Moé Moé Rabu

Damn it’s been nearly two months since I last did a figure review. The backlog growth has slowed down considerably since I stopped ordering so much as I needed to save money, but it’ll be back on track when I’m back from Japan. But with only a few days to go and my decision to not blog anything this season I’m hoping to cut through the backlog. So anyway, on with the show. Dating back to November 2007, Resinya’s Shirakawa Kotori, which is COSPA’s first attempts at the figure market but how well does it compare to other established figure makers? Well hit the jump to check out the pics.

So of you may know already, my Da Capo fandom knows no bounds. However when I first saw heard about COSPA wanting to release figures and that one of their starting products was Shirakawa Kotori, I wasn’t too sure if I was damn excited, or couldn’t really give a damn. The one thing about buying a figure from a company that is just starting up, you can’t tell what the quality is like until you buy one of their products. Or simply wait for someone else to buy one. Either way I decided to take the gamble and bought Kotori. The other initial release item was Minase Nayuki, but the lovely school idol won me over.

But all was not well especially when I read what moyism had to say about this figure. Sad to say but I would have to agree with him on a few points. The skin tone is one of the bigger flaws of this Kotori and although it doesn’t look like it in the photos, she is really really pale. Mold lines are easily visible around her body and with this being a swimsuit type of figure, it’s almost blasphemy.

Another point about this figure is that Kotori’s bikini is actually cast-offable. In my mind I am unsure it this is a good or bad thing as it kind of ruins the perfect image of Kotori for me as a fan. But then that’s almost saying her h-scenes in the Da Capo game is wrong. Don’t you just love conflicts. Well the removing of the bikini was as easy as one would think. Just moving the straps off her shoulders would scrap against her skin leaving marks if one is not careful and once you have her bikini off, the nipples aren’t all that great either.

Accessories that come with Kotori include a pair of sandals, a beach bag, and some kind of mat that is practically falling apart. It helps in giving Kotori presence as I usually find swimsuit figures to be quite bland unless they are accompanied by something to compliment them. Shame that none of the accessories sit with Kotori inside my cabinet. This also isn’t my only Kotori figure as you can see in the image above I’ve had another swimsuit Kotori for god knows how long. A Kotobukiya one as far as I can remember and she was one of the first 10 figures I ever bought. Amazing to see how figures have changed over the years.

Product: Shirakawa Kotori
Anime/Game: Da Capo
Produced by: Resinya
Scale: 1/6
Material: PVC
Release Date: November 2007
Price: ¥7,429
Available: HLJ (out of stock)

Despite all the major flaws in this figure, there is one thing I like and that is the sculpt of her face. It’s not all that great as her expression seems rather bland but the face is very much as close as a real life Kotori would look like. Well if anime characters could ever come to be living things. But it’s not enough to make up for the figure. I think the problem is that Resinya went for the 1/6 scale instead of a 1/8 scale. Going to 1/6 scale is where the quality can start slipping a lot unless they have experience in making figures of that size.

Also for a figure at a staggering ¥7,500 and at this quality, it really does hurt my Da Capo fandom.I do kind of regret buying this (which is pretty rare to hear) but knowing that it’s Kotori I just couldn’t resist. In the end I don’t think any Da Capo fan should buy this, that is unless you have lots of money, or you are a diehard Kotori fan.

Photography Notes:

The pale skintones of Kotori made the photos look really bad so I decided to touch it up in Photoshop. When I was talking to Aya Kyunik a few weeks ago, he taught me a few editing tricks in Photoshop and that is using layers. My previous method was to edit the photos directly which he told me was “destructive editing” or something like that. I must say though that this photo set is more upon improving my Photoshop skills than my photography skills. Personally I think I’ve done pretty well.