, as it’s shows the heroine like a heroine and not like a sex addict victim or pole dance ninja.
Yeah, the Taimanin series does go pretty far with how it treats its characters XD For me, I’m not a big fan of NTR stuff and there’s a fair amount of it in Taimanin Yukikaze, from what I remember. I think I do like Asagi better, since I’m more of a fan of well-rounded characters, but Yukikaze looks very nice, too.
If I remember right the limited edition version had exposed nipples and a more lewd face. I remember that Native sold some Taimanin series action figures but I’ve been told they were pretty bad, so I don’t think I am too interested in them. I’d love to see one of their labels do scale-size figures of the Taimanin girls, though; I think they would fit in pretty well with what they do.
Hi Tier, did you see my comment about Duke York? Have you tried the castoff?
Yep, I saw your comment, huge apologies for the late response … I have to admit I spend a lot of time playing gacha games when I’m at home and updates to this site have suffered tremendously. I haven’t tried the castoff on Duke; I don’t think I want to damage the figure. I’ve got a ton of BINDing figures here that I still need to unbox and photograph, so I think they will serve to satisfy anyone’s interests for big-scale lewd figures.