Bizarre Figures Haul

I’ve received dozens of figure packages these past two years without a hitch, but an early December delivery took the cake as the most unique and to me, bizarre experience of them all. What started as a simple delivery turn ugly eventually led to one heck of an ending that’ll be something I won’t forget anytime soon.

I’ll talk about the “bizarre experience” in a bit (for those interested, scroll towards the bottom) but first the figures that arrived without issues, the first three from HLJ and the last from Kidnemo: Resinya Kotori Shirakawa from Da Capo, Kotobukiya Belldandy Goddess Version from AMG, Kotobukiya Chie Yoshioka from To Heart 2, and Kasumi from Dead or Alive.

The figures un-boxed while I shamelessly plug my blog in the background

I’ve never been that big of a fan of Ah! My Goddess but did enjoy the OVA series and character designs as much as anyone else who has been introduced to the series in some shape or form. So it may go without saying that once a good sculpt of one of the characters became available, I was bound to order it sooner or later.

In the recent trend of castoffs, multiple releases of the same character from different companies, various clothes/accessories gimmicks, and more skin = PROFIT it’s nice to see a normal figure with no bells or whistles trying to be more than what it is; a 3D representation of a 2D character. Much to say, I’m very pleased with Kotobukiya’s Belldandy as I would think at least one other AMG fan may be. It’s simply a solid release with nothing bad or great; just a nice figure of Belldandy any collector would be glad to own, AMG fan or not.

Didn’t realize this until now but the photo of Kasumi I took seems to be the only one out of focus; my bad. Anyway, there must be at least five to ten variations of this figure out currently and to be honest, if it wasn’t for Kidnemo’s sale I doubt I would have even picked one up. Not that much of a fan of the game and seeing so many versions of the figure out, figured (ha) there was no real rush to try to buy one.

However, now one in my possession, I can see how this particular version of Kasumi from Dead or Alive is so popular. It really is a very nice sculpt, period. The pose is mad sexy plus the figure felt “well rounded”(?) in the sense her body proportions “made sense” (i.e. she has meat on the rest of her body to balance out the huge eyes she’s sporting versus being stick thin everywhere else as is the trend of a lot of big eye-ed female characters).

Honestly if one is even remotely interested in sexy female ninjas or sexy females in general, there is no reason Max Factory’s Kasumi should not be in their collection. Now that I have one, I feel like a heel for not buying one sooner!

I’ll be blunt, this figure sucked. Badly… made it all the worse since I’m a Kotori fanboy as well

Just listing the negatives off the top of my mind, the skin color tone was horrible, face sculpt very bland, and the bikini cast off (and very wrongly done nipples) was a joke. As one of Resinya’s first releases, this got a big FAIL from me and I would advise everyone to avoid this and any other releases by Resinya until they can show they can get their act together. Hopefully for Resinya, it’ll be soon.

I ordered Chie from To Heart 2 for the pose and awesome bust action to be completely honest. Unfortunately thinking with my lower brain (once again) blinded me to the rather bland facial sculpt. I guess I had some type of blind hope that between the promo photos and release, the facial sculpt would be improved upon. But as one can tell, that hope never happened. Still I’ve seen worse *cough* Resinya’s Kotori *cough* so while I’m not too pleased with Kotobukiya’s Chie it’s still a pretty decent figure overall.

… plus for those into striped (green) panties, Chie would be a good buy for their collections

Just a shot of where all my recent figures go. Do know this is a rather outdated photo (LOL less than a month old) as the current space is already maxed out from other figures I’ve gotten inbetween then :aorz:

Okay so enough with the normal figure photos, what readers really want to know about is the “bizarre experience” I kept talking about here and there right? Well one may have noticed that I only posted about one of the three figures I ordered from Kidnemo’s recent sale although three figures were delivered. The problem? Fantaz Moon Eclipse came in pieces, literally, as her head and staff broke during shipping (see photos 1, 2, 3, and 4). That in itself would be enough cause to make the particular delivery “bizarre” but it got even better; the wrong Nanoha was shipped as well! Instead of the kick arse GSC one, I got Alter’s rather plain looking Nanoha as one can see here.

Now if I was the short tempered or out of luck type of person, I would have probably been very pissed that day but honestly at the time, I laughed it off. Sure it sucked but it happens and at least one of the three figures shipped was the right one in excellent condition. Also helped that I remember reading at one time on figure.fm someone else whom had a similar issue and how Kidnemo was pretty quick in resolving the issue. So with that in mind, I sent them an email listing the issues with the included photos waiting to see what they would say. At best (and what happened to the individual I read about on figure.fm) I hoped they would let me keep both figures thus saving on the hassle of shipping them back while at worst, I would need to ship what was damaged and wait a bit for replacements.

The final result? See the email below:

Yep, the best case scenario One wouldn’t believe how happy I was with their reply and how cool Kidnemo were being in handling the situation. Now that’s grade A+ customer service for you! As I stated in my reply email thanking them for their decision, it’s nice to know there are companies out there who don’t mind losing a few bucks if it means keeping the customer happy; more so considering they could have made me at least return the damaged/wrong items as is the norm with most stores.

So yea, thanks to either bad luck or accidental mishandling somewhere from their warehouse to my doorsteps, I basically scored two free figures from Kidnemo! First GSC’s Nanoha that I originally ordered that was free due to their sale plus the Alter Nanoha they mistaken sent me as well (and I guess the damaged Fantaz Moon Eclipse if I can savage it)! Honestly it couldn’t have gotten any better than this as I can only continue to give praise to Kidnemo and value my good luck in this.

… and yes, people can start to hate me now if they wish