We took a look at Vertex’s Archeyle almost four years ago, and today we’ll be looking at Cecil, the latest in their series of Elf Village figures. I liked Archeyle’s design but I felt that the execution left something to be desired. From what I can tell, this is a common sentiment regarding Vertex’s figures and it’s one of the reasons I haven’t reviewed very many of them. Laziness, of course, is the main reason. At any rate, here’s Cecil.
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Happy New Year to everyone. We recently – relative to my pace of updates, anyway – looked at Raiden Mei from Honkai Impact 3rd, and we will on this first day of 2023 take a look at a character from the game that elevated Mihoyo to international renown. That game is, of course, Genshin Impact, and this character is the perpetually-penniless astrologist and water mage Mona Megistus. My impression is that she was one of the most popular of the game’s early group of heroes and she’s still very much a fan favorite, but other characters like Raiden Shogun, Ganyu, and Hu Tao may have since eclipsed her in popularity. Nonetheless, she’s one of the first Genshin Impact characters to get a figure, and I don’t think that anyone can make an argument opposing that choice.
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I’ve been wasting a lot of time playing gacha games and watching gacha game streamers, and being that Azur Lane was the first gacha game I played, a review of an Azur Lane shipgirl is long overdue. There’s a long-anticipated Royal Navy event going on now and thus it seems like an appropriate time to take a look at Duke of York, the personification of the King George V-class battleship that served in the real Royal Navy during World War II. This particular figure is by Mimeyoi, and it’s the first figure from them that I’ve ever owned, which is another good reason to have a look at her.
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I’ve mentioned several times that Epic Seven is now my primary game. I’ve also said that one of the reasons I enjoy gacha games are the attractive character designs generally intrinsic to the genre, and that I am looking to collect more figures of gacha game heroes. Strangely, while there’s no lack of figures from games like Azur Lane, Girls’ Frontline, and Granblue Fantasy, there are virtually no figures of Epic Seven characters: this figure is the only one. It’s a strange state of affairs, and one that I hope is amended in the future, as I think it has excellent character designs, though in my opinion none are better than the dragon knight Luna.
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Some time back, Good Smile Company released figures of Pyra and Mythra from Monolith Soft’s popular role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles 2; they sold out quickly and subsequently commanded impressive markups in the secondary market. Happily for collectors, they’ve since been re-released and were stocked by a number of retailers in both Japan and the United States. However, in contrast to that level of demand, this figure of KOS-MOS has, as far as I know, been in stock at Amiami since it first shipped last year. That’s a little surprising for an impressive figure of a telegenic character from a fan-favorite video game, but I suppose it’s also provides a long-lasting opportunity for anybody on the fence – or who wasn’t aware of this figure at all – to consider picking her up.
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So this statue and this post both require a bit of explanation. I hadn’t intended to review it but it looks pretty good, even if it does take certain liberties with 2B’s design, and I thought it might make for an interesting review. The principal thing here is that this statue is in no way an officially licensed product and I’m generally a little reluctant to review such things unless they are doujin products whose production is largely motivated by a desire to display artistic creativity and to express an affinity for the originating material, and being that this statue is the product of some enterprising individuals in China, I’m inclined to think that its existence owes more to its potential commercial viability rather than aesthetic concerns. But like I said, it looks pretty good and hey, its producers may very well have an appreciation for both the character and for the female form, as we’ll see. Also, there actually is a licensed 1/4 scale statue of the Nier: Automata characters, produced by Prime 1 Studio. However, they’ve made the somewhat shady move of requiring consumers to buy the very expensive full set of all three characters if one wishes to display 2B without her skirt; the standalone statue doesn’t have that feature (though I imagine a brave collector could remedy that with some hand tools). Given that situation, and combined with my lingering resentment towards Square – undiminished even after a quarter of a century – for helping Sony destroy Sega in the game console business, my qualms regarding the unlicensed nature of this statue are largely mitigated.
So I’m going to put up some pictures of this statue – this is going to be a brief review, without as many pictures as usual and a great deal more explanatory text, since some people might be curious about this statue and others like it. This statue comes with a ton of optional parts, including her sword, another head, and different arms. The configuration I have her in here is the way I wanted to display her, so the other parts are back in the box.
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I usually review figures in no particular order other than what I feel like photographing, but today we’ll take a look at a figure that was released relatively recently: Lacia from the light novel, manga, and anime series Beatless. She was released earlier this month, making this one of the few times I’ve reviewed a figure in the same month of its release. This will likely be even less common in the future, since many of my figures are being shipped by surface mail and are thus taking a long boat ride from Japan to the east coast of the United States.
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We’re looking at another telegenic girl in a leotard: this time it’s Kasumi Yoshizawa, one of the newest additions to the Persona universe. I’ve yet to play Persona 5, despite it being a game that I was very much looking forward to, despite the fact that I own two copies of it (the original game and its expanded Royal release), and despite Persona 3 being one of my favorite games of all time (I rank it third or fourth, behind Phantasy Star II, Wasteland, and alternating spots with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic depending on how I feel on any particular day). In lieu of actually playing the game, I can at least appreciate the look of its cast, starting with Kasumi here.
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Today we’re looking at yet another leotard-clad girl from a fighting game – in this case, Marie Rose from Tecmo Koei’s Dead or Alive series. She’s a character I’m conflicted on; I like her design, in a general sense, but I have not been enthusiastic about what her – and Honoka’s – introduction to the series has meant for the Dead or Alive franchise. Nonetheless, in figure form, we can simply admire her for what she looks like, and that’s good enough for me.
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Today we’ll take a look at another leotard-wearing girl with an appearance in a fighting game – Cammy, quite possibly the reigning queen of them all. This figure is not new, having been released in March of 2018, but it’s a relatively recent pickup for me; I bought it during Kotobukiyua’s Memorial Day sale last year, partly due to a a moment of lockdown-induced ennui, but also because I’m a big fan of Cammy. I own a bunch of her figures, including her previous Bishoujo figure. I also have PCS’s Shadaloo Cammy and I’m expecting to receive PCS’s super-sized 1/3 scale Cammy soon. I don’t expect to review either statue, since they’re way too big for me to comfortably photograph and I don’t think there’s much interest here for statues meant for Western audiences; therefore, we’ll have to be content with looking at this figure.
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