Since it first finished airing two years ago, merchandise from the breakout magical girl hit Madoka Magica has continued to roll in with no signs of stopping soon. Of course, figures count towards a good portion of this number, with many figure companies offering their take on the five magical girls, covering everything from small trading figures to huge scaled models.
The last few months in particular have been dominated by GSC's and Max Factory's releases of Ultimate Madoka figures (a.k.a. Godoka or Madokami). Starting with the amazing 1/8 scaled figure back in December and following up with a Figma this past March, the current Godoka offerings are wrapping up (for now) with the release of this beautiful Nendoroid.
But man, is she a pain to set up! I hate to start off a review with negativity, since I do love this Nendo, but I need to vent for a minute. With every figure that I have ever purchased, I've been able to take them out of the box, put them on their stand, and display them as-is if I felt like it. With Godoka, that wasn't possible. The arm on the stand she comes with is longer than usual and is apparently supposed to attach to her hair (with a separate joint for the magic circle that goes below her). However, for whatever reason, the joint that attaches to the Nendo is slightly loose. This would be a non-issue if it weren't for the fact that Ultimate Madoka is the heaviest Nendoroid that I've come across. Attaching her to the stand in the way intended makes her fall on her face. The solution that I found was to fold the arm stand, having it rest on the base and attach to the base of her skirt. However, she can only balance this way at a specific angle, otherwise she will still fall over. You can see in the side-view images below that she's tilting upwards, since that's the only way she will stay in place. It does achieve the "floating in space" look, but prevents me from moving her to any other angle, since I'm afraid that she'll fall.
The other problem was with her wings. I was forewarned about this by the comments at MFC, but I didn't realize how bad this problem was until I had to struggle with it myself. Ultimate Madoka's wings connect to holes underneath her hair, but whoever drilled them or thought up this solution in the first place didn't seem to be thinking about how the average collector was going to attach them. The holes are drilled at an odd angle, and they're surrounded by strands of hair. Not to mention the fact that the wings are thin to begin with, so I spent most of the time attempting to attach them paranoid that I was going to break something. After over an hour of trying (these instructions are the best I've seen), I managed to get the right side in, but after another fifty minutes of trying to get the left side in, I realized that the hole was too small and gave up because my fingers were going numb. For that side, I went for the inelegant solution: tape. I'll figure out another way to attach it later, but I was amazed that I had to spend so much time getting her to look the way she was advertised, wings and all, and then struggle to get her to balance on her stand. All of this happened before I could get her into the lightbox for pictures. I'm not sure what happened here.
But when you're done bashing your head into a wall from sheer frustration, she is quite beautiful. The paint job on mine is the best I've seen on a Nendo so far. I'm not sure if the gems on the front of her dress are clear pieces or if it's just the paint, but they look great. The pearl shine on her dress is quite the sight as well. The view of the universe on the underside of her skirt is faithfully recreated as well. There are quite a few obvious seam lines on her hair though, especially on her pigtails and at the ends of her flowing strands of hair where they branch off. However, they create some interesting shadows so it's not that big of a problem to me, especially after having to mess with her wings for over an hour. Speaking of those, the wings do have a nice pink gradient applied to them that gives them a clear look. Thankfully, once they are attached there's no way they're coming back out unless you want them to, and you can move them around to a small extent.
But enough about all that. It's time to talk about her accessories! The first is the magical circle that I mentioned before, which matches the one on her 1/8 scale counterpart. The lines aren't really visible on it unless you get up close to it though, but I still like it anyway because it looks like Ultimate Madoka is floating through the stars somewhere. My camera wasn't able to pick up on the fine details very well, but they're there. Aside from that, Ultimate Madoka only really has two main accessories, and they're both forms of her bow. The first one reminds me more of a staff than a bow, though. I remember reading somewhere that the official justification on including this was that it's what her bow looks like "pre-awakening" or something like that. I don't know about you, but when I think of Ultimate Madoka, I think of her big, fiery bow!
That's more like it! Ultimate Madoka comes with specific hand, arm, and shoulder pieces specifically to recreate her signature pose. I think it looks pretty good, but it does have a few problems. The bow is a bit top-heavy (it's resting on Madoka's head in this picture), so if you're planning to display her in this pose, it may pull the arm down over time. Also, the hand that holds her arrow angles it upwards for some reason, reminding me of the problems that I had with my first Madoka Nendoroid (although her arrow went down). This picture also shows her only other faceplate: a determined look. I think it complements the peaceful, smiling expression pretty well, and I can't think of what they could've added for a third faceplate, so only having two is fine by me.
Her final optional part is a pair of folded hands. Clearly it's meant to go with the smiling expression, but I think it looks amusing with her determined expression, like she's a disgruntled parent. "I sacrificed myself for the good of the universe, and this is how you behave?" Or something like that. Anyway, this is my favorite pose, and how I've decided to display her. It also looks really good with the closed-eyes faceplate from Menma's set!
 |
| Don't forget. Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember her, you are not alone. |
Images by me.
No comments:
Post a Comment