Go Figure! – Ryomou Shimei in Gothic Lolita Cosplay

Having attended Fanime this past weekend has re-kindled my interest in keeping the blog fresh again. So to that end, I present Ryomou Shimei, from the Ikki Tousen/Battle Vixens franchise, produced by the good folks at Orchid Seed. At 1/7th scale and standing about 8 1/2 inches tall, Ryomou is sculpted in a battle-damaged gothic “lolita” outfit. She’s holding a large saber, sporting her trademark handcuffs and eye-patch, ready to engage in more fighting.

She’s a beautiful figure that was not engineered so well. After having her on display for several months, she actually started leaning forward. Her shins started bending more and more, and after a week, everything above her shins was at a 45 degree angle!

I fixed it by first using a blow dryer to heat up her legs and bend them straight again. Then, I had to stabilize her by adding a couple of very small screws (only seen on the underside of the base) fastening her heals to the base.

Poorly engineered legs. Have any of you had problems with leaning figures? Any what did you do about it?

One thing I found fascinating about this figure is that it was not castoff-able (which is rare in figures these days), and the dress was actually made of a fairly rigid plastic. Without having touched the figure, I would have guessed that the dress would have been made of a pliable plastic. Nope, that wasn’t the case.

I also thought Orchid Seed could have done a better job on the handcuffs. The cuffs and chain were all made out of molded plastics. On other figures, while I’ve seen the cuffs made of plastic, the chain would have been made from fine metal link. Wish that was the case here too.

Finally, I thought that the base was schmaltzy. I would have preferred a plain black base, but instead, Orchid Seed printed a rose and the words “Gothic & Lolita” on the base. I thought that really detracted from the overall presentation.

Overall Grade: C-. She would have gotten a B if it weren’t for the legs that weren’t designed to hold the rest of the figure.