Welcome to the first ever ‘Figure Review from a Hikikomori’. Each week, I, Fadsy, will delve into my horrible stash of figurines and gashapon sets to take some time to describe them to you in detail, possibly to get you to waste yen or dollars or Canada bucks buying lots of otaku goodness from japan. Just don’t spend the rent money because homeless people and pvc don’t mix well at all. This week, we look at Beat’s Akari figure, from their ARIA figure series.

Akari hails from a series titled ‘ARIA’, which is based a ways into the future, on a terraformed Mars. It takes place in a town named ‘Neo Venezia’, which is designed much like Venice in Italy. The series follows the everyday life adventures of Akari and her friends who all aspire to be great Undines for their respective gondola companies, as well as experiencing various events going on around them.

At a first glance, this figure gives off a very humanly realistic design, as apposed to an anime-ish design. She also takes up a decent amount of space, measuring about 11 inches vertically and about 13 inches horizontally holding her oar. The company that released this figure, BEAT, seems to have a small but decent set of releases which are of decent quality. The price for this figure is a bit high at 6980 yen or roughly $60, but between the quality and the scale (1/6), it is well worth it.

At a more detailed glance, the overall paint job is very well done, with very little instances of paint overlap. The lower portion of the skirt has very nice shading done up, and her face/eyes are nicely painted. A little bit of prying on her skirt reveals that even her panties, for what little the design lets you see of them, are also nicely detailed. The oar she holds is well crafted and is fun to swing around. Unfortunately though, the way she is designed to hold it seems to give way to it bending at the point the two pieces of the oar meet. Reversing how she holds the oar seems to fix this issue.

Another very nice concept is how she is attached to her base: Screws. There are only a handful of figures in my collection that share this, but it serves them well, even though the posture of this figure lends itself to it not needing screws.

The ARIA President that accompanies Akari is also detailed, from his feet pads to the ‘x’ for his hindquarters, to his soul-crushing eyes. He is roughly knee-high to Akari. Both of them rest on the wooden floor style base, which is likely to depict a gondola.

This is the first of a series of figures from ARIA, all of which are the same scale, and all seem to share the same realistic design. You can go to Hobbylink’s Page to purchase this figure.

Stay tuned for next week’s detailed investigation into another figure sitting either on my desk or possibly from the shelf behind my desk. MAYBE SOMETHING SEXY OH MY.

Rants (lol edit):

NANAO could have used feet screws. She keeps falling and almost hit me with a dive bomb. Also that circle and dot on Akari form a perfect crotch bull’s eye. How creepy.