Nendoroid Sakura Miku Hatsune Review

Spring is in full swing, and this special release Nendoroid is here to help celebrate!


This Nendoroid has quite the interesting history. Like most Miku Hatsune products, she's based off of an illustration, but was originally released as a keychain a few years back. It didn't take people long to start clamoring for a full-sized Nendoroid version, and bootleggers beat GSC to the punch. There are three bootlegged versions that I know of, one of which is reportedly as good as a real Nendoroid, but GSC has decided to combat the unofficial versions in a way that makes them more money: by creating a real Sakura Miku Nendoroid.

   
And right away, you can see why she's made such a big stir within the figure community. She's absolutely adorable! After getting my Append Miku Figma, I told myself that I was not going to go any further down the slippery slope of Miku products, but this face was too cute to pass up. "Adorable" is almost an understatement. The sculpt is the same as the regular Hatsune Miku Nendoroid, but the pink theme and the decal applications are very well done. The only paint flaw I could immediately find on mine was an extra glob of red on the cherries on her back. Her pigtails make use of a clear gradient, and the addition of different colored flowers in her hair is a nice change from the original keychain.


She also comes with a ton of accessories and extra parts, easily the most out of the Nendoroids in my collection so far. The first are the hair and head pieces. Along with the head piece that has Miku's usual square hair accessories, out of the box she's wearing her "Sakura Headphones," i.e. a pink mike headset with flowers all over it. She also comes with a completely separate head piece meant for the standard black headset and holes in her head where you can attach cherries (because "cherry blossoms." Get it?). I find the cherries adorable and decided to display her with them attached. With some fiddling, you can attach the sakura headphones to this headpiece as well. Also pictured above is the second of her three optional expressions, a crying face.


Next are more flower-themed accessories. Miku has a special hand used to hold a Nendo-sized cherry blossom and a matching extra base. It kind of makes me think of Buddhist imagery, except it's not a lotus blossom. I think that they were going for a "flower fairy" kind of effect here, and it's probably my favorite out of all the accessories just for that. Miku is pictured here with her third optional faceplate, which seems to be a happy version of the >_< emoticon.


Finally, you can't have a sakura viewing party without alcohol food! Three green stackable cushions are included, and Miku can sit on more/less of them by attaching/detaching using the pegs in the bottom two cushions. The top has an indent to make it easier for her to sit. However, she still needs the arm stand to stay balanced (or maybe the cherries were weighing her down). She has another special hand that holds the rice ball, and it's easy to turn a bent arm to make it look like she's holding it in both hands.

Overall, I'm really happy with Sakura Miku, but she's not without her defects. Right out of her packaging, I noticed a number of strange black spots on the top of her head and the inside of her pigtails that only could've come from the company she was packaged in (she was completely encased in plastic right before I noticed them, so there's no other way that could've happened). I was able to easily brush them off though, so no harm, no foul? But that wasn't the only think that was slightly off about this Nendoroid. One of her pigtails works fine; it moves smoothly to the extent that the articulation allows with no problems. The other one is extremely stiff, yet somehow keeps finding a way to fall off Miku's head. I constantly had to compensate for it's lack of movability while I was taking the pictures for this post.

The weirdest thing though, and I've never had this happen with a Nendoroid before, was the fringe part on her alternate head. It felt like it was glued on; instead of slipping out easily, like it should, it stayed put like a rock. I couldn't leave it like that, since one of the alternate expressions was in there, and I finally came up with this solution: take the blunt edge of a knife to to the side of the finge (by the ear where the headphones attach), and you should be able to pry it off with no damage to the figure. I saw that a lot of people had the same problem with her, so I thought that I'd share. However, the fact that I had to do this is ridiculous.

Thankfully, these are the only problems I've had with her. People online and at MFC have reported QC problems across the spectrum, from bigger black spots that wouldn't come off to shiny faces and big flaws in the paint and decal job. In light of all that, it seems like my Miku came out relatively unscratched.


But even with that said, she's a great Nendoroid to add to any collection with the amount of accessories that she comes with. Even with her bad pigtail, I found that she had a pretty good range of possible poses and articulation even when considering the limits of the standard Nendoroid line. It also helps that she's cuter than a button.

Sakura Miku was up for exclusive preorder through the GSC Online Shop for a limited time last year, so if you didn't put your order in then, the secondhand market is now the only place that you can get her. If you do decide to go after her, be wary of bootlegs and absurd mark-ups. GSC has a policy of replacing faulty or missing pieces on their figures for about a year after the figure's release--even to overseas customers!--so if you ordered her and have any of the bigger QC problems listed above, don't hesitate to contact them. Happy collecting!

Images taken by me.