It's the last figure review of the year! Is it just me, or did 2013 go by really fast? Anyway, I'm wrapping up the year with a Christmas present to myself: Saber from the PSP game Fate/Extra!
Also known as Red Saber or Saber Extra, this character is not the same person as the one from the main Fate franchise story. This Saber sets herself apart with her red outfit and outspoken personality. Saying anything else would be a spoiler, so if you haven't played the localization of Fate/Extra yet, I highly recommend it.
But onto the figure itself! Saber looks very nice out of the box, with very minimal paint flaws. I only found a tiny fleck of red paint on her hair fringe which took me ten minutes into the photoshoot to notice, and a little bit of paint bleeding on her collar. This is doubly impressive since her outfit is pretty intricate for a Nendoroid. I was honestly expecting the gold details on the edges of her skirt and sleeves to get at least a little bit messed up by the mass production process, but they came out flawless! The accuracy is great on here as well, even including the hole in the back of the dress despite the fact that its usually covered up by the stand. The stand itself is a bit weird, but not anything I haven't encountered with a Nendoroid stand before. This one in particular makes her lean a bit to the back and the side.
Saber is pretty minimal on extras, with only two main accessories and a couple of extra arms and hands. The first is the arm that holds her rose, a reference to her ultimate move in the game. The second is much more interesting and is obviously the main accessory: her sword! The extra bent arms are obviously more focused around creating action poses with the sword, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with them in the future. Her more serious faceplate also goes great with these poses.
However, I do have some problem with her articulation. On the box and in the promo images, the arms are shown to have a bigger range of motion than the actually do. Or, more accurately, if I tried to move them to, say, put her hands on her hips, I'm afraid I might break something. As usual for Nendoroids, the arms have pegs, not separate joints. This is usually a non-issue, since you can just rotate the arms, but the uniform decorations on Saber's shoulders are solid pieces that jut out from her torso, and are not very flexible. They limit the angles where the arms can be attached and how far they can move. I'm sure that there is a way to do this, but I'm too paranoid about damaging her to experiment with it.
But even with that problem, I'm really happy with her. She has one of the best paint jobs I've seen on a Nendoroid in a while, and her sword poses look great, which was one of the main reasons why I wanted her. If you're on the fence about her, this will still make a great Nendoroid to add to your collection.
Images by me.
Cute figurine!! (｀・ω・´)
ReplyDeleteRe Valvrave: And thus did L-11 become Emperor Mikhail I of the Galactic Empire, and the Magius Council got their just desserts...
What did you think of the ending? I think there's definitely a finality in regards to unveiling the world and the Empire's beginnings, although more elaboration on the future world and the Empire’s workings would have made the experience more complete.
I hear on other forums that people, even in Japan, are pretty pissed at the ending.
What’s your take on how the new Valvrave activation question ‘Do you believe in humanity?’ has relative to the show’s events, and how it contrasts with the old ‘Do you resign your humanity?’ question.
Re Nobunaga the Fool: Character designs are being done by Yone Kazuki, who also designed the characters for the Hakuoki and Hiiro no Kakera games.
PS. The TM Revolution x Nana Mizuki opening songs were the best J-pop songs associated with the show, which actually pulled me to the show in the 1st place.
ReplyDeleteI felt the same, there was still a lot left unexplained despite the finality. I liked the ending itself, but I wanted more clarification on the flash-forward parts that they showed throughout the series.
ReplyDeleteI think that the question change has to do with Pino going along with the big finale speech about the Magius learning to live with humans instead of viewing them as the enemy by default. However, if that was the big overall theme of Valvrave, they could've done a better job of portraying that throughout the show... It was a good "moral of the story" moment, but it felt like the show was trying to half-ass an ending at the last possible second.
What hit me much harder in the feels was Haruto and L-Elf's last scene, since their relationship has built considerably throughout the course of the show. The final fight was a nice reversal on what happened in the beginning. And then L-Elf finally called him his friend...Ah...
Nobunaga the Fool: I thought that style looked familiar. I really should pay closer attention to these things.
Agreed, they're some of the best OP song picks I've ever heard
ReplyDelete