Bandai continues its string of Gundam-themed arcade prize item character figures which are a nice counterweight to the more expensive (ludicrously in fact) characters coming out of its premium MegaHouse brand. This revival of sorts started with Lalah Sune in late 2021 followed by Four Murasame in early 2023. In the same period we also had two similarly sized figures from Witch of Mercury although those figures are not as closely related seeing as how they feature different packaging size and base types. There was also a figure of Gigi Andalucia to capitalize on the release of the Hathaway's Flash movie through the Bandai Glitter and Glamour figure line. Now the turn has come to Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack and of course Bandai continues to pick what it believes to be the best eye candy available and so the task falls on the whiny brat Quess Paraya to do the representin'... Ungh.
If you are familiar with the Lalah Sune and Four Murasame releases you will recognize the style of the packaging for the new Paraya figure. What is new this time around however is that Bandai ditched the two different A+B versions it used for the two prior figures, which were basically very slight recolorations with "Newtype" glitter and sparkle versions, which didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. You could just tell someone wanted to try to milk the OCD contingent of the market to double their wants. This figure is a step in the right direction.
Quess Paraya was released to the gaming arcades in mid-June and can now be easily found on the secondary market. I picked one up from Mandarake where it is currently priced at 1000 yen which is very affordable compare to the recent MegaHouse GGG range which currently sits around 18000 yen per figure. Sure, those figures are very heavy on the detail but honestly these cheaper figures tend to offer just as good a likeness with less overproduced bases, not to mention staying true to the character proportions whereas the MegaHouse brand has a thing for pumping up the bra sizes a couple of notches for the heck of it. Anyway, as you can see here the figure is a single piece and comes with a circular base with a support for the right foot featuring a peg hole. A support piece for the other leg to prevent warping is also included should you want to display the figure for a longer period of time.
As you can see the character likeness and outfit colours are really true to the movie. The attention to detail is all I could ask for and the printed eyes are both realistic and anime at the same time, you can tell the character design stems from an older era. If you enjoyed the previous figures in this series this will be a great addition and I am curious to see if the "line" will continue to showcase girls from the various Gundam properties. Who would you expect to be next? Maybe Fa Yuiry from Zeta or Elepo Ple from Double Zeta? Personally I am quite sick of the adolescent girl-trope and would like to see character in flight suits and uniforms. The MegaHouse GMG line started out promising although it seems to veer into anime girl statue territory more and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment