Ok, this is the last one I’m doing for today. There are some other ones, but they weren’t that interesting and didn’t have great pictures anyway. Anyway, moving on, Wow! Kotobukiya must just be constantly busy churning out figures, because rare is the day that goes by without some sort of mention of them. Maybe not here, but you know, other places. Anyway, Kotobukiya has announced their superb Arika figure, from Mai-Otome. This 1/8 scale PVC is set for late June and is only going to run you 3,990 yen. I know that’s the standard price, but still, it’s cheap and the PVC is nice. Plus it’d get boring if I didn’t use fun words like “only.”
There’s a production shot of this one after the jump. Oh, and while we’re on the Mai-HiME series, this Mai and Mikoto figure went on sale today. Get it quick, the 10,290 yen figure is selling fast.
Hrm. Don’t think I’d pay that much for that Mai-Mikoto figure pair. In my opinion, the sculptor didn’t go far enough with Mai’s pose. It doesn’t seem as dynamic enough to me. I’m not sure if it’s the photo, but the detailing on those figures seems a little soft.
Arika’s cute enough but I’m not entirely fond of the costume designs in that show, specifically the Garderobe school uniforms and the some of the powered-up Otome outfits.
I think out of all the outfits, I like the villainous Valkyrie squad’s armour the best. :-P
Yeah, I am certainly not a fan of that sort of maid look that they’ve put into Mai-Otome. It feels sort of awkward considering the first serious, like maybe Otome was just a bit of fan service built around the original concept of Mai-HiME. And if you need more proof, just look at the panty party they all had in the special episode on the latest DVD. I mean, come on!
Oh, and I agree fully about the Mai/Mikoto figure. It seems to be lacking a bit of charm. There have been too many Mai-(Z)HiME figures coming out lately.
I like fan service as much as the next guy, but I have a problem with it when the producers of the show attempt to make fan service one of the primary reasons to watch a show. It comes to a point when the fan service aspect becomes so forced that it gets tiring really fast.
I don’t dislike Mai Otome entirely, but I agree. It feels like it’s banking too much on the initial series without the merits of making it on its own as a separate show, and as a new story. I certainly hope for their sake that the upcoming HiMe/Otome OVA series tries to correc this.
True, there have been quite a bit of HiMe/Otome figures coming out lately— which wouldn’t be a bad thing except most of them really aren’t all that great.
I’m really tempted to get one or two of the trading figures and re-design the costumes myself. I think that’d be a lot of fun.
Whew, long day. >.>
One of the thigns I found a bit shocked was that they actually went back and redid scenes that were perfectly fine for the DVDs. They added a lot of unnecessary shading to make the girls in the scenes look more sexy and thin, or whatever. Most places you can’t even tell anything changed other than extra shading on legs and pelvic areas. It’s sort of weird and definately annoying.
But hey, that’s what happens, I guess.
Ah, they pulled a ‘Lucas’ did they? :) Hrm, that is a bit unusual isn’t it. You don’t often hear about animated shows getting tweaks of that nature.
Ok, apparently the people on IRC are made of lies.
They told me they buldged them out, but apparently they made it more sanitary on the DVD version. Sorry. IRC got it backwards, not me.
TV on the left, DVD on the right.
http://tinyurl.com/fkn9y