A few months ago I noticed a new Gasha Portrait figure making its way into the secondhand market. And then suddenly there were three. I like to think that I have a pretty good idea of what rumbles in the Gasha Portraits line but here Bandai snuck out a load of premiums without me noticing. If only Bandai would keep their Gashapon blog more up to date. Anyway, I jumped straight at these and figured I'd better make a quick review for any other latecomers since these will probably not stay in circulation that long.
Once I had secured the full set of figures the next hurdle appeared. I knew absolutely nothing about Mobile Suit Gundam Build Divers except that it is a rehash of the tried and tested Build Fighters/Build Fighters Try formula and the few details I had seen about its characters left me highly skeptical. I mean, just look at the main characters and their outfits in that shot. The rest of the cast is even more eccentric with half a dozen furries, an Oni look-a-like with horns on his forehead and a very flamboyant ladyboy mentor for the young protagonists. Still, I sat down and figured I'd better watch it from the start, at least until Ayame shows up to get a feel for who she is and what her character is supposed to be all about. Well, I have stomached roughly half of the 25 episodes and while I have some reservations about recycling old concepts and the same annoying talking during fighting aspect that kills all suspension I think it is a decent and light-hearted if not stellar follow-up, but the original Build Fighters set that bar pretty high.
The packaging was really Spartan for this lot. Gone is luxurious cardboard boxes like the ones used for the SEED Destiny or Evangelion premium figures, instead Bandai go for individual transparent plastic chucked into separate bags on which a stickered barcode is the only ornament. Each figure in this set has an individual barcode as can be seen above. This does not seem to be reflected in the price however, because you are paying ¥2500 for the privilege of owning these... per figure that is. The figures began delivery in May 2021 and the price quickly jumped to ¥3000 on the secondary market.
Taped to each figure's packaging is a multi-compartment bag containing the action base components. There was also a typical Gashapon style mini-booklet included with the two larger Ayame figures. There was probably one with the Aya Fujisawa figure as well which may have gone lost in handling.
Build Diver Ayame (Masked ver.)
Here we have Ayame as she appears on the early title card together with her chosen steed, the super deformed RX-Zeromaru. This is basically the Unicorn Gundam with some additional ninja-style components because why not? The machine can alter modes between the Unicorn's Destroy and Unicorn modes granting it different abilities such as overwhelming speed or stealth.
The RX-Zeromaru later gains a bird-shaped support craft together with which it can transform into a fully proportioned beast. For some reason Bandai seems content on sticking to model kits for their Build Fighters/Divers designs, there are some really neat designs in Divers that I wouldn't have minded to see in Gashapon or Shokugan form. The Zeromaru (and why not Fumina's Winning Gundam?) seems a given for the Senshi Forte line, which used to shake things up at the end of the early sets with SD character designs.
For the bigger figure classes there were several other interesting customs like the GM III Beammaster or the Powered GM Cardigan seen here. How exquisite they would look in Converge form. :)
Well, back to Ayame then. As you can see this figure has its basic pose from the title card with some slightly different posed arms. The left foot has both a small peg and a rest supporting it while the right knee is propped up by a longer support. Great job on making a discrete and functional base. The flowing hair is made of slightly bendy plastic and so maybe there could be a slight deformation over time if keeping the figure up on display. The colours chosen are as you can see pretty much spot on.
The character likeness is really on point here. You can see some slight painting mishaps at the edges of coloured areas here and there but I sure am not complaining.
Mmm... how is that coffee? This scene reminds me of that old gag with the Imperial Stormtroopers having drinks in a bar.
Build Diver Ayame (Unmasked ver.)
As is common with Sunrise's Gundam television series, the opening titles change at least once during a season and now Ayame appears unmasked in this sequence. Not sure if she will do this more often as I haven't watched any further thus far, it was enough to get the review going...
As you can see, this figure is a simple head swap of the masked version. When Bandai did the Hawke Sisters Set we got two two figures with swappable head parts for Meyrin's two hairstyles and I would much have preferred a nice box with both figures and conversion headpiece or similar for the Ayame figure. Perhaps this was difficult to solve together with the long hair and so the designers preferred to make two different figures entirely, hopefully for their robustness' sake and not as a cheap money-making trick getting you to purchase three instead of two figures. I have my suspicions...
I haven't seen too much of the unmasked Ayame yet but the likeness remains except for the fact that her characters is brooding and quiet for most of the time, I certainly haven't seen her breaking into big smiles like this. I think a minor smile or even smirk would have suited the character better.
Aya Fujisawa
In the Build Divers lore, the theme has changed from doing metaphysical battle with scales models (that actually breaks them when they receive damage) into a MMORPG-style world where not only the mobile suits are scanned and virtualized, the players themselves get freaky auto-assigned avatars. I don't quite understand the lore here because most other players are seen wearing show accurate uniforms or character costumes for the most part, whereas the Build Diver troop has some ridiculous gear on display. The actual player of the Ayame character is named Aya Fujisawa and is revealed halfway through the series.
Again the attention to detail and colouring is superb for this figure. Each foot has a peg hole but I haven't forced it all the way down on its pegs since I will keep it in its packaging for the most part (although I have no idea how to store the overly large packaging itself). This smaller smile is something I think would have suited the unmasked Ayame character better. The Fujisawa character appears to be quite serious and I would have preferred a more serious expression also on this figure.
It is a war out there...
Conclusion
The Gasha Portrait series is always producing great figures and I hope to see more Gundam-themed characters in the future. I do imagine that most Gundam figure collectors are left quite cool about these figures (the price certainly won't help) but if you are a fan of Ayame this is a great figure set to grab - and now is the time. If you prefer articulated figures you may also want to consider the Figure-Rise model kit version of Ayame of course.
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