It's time for another figure review on Plastic-Love. It was beginning to feel like it had been ages since the last one, which was of an older figure I was selling to make room for some of the new stuff I have on the way for my collection for the next year. Thankfully she sold right away and is already in her new home, giving me more space in my home for stuff like this 1/8 scale figure of Akagi from Azur Lane in her swimsuit costume from the game.
I don't know much about Azur Lane other than that it is a phone game that came along to capitalize on the internet's thirst for ship girls in the wake of the highly successful Kantai Collection. KanColle passed me by, but Azur Lane has sunk its teeth into me a little bit, in no small part due to wonderful looking characters like Akagi here. Let's have a closer look!
They've really captured the essence of Akagi's swimsuit art. The pose is different, but her expression is recreated very faithfully. This is the highlight of the figure and the initial thing that caught my interest in Azur Lane in the first place. The paint application around her lips isn't perfect, but her coy expression really comes through and I love that you can see just a hint of some fangs sculpted there on the top of her mouth. Proportions and placement of all her facial features just seems spot on as well. They really nailed her face.
This is a swimsuit figure so of course we're going to have a closer look at Akagi's body and whew boy there's a lot to look at. She's a lot curvier in figure form than in the art and that's just fine by me. Overall I think her body looks absolutely amazing, and this would be a flawless figure based on her amazing face and body if not for some really glaring design/production issues which detract somewhat from her overall appearance. The main offender her has to be the straps of her thong, which appear to dig into her skin. I can only imagine this is due to how they put the figure together in the factory. There is no functional seam there, so I'm not sure why it is so prominent on the finished figure. The only places where she's intended to come apart are at her neck, tail, and just under her bust, but they've done a good job at hiding those seams. Less troubling, but still an issue, is the seam splitting the strap of her swimsuit's top.
Overall the paint application on this figure is really good. Her skin looks really nice and creamy, and is well shaded to highlight her curves. They've done an especially good job on her tail and hair, with some really smooth transitions from a deep red to dark brown. Somewhat less thrilling is the glossy red used on her swimsuit top and the flower in her hair, which doesn't look bad by any means but still looks a little plastic-y and out of place with the rest of the figure.
Her wrap kind of suffers from this problem as well, but thankfully they've balanced it with some really nice use of transparencies and gradients in the paint application to make it appear slightly sheer where it's pressed against her butt. This is a cool effect! It's a shame that it's only really noticeable from this angle where you'll rarely see it, but still it's nice to see. I should also note that this picture and the next one here are two that I took under some mysterious condition that produced really beautiful lovely lighting that I wasn't able to replicate later. I'll get another chance when I look at her sister ship Kaga later this year, but it's a shame I didn't get more from this session.
Turning her slightly to the side you get what I think is the best display angle for Akagi. here you can get a little glimpse of everything that's great about this figure. Her face, breasts, stomach, hips and things are on full display and it doesn't look like a super unnatural pose. It helps that her head is actually on a ball joint and can swivel left and right slightly, so you can always have her facing a good direction even if you turn her body a little.
Akagi comes with another display possibility, which is the removal of her wrap to reveal some very tiny thong with surprisingly good paint application. The is probably the most nuanced and subtle shading on the entire figure. It really makes you wonder what the people painting these figures are thinking in the factory, haha. I hope they know we appreciate their hard work.
Of course you will want to look closer, however, on close inspection you can start to see another design issue start to rear its ugly head in the form of paint transfer from her wrap! To be clear, I've had her wrap off exactly two times and was very careful putting it on and taking it off each time and this is still the outcome, so it seems unavoidable. I suppose if you were going to try and display her this way all the time you could try wiping away the transfer with a wet wipe, soft eraser, or magic eraser (last resort), but I plan on having her covered up in my display for now so I haven't had to think about it much really. It feels bad to know that your figure is pretty much damaged right out of the box.
Speaking of damage, that thong cannot be comfortable!
Overall, I really like Akagi. She's not perfect, by any means, but the stuff that Wave got right with her is so good that it's pretty easy to overlook whatever defects she might have. I am somewhat saddened to know that the Kaga I've ordered to go with her will probably suffer from similar issues, but what can you do. I certainly won't be thinking of Wave as one of my favorite figure manufacturers based on this, but they've done a good job with her anyway. It's a shame that Alter is doing the Atago and Takao (one of which I have on order as well), because I would have loved to see them do these two instead.
I think you can still get Akagi on some sites for around $150 plus S&H. I paid a little less than that shipped. I think she's worth it if you like what you see here. As usual, here are some more photos. I would have had more but actually my camera ran out of battery and it was 3am so I just went to bed.
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