Have always wanted to get me grubby mitts on this figure ever since I saw her at the WHF last year. I remember lining up at the time and then realizing that I was just about to shell out over 10,000 yen for a kit which I had to assemble and paint myself!
You can imagine my delight when Yamato announced that they were releasing this as a PVC painted figure.
Arrived recently but I have to say that I will steer away from Yamato's figures from now on. While they do make a good Valkyrie, their figures (judging from this one) don’t come near the standards of GoodSmile/Kotobukiya/Kaiyodo.
For starters her arm has a huge visible join in it – they could have made some sort of arm band to hide it – that join screams “look at this join!” By todays figurine production standards, this visible join gives me the impression that Yamato didnt really put much effort into this release.
I could live with the join but the worst bit is her chest – I know she does have a challenging chest to produce but if GoodSmile can do it them Yamato should have given more thought to how the pieces where going to be put together. While her boobies (given up saying “chest”) look good from the front and certain angles, they look rather bad from the side and the straps look like they have been painted by somebody drunk. A close look from underneath and you can see a gaping gap under her boobies – not good. The quality is just as bad as the Zombie Saber. The last four images in this gallery are close ups of the offending craftsmanship and the gaping gap between her left leg and bikini line.
This is the first figure I have where the hair has been painted with some sort of glossy paint – all the paint on my other figures are matt. The gloss just looks bad and difficult to shoot – maybe its because the hat is supposed to hide the hair?
McDonalds paper bags looked better than the box she came in - but I think they purposely made it so that you cant see the bad quality awaiting inside the box...
Anyway, cute figure but rather disappointed in the poor craftsmanship and somebody at Yamato deserves a slap in the face with a bag of vomit (carrots included) for ruining this most anticipated release. TJ Han has different views on Mine Blue however and you can check out his review. If you have a post on this figure, feel free to post a link to it.
There are some good things about this figure though - as you can see from the photos, her moped can be used for other purposes...
If you do decide to buy then you could always try some of these…