Toy Review: Figma Kanu Unchou

Kanu Unchou of Ikkitousen

Originally posted at Slangards.multiply.com

Most of my collection is centered on Robots and Superheroes, but I will pick up the occasional piece if it looks nice (ie: it’s a half nekkid female). Most of my anime figures are from the Fraulein Revoltech line, mostly because they’re near the scale of Marvel Legends and have a good amount of articulation. I had heard that Maxfactory was making a competing line called Figma, and decided to try one out.

Kanu Unchow is from the OAV series Ikkitousen. I had heard and read alot about this series online. As you can guess, it was mostly pictures of the main characters that sold me on the whole idea. See this from the excerpt from the[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikki_Tousen]Wikipedia Article[/url]:

The series is known for being full of fan service, featuring a very large cast of attractive young girls, who fight in short skirts and dresses which get constantly ripped off, in addition to numerous other ecchi situations.

Prior to the figma series, the only plastic representations I could find for the girls from Ikkitousen were statues, which look great, but don’t move. Now statues, while unbelievably nice to drool over, are not easy to store and I lack the display space to keep many of them (I can’t exactly keep ‘em at work either - I’ll get canned for sexual harassment). So when I saw the Kanu Unchou figure at WasabiToys, I chose her over the Fraulein Revoltech Yoko and got my first Figma toy.

The package has some pretty good product photography, showcasing Kanu (Unchou?? I can never remember how it goes with Japanese names) in various poses you can place her in, with many (many many) Japanese characters spaced about. I can’t read Japanese, so meh. The window shows off the figure well, wearing the school girl outfit she wears in the series, and you ca see all the accessories she comes with, including her extra breasts.

Yes you read that right. Extra. Breasts.

The gimmick here is that since she’s always getting in fights, she’s always getting her clothes torn off, so the figure comes with an extra pair of boobs with a ripped blouse that you can switch with the regular ones. I don’t know how Fan Service came about, but gods bless the Japanese.

There are other accessories as well, like two alternate faces, an extra torn skirt, five or six extra pairs of hands, and her signature weapon, Houtengeki. It’s sort of a big naginta (Japanese polearm) with a maned dragon wrought below the blade. For such a small figure, the detailing is excellent, especially on Houtengeki.

Speaking of small, the figure really is. I hear most of the Figma line is in scale with the Revoltech girls, but this one is alot smaller. The thing is, it’s not small enough for the 3.75″ crowd either. It’s in the middle, so it fits with nothing. It’s extremely frustrating, but it’s a great figure otherwise.

Articulation wise, she’s so so. There’s alot of it, but there are some things that just get in the way due to the way she’s scuplted. One, her breasts keep falling off. Every time you twist her waist, the piece tends to slide off the peg it’s fitted on.. Two, her hair looks awsome, but due to the space it occupies, she’s restricted to standing or jumping poses. Three, her knee socks totally ruin her ankle movement. They bothered to give her ball joints there, but she can’t move her feet to save her life.

Not that it makes much of a difference in my mind. I got this figure for the same reason I got my [url=http://slangards.multiply.com/reviews/item/76]Polno Dianno[/url] Statue, and I’m still getting Shimei Ryomou when Figma releases her later this year.