When this PVC conversion of Melting Neuron’s Felicia was first announced back in May I was pretty excited. I’d had my eye on the resin for awhile as an example of a truly impressive sculpt, and while I’m not a huge fan of Felicia (or heavily musclebound heroines in general) I felt it was imperative to pick this up both to support the sculptor and as a study in the nexus of … well, “cute and brute”. Unfortunately Organic’s take on the piece is a critical failure, but in a rather bizarre way; read on for the (literally) nitty gritty details.
Original Design: Yasuda Akira (blog)
Sculptor: Melting Neuron
Source: Vampire (game)
Scale: Non (15 cm tall)
Materials: PVC, ABS
Release Date: August 30th, 2007
Production: Organic
Price: 7,140 JPY (tax included)
Current Availability: [KNC] [HLJ] [HS] [TL] [AAA]
Support HD!: [PA]
Felicia has been around since the July 1994 release of Vampire: The Night Warriors (Darkstalkers), and in the game’s subsequent sequels has gone through a number of makeovers (which I know very little about). As a neutral participant in the catgirl wars that wasn’t much of a factor in the purchase either; I picked her up entirely out of a liking for the sculpt, and I trusted that Organic would pull through and produce a serviceable replica of the original resin. In hindsight, this was probably a mistake.
The casting job itself isn’t so bad, and the paint jobs on the skin and face are decent. What really starts to hurt is the trim, which up close is quite roughly applied indeed. It’s not very visible in any of these shots, but there’s also what is unmistakably a fingerprint in the trim on top of her left thigh. Worst of all, though, is that the kit is uniformly dirty. There’s no other way to describe it – it’s like they dropped her in a box of loose earth and left her there long enough for a good bit of it to stick, then shook her off and put her in the box. If you didn’t notice it at first, wipe your screen down and look at the pictures again – it’s positively maddening. I did try to minimize the effect in the photos I chose for the review, but it’s still evident in shots like this one.
This is the first time I’ve seen this particular deficiency in a figure, and I pray it’s the last. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking, and I don’t know what went wrong – all the pictures I’ve seen of Chinese figure manufacturing facilities depict them as absolutely pristine. Was Felicia made in China’s one combination dirt/PVC production factory? We may never know…
This is a figure I’d recommend highly to Felicia fans, if we could be assured that my copy is just a freakish coincidence; otherwise I find it hard to recommend to the discerning figure buyer unless she hits the bargain bin.
Overall Score: 4/10
+ the original sculpt is great
o the skin and face are fine, if not amazing
– poor trim job
– fingerprint
– dirt. catgirls aren’t chinchillas, people. >:O
If you’d like to take the gamble on this figure you can support HD and pick her up at Play Asia, or go the budget route with HLJ.
To sum it up, very bad production job…
Wow- I’m fan of both the masculine female figues and the catgirl variety. I’ve been always intrigued by the resin original. I have been struck by a WTF job on; what should have been an overall (IMO) slam dunk of a figure but she was not clean and what not.
Too bad about this one.
Sadly this is not the only “dirty” figure I’ve seen recently.My Kanu Unchou(white gosurori ver) has a similar problem.
It wasn’t visible in Shingo’s review,so I guess I had bad luck with mine.
I hope that the manufacturers won’t start using this cheap pvc as a rule.
o i was thinking of picking this one up when i saw the preorder. good review, so i still won’t pick this one up.
so sad about the dirty figure thing.
Unfortunately I think every now and then- you’re gonna get a dirty figure- because this was the last model some poor schulb had to put together before closing time and he ain’t gonna make sure it’s perfect- he’s gonna make sure he gets in on the first round down at the bar…….
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>>MK
Alas, that’s sadly a very accurate summary. ;_;
>>Work_Ethic
Yeah, I thought it would be relatively hard for Organic to mess this one up, and if it weren’t for the dirt and the fingerprint I’d have scored her a 7 or 8. I hope other people have had better luck with this kit.
>>Balduf
Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. My copy of Kanu was clean as a whistle… I wonder where this dirt comes from; if as you say it’s embedded in the PVC that would be pretty bad news.
>>fake
You might want to take a look around at other reviews before nixing the figure entirely, I haven’t looked yet but they may have different results than mine. I can’t believe this sort of thing would’ve passed through quality control otherwise.
>>Work_Ethic
I do have to wonder about quality control, though… I guess they don’t check these very thoroughly to monitor for the “first round at the bar” effect. :/
I can truly attest to figures being different in batches. My Mine Blue #10 is better than Danny Choos, as it has none of the defects his does (sad that I broke the handle bars though).
Sorry to hear such a sad tale about your figure, Shingo. Hopefully this is a one-off…