AOYAMA MOTOKO
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The obsessive female Kenshin
of Hina is #2 in the series.
At first glance, she doesn't seem like much of a gem, especially when you know what you're getting with Naru or some of the others. From the outside of her unopened blister card she looks like she sports very lousy articulation. Her clothes don't appear to have any allowance for movement at all. There's that neck joint, and you'll be able to see hinged toes, but that's about it. And her accessories, while relevant, seem weak. They're mostly articles from her quarters: a mini divider, and a small holder for her sword, but they don't have much interactive value apart from her katanas and her hat. One good thing that's obvious is that she comes with a katana that can be sheathed. Most impressive. (Her hat, on the other hand, just balances on top of her head with no way of securing it.) Ironically, like the character herself, the toy holds a few surprises on the inside. Unfortunately, a lot of them mean having to strip her clothes off. Underneath you'll find that she's got a reasonable amount of usable articulation. Not that a semi-naked Motoko's a bad thing, of course, but it kinda upsets displaying her in her usual look. Unless you can come up with a reasonable explanation for her always being in bust-wrap and panties. (I'm sure some ecchi otaku somewhere will be able to...and she's got a nice pair of panties on...) |
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With her clothes off she has an additional
use of the joints at her shoulders, cut elbows on each arm, hips and
knees. There's also a well-hidden torso cut that runs under her bust-wraps
that allows her to turn her shoulders from side to side.
Taking those into account, she does have a pretty large range of poses, and both hands can hold her weapons for some double-sworded fun. However, her cut elbows mean you can't do much with her arms, which is a shame. She does seem to be very well-balanced. I had little trouble getting her to pose with bent knees, using her toe joints as well, and with a large mass of hair like that it's nice to see that she doesn't fall over because of bad weight engineering. I did, however, NOT like her face sculpt. It has its nice features, for example, if you turn her upwards slightly her smile turns into a frown. And there isn't anything wrong with the sculpt itself. It's just that I personally like Akamatsu's lean-faced Motoko, while this sculpt seems to be based on the anime promo artwork which always makes her look chubby and plump. |
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Interchange play-wise, she's fully compatible with the Waterline 2 Motoko. unfortunately that Motoko has a very odd expression on her face, and it seems only suitable if you want to put her next to Tama-chan or something. The good news is that you can use the back portion of that head with this figure to give her a ponytail look, and it does look very nice. technically she can swap heads with some of the other Hina girls too, but her specific Motoko body doesn't lend itself well to it. Unless you want to do that scene where all the girls dressed up in Motoko outfits, then you can go buy a few Motokos and do a head swap. There's not much other reason to do it.
So is she worth the high Japanese price tag? Poor Motoko seems to be getting the brunt of everything. I'd say no; this figure as is is maybe worth about 3/4 of that price. I'd say half but you gotta give her points for being able to take off her clothes. She's a nice figure, but the static outfit and the mediocre accessories bring the figure down a lot. She needs a clothe outfit, or at least one that can accomadate her articulation. Its either that, or they should have provided a bag of secret extras that had a snap on version of her RPG outfit! Now, I'd pay 3000yen for something like that!
For a LOT more pictures, check out the
photoshoot!
Warning, adult content. May offend those with extreme moralist viewpoints.
24 / 04/ 2002
