We don't often get to see Mobile Suit Gundam-themed prize pools in the Ichiban Kuji-lottery. I'm struggling to even remember what the last set was - I believe it was the UC0079 and SEED set in 2021 which featured those enormous Masterlise Mechanics figures of the Freedom and the RX-78. Nevertheless, the premiere of the Witch from Mercury television series was backed up by a wave of its own which premiered in the lottery in November 2022. Tickets ran at 700 yen and would each give you a single shot at this A-level prize. This was the only figure in the set, other prizes were mostly acrylic stand displays, keychain charms and similar bric-a-brac. If you are curious you can see the entire list of prizes here.
The figure comes in one of those unwieldy windowed boxes that are extremely unsuitable for shipping - it is about 25 cm tall and mostly filled with nothing. Still, it keeps the figure safely tucked in a sandwich-style blister pack. Notice the barcode and product code 62400 for easier identification (all different prizes carry the same barcode).
At least one of the advantages of this way of packaging is that very little assembly will be required, and you can view the figure without taking it out of the box although there is only a window on one side. Assembly involves attaching the feet to a circular stand trough pegs, exercise a bit of caution here as you never know when you might have that bad day when you actually manage to break one off.
This depiction of Suletta Mercury (lead character in the Witch From Mercury) carries the additional title Mogumo designed version. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about Japanese animation artists but given that he is listed as the main character designer for the show this seems like an odd description. I imagine it might allude to the original concept art of the character which later evolved to what we can see in the anime today, I don't really know. What I do know though is that this sculpt has the same air of overabundance of energy (which is the hallmark of every annoying character ever) and just exudes a lot of positive feeling. The pose looks a bit odd from the sides and personally I would have preferred a more neutral posture but I can clearly see what the artistic expression is all about. I guess I just like my characters in uniform to be more gloomy and stoic. :)
The paint detail and printing is really crisp across the board and at a level that we can only dream of seeing Premium Brands like Converge CORE also being held to.
I think it is interesting to compare this figure with the other recently released Suletta figure. That figure was also manufactured by Bandai Namco/Banpresto but instead aimed at the shelves of the local gaming arcades. I really do like the compact packaging of the (only slightly) smaller figure.
Based on the box sizes you'd be forgiven to think the size difference between the two figures would be much larger. Here you can clearly see two different styles of sculpts, the details of the Ichiban Kuji figure have been smoothed over for a more cartoon-style design in the smaller figure. The quality still remains very good for both figures and while I personally prefer the Ichiban Kuji sculpt the Banpresto version is perfectly fine on its own and roughly three times cheaper on the secondary market.
No comments:
Post a Comment