1/7 Takamura Yui Review by Kotobukiya

This would be my first kimono figure, and I absolutely love her. Other than the love for maid outfits, I really have a thing for kimono women xD Unfortunately, the figure market only knows how to milk girls in frilly maid outfits, giving the kimonos the cold shoulder ;__;

This is Takamura Yui, a character from a visual novel “Muv-Luv Alternative”. Not much is known about her apparently, but with a bit of Googling …

“As the daughter of a legendary soldier involved in the development of the Tactical Surface Fighter she has a strict character. Dispatched to Yukon Base as the Imperial Japanese attendant of the XFJ Plan.”

Given the nature of her strictness, she sure does look relaxed with her kimono dropping off her shoulder, leaving her right breast almost bare. Who knows, perhaps she is revealing a bit of her true nature under that umbrella.

Comparing our Japanese beauty to her original illustration and she doesn’t live up to it. Her pose is different, ranging from her legs, to lower back, angle of her head, and the position of her umbrella.
If you look more closely, Yui is given pointier bangs and the top of her hair looks like she has tiny cat ears because they’re raised up. On the illustration, her hair is a lot more softened and round.

Let’s look around at our Yui in her kimono.

Admittedly, I don’t love her eyes. Something’s not quite right, but not enough to stop me from buying this figure.

Not sure if it’s her eyes, but I feel like she’s lacking that magical look on her face. Maybe it’s the position of her mouth or the shape of it? Or maybe it’s the lack of a prominent cheekbone… whatever it is, it’s alright. From a regular eye-distance view, she looks fine.
She has purple eyes filled with a pixelated gradient (much like Dead Master’s). She has no blush either.

As seen from multiple pictures above, Yui has long black hair with a tint of brown (under flash, the muted brown will be visible). There are no shadow or highlights on her hair, so it looks rather flat and plain. She has jagged bangs. Her hair seems to be rather pointy though which is fine. However, her bangs are rather “formless”. I feel like every strand were copy-pasted… with very little effort involved. Looking at various images of Yui, she originally had a lot of thick bangs. But on this figure, they look rather thin and wet. At least the hair tips are pointy though, because if they were rounded (low quality), I’d be very pissed.

Warning: She has a small bunch of hair tied with a white ribbon on her left side. It’s VERY fragile!

I feel like it’s necessary to point out one of the huge flaws of this figure right here. There are very noticeable seams on her hair, especially the sides where her hair flips / points out, which are non-existent on the promo pictures (which are so smooth!). And yes, the usual seam around the crown of the hair is there but it’s not as bad as the huge triangle cut around her side hair. Heck, it looked like there was a problem with the production team and they had to stick in her hair strand at the last minute. Very bad… Kotobukiya. *shakes head* Their Melty wasn’t this bad.

Additionally… Yui’s top of her head seem to have taken damage during production. I was very upset about it when I first saw it.
Also, there’s this mysterious white… leftover plastic marks? Not sure if it’s because that area wasn’t cut properly or because it lacked paint.

I usually don’t buy figures if the face and hair lacks that oomph, but … but! Her body, her clothing, her umbrella, and her tatami base makes up for these huge minus points.

Promotional picture

Sigh.
Ok, let’s move on to the happy stuff!

Juicy outfit.

Having one side of the outfit falling off is very cliche’d indeed, but hey, it works for me! The combo of naked shoulders and exposed thighs make this Yui especially… juicy. Not to mention, her thighs are smooth and nicely proportioned (though her arms are rather too thin). Kimono’s are amazing. One minute they look tight and reserved, and the next, you can spread out the kimono just like Yui’s. xD

The huge orange bow is beautiful and it really accentuates her outfit (rather, isn’t it like that for all kimonos? ha). The gradient is another winning point of her outfit. It’s just so beautiful and soothing. There are also golden flowery and line prints on her kimono.

Paint job is good, however, the sculpt has flaws. Every one knows about this by now, but her kimono floats and doesn’t touch the surface. Magical kimono indeed.

Dream

Reality

Oh, and our dear Yui wear’s G-Strings, flashing it to us.

Yui also has accessories.

She has a rope with bells tied on her ankles (kyaaa~) and it looks so real! The rope is very textured and well-painted. The bells are golden and cute.

Yui holds a red umbrella with bells hanging from the handle. Unfortunately, my umbrella top has a minor paint graze. I can overlook that. Also, the bell hanging from the handle is flawed in terms of design. It should have been a bit heavier because the string is bouncing around as if the bells were feather-light, defying gravity. Doesn’t make sense, right?

Overall paint & sculpt: Paint job is decent but there were light black tiny smudges here and there which is very annoying. Considering how lazy I am, I’m not going to run out and buy a paint thinner to clean it (besides I’m a newbie at this stuff).
Sculpt… a bit below Koto’s average skills. Huge points docked off the very obvious and ugly hair seams and minor points for a floating kimono.

Alright, moving on to the base.

Her base is actually really neat and attractive. Yui sitting on a plastic tatami is better than her sitting on a round dish right? Surprisingly, the paint and sculpt was well done. I guess the base also makes up for the loss of quality on Yui’s hair.

Overall…

Despite some major flaws, Kotobukiya’s Takamura Yui is still beautiful and attractive. Upon gazing your eyes on her, your sight will remain on her, scanning for every detail from her umbrella and its handle, to her kimono, to her body, to the rope around her ankles, and to her base.
It was still a good buy to me given the overall positive enjoyment of the figure ^^v
*tries not to think about the ugly hair seams*