Saturday, May 30, 2015
Review: figma Kaname Madoka
| Figure Information | |
| Manufacturer: | Max Factory |
| Figure Number: | 110 |
| Origin Series: | Puella Magi Madoka Magica |
| Scale: | Non-scale |
| Height: | Approximately 12.5cm tall |
| Original Price: | 3,048 Yen |
| Packaging: |
While this is the second time you'll see this box design here in the reviews (Sayaka being the first), Madoka IS the one who actually started the said deceiving design of kid friendly lines and stars for the entire pre-rebellion figmas with the exception of Ultimate Madoka and since Madoka's the pink-themed magical girl in the show, her box follows this color as well and I must say that it is quite fitting for her character.
Much like the old figma box designs, one side only features the line logo and the other features a product shot while the back, as usual, gives you an overview of gimmicks and mostly what to expect of the figure.
| Details: |
I'll start with the default face as usual and I must say there's a good amount of accuracy in there since they did a good job of capturing Madoka's face though some might argue with me that it needs to be wider but for my personal tastes, I like the wideness of it and I think it's just right.
As for her hair, it's unlayered as the original art but there's a good amount of spiky goodness for her bangs and pig tails which certainly is good enough for an articulated figure.
As far the clothes go, the details are magnificent and there aren't any notable misses or smudges on the paint applications as well. The figma rendition definitely has that very puffy balloon-like skirt and it looks great as well as the soul gem's form which can be found on her chest. Madoka's clothes is pretty frilly and while the figma doesn't capture that to the teeth, there's still a great amount of frills that can be found throughout her body. There are actually some soft bendy plastic pieces in her clothes as well and they work pretty well when it comes to the overall design of things.
As the GSC site says, she's only 12.5cm tall so that really makes her smaller than your usual usual and here's a quick size comparison between her and my figma Asakura Ryoko.
| Accessories: |
Figma stand aside, Madoka comes with 2 alternate faces, 4 magical arrows, 2 variants of her bow, 2 grief seeds, that little devil Kyubey and a total of 9 alternate hands that comes in pairs of open palm hands, fists, gripping hands, a unique left hand intended to hold her bow and a corresponding right hand that's used for holding arrows and lastly, a unique right hand that's intended to hold a grief seed.
Madoka's faceplates are definitely 2 good picks as one is her serious face that perfectly fits her action poses and the other is her despair face, a perfect fit for the series proper and for Madoka especially since she's bundled with Kyubey.
And now going to Kyubey, the overall mold of Kyubey is definitely spot on and the paint apps are amazing, figma definitely captured that "harmless" look of the little devil.
| Articulation Points: |
Madoka's head movement is pretty satisfying and is free of restrictions thanks to her hairstyle; there's a great range of upwards movement and an even greater range downwards; rotation is also quite free while sideways tilt is pretty damn good as well.
Madoka's pigtails can full rotate via swiveling on the connection point and additionally, you can tilt her ribbons as well if you need to.
Her arms can be fully rotated though you might need to adjust the head from time to time since the arms will collide with her pig tails while sideways raise is about 80 degrees. There's also some minor "bicep" swivel on her connection point between the shoulder joint and her arms. Her arms bend at the elbows for around 135 degrees and like most figures, you can turn around the forearms from the connection point between the elbow joint and the upper arm thanks to how figma joints are constructed. For her wrists, there's definitely a more limited movement since she uses the old wrist joints being part of the pre-200 figmas (don't get me wrong though, not all post 200 figmas have 2.0 wrists as well).
Going to her ab joint, here's where I think Madoka shines. There's obviously a cut on her torso when you view it from the side or the back but none at front, one might think that it could be very limited but thanks to a really well thought out engineering of using soft and bendy plastic for that detail in front of her clothes; this does allow you to still fully utilize the ab joint giving you a good range of forward and backward movement while remaining seamless up front and the plastic feels pretty sturdy and I'm pretty confident it won't get ripped over time. Her torso can tilt sideways by a little using the ab joint as well.
Her waist is ball jointed so yeah pretty neat stuff you can do there as you can adjust the whole lower body section through there which does help in making kneeling poses for Madoka.
And finally for the lower body articulation, I must say for someone having a very puffy skirt, Madoka sure does have a great leg movement (even better than the touhou ones!); Forward and backward movement are pretty damn good as they both reach around 75 degrees and the same can be said for her sideways splitting action. She also has a very neat thigh swivel though it can only rotate until you reach the tip of the mold cut where the swivel moves. Her knees does give you the standard figma range of a 145 degree bend. Last but not least, her ankles definitely have little to none hindrance so you can fully utilize the rotation points and the hinge.
| Poseability: |
Madoka's frame is surprisingly very very poseable and because she's more of your standard archer than your kyudo practitioner, there's definitely a lot more you can do with Madoka when it comes to her stances when she's about to shoot her arrows and what really surprised me is that she can actually pull off a very natural kneeling stance and I definitely love this aspect from Madoka's figma rendition.
The decision to give Madoka 4 magic arrows actually help in making one do a pseudo arrow shower or make her rapid firing capability that can be seen in the Grief Syndrome doujin game. Additionally, having 4 arrows does make it a little safer if you lost one by accident.
Her bow's rest state also gives you some additional pose options but I barely have any use for it that would actually fit her character. XD Though you can certainly use it as a meelee weapon for some shots of you really want to.
Her default face primarily works for more casual poses but they still can be used with the bow and it's really just up to your imagination to work around mixing and matching hands and faces with rightful poses.
And as I've mentioned in the accessories section, her despair/frightened face works very well for the tone of the entire series and the frightened face is pretty exploitable as you can make use of it in other scenarios like some peole making Madoka a gangster haha.
Certain scenes definitely works with Kyubey and one most specially is the use of her included grief seeds, though the seeds pretty much have one main purpose, adding those to the package definitely improves Madoka's overall play value and is pretty welcomed IMO.
| Final Thoughts: |
Madoka is definitely one of, if not, the best archer figmas I have in my collection and being like almost 4 years old now as a figure, I definitely can say she's a better archer figma than let's say figma Akagi solely because of Madoka's powerful frame that allows a ridiculous amount of movement. While my comments of Sayaka was that she was pretty much the 2nd weakest figure in the original 5 magic girls from the line, Madoka is the exact opposite for me as she is the 2nd best release among the original 5 magic girl versions. There's definitely a great amount of thought put into her overall engineering and I have little to none complaints on her as well, so yeah, definitely a highly suggested figma to pick up and I think even if she's already more than 3 years old as a figma, she's still pretty affordable these days I belive. Being a figure released in the last quarter of 2011, I got this figma from my friend who's behind CWToys! (because CWToys still wasn't a public service back then)
I give Madoka a godly 4.5 out of 5.
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