By
TReina -
Monday, June 26, 2017
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This figure may very well be one of my top highlights of 2017 because she just comes with so many accessories and intricate assembly points. In my previous article, I showed how I assembled my copy of Chiaki and now, I would like to cover a review of her base, which includes Monokuma and the various gaming devices. The third article in this trilogy will then talk about Monomi and Chiaki (finally) and how much I enjoyed this figure!
Let's stop dawdling around and cut to the chase~ Note that some images may be repeated across posts and that is not an issue of concern.
Monokuma
Monokuma is the antagonist of the series and his name is simply a combination of "Monochrome" and "kuma" where the latter is the Japanese word for bear. Calling monokuma a monochrome bear is a perfect fit and the makers even go as far as making him literally half black and half white to acknowledge his name.
As you can see, on the white half, Monokuma is a friendly bear and on the black side, he looks evil and monstrous, armed with fangs and a glowing red eye.
Three things to note about this:
1) The red eye is deeper than the surface of the sculpt, where it clearly exhibits that it is sculpted into Monokuma's face to show that the eye is under the black surface, instead of the white half where the round eye is protruding out (one of the key points of cuteness in cartoon animals) The brighter lining around it seemingly shows that the eye is glowing (as it should be in the fandom itself).
2) The fangs are protruding out of the sculpt, where they look separately sculpted then placed onto the mouth sculpt.
3) The shading is superb. It is heavily used and adds a lot of dimension into tomsthing that would otherwise be solely flat black and white.
Unfortunately, the back of the base is quite disappointing seeing as it is just a bear-shaped white plastic piece. But seeing as the rest of the base looks pretty impressive and you really shouldn't be looking at this side of Monokuma, it isn't a problem to me.
TV
If looking at the figure so far hasn't taught you anything about how detailed they are, take a look at this TV. Featured on the screen here is a game that is played in the game of Super Danganronpa 2 itself, which is also one of the key clues to solving the overhanging mystery of SDR2. This whole thing is remade in the figure in the original form of a retro TV and keeps all of its retro details about it.
The TV is painted in matte red, kept well with adequate shading. These are the colors on the original TV in the series and the screen of the TV here is the main menu of the game in SDR2. The screen even looks a little glossy and makes you think that there is actually a game running inside but it's not!
Looking at the other sides of the TV just ascertains the fact that many of the details of a retro TV are kept accurate. Furthermore, the shading is adequate and seen on both the red and black sections. On average, this figure uses a lot of shading, which is true to the franchise as well as the dark and gloomy feel of the series itself. How can a show not be dark when you have a psychotic judge executing your classmates and your friends killing each other, huh?
The vents of the TV are as realistic as it can get. If they would take it a step further, the vents would be see through to see all the little electrical details in the TV itself but though that detail would be nice, asking that of a company for a 10k+ figure might be pushing it a little too much. Besides, I probably wouldn't appreciate the rise in cost for this detail.
More vents as well as the plague behind which electronic companies tend to put their names there. However, there is no name here since this isn't technically from such a company, still it would be good to see either Phat or Spike Chunsoft's name here, haha.
Here's more vents and the circle peghole for the stand to connect to. And in the image above you can see that there's shading for the black and even more for the red part-- and you get this line of brighter red between the two lining of darker, duller red due to the shading.
Player
The player is also one of the most detailed, retro game players. It is the center piece where all the wires in this figure conjoins and thus comes with numerous peg holes for the wires to insert itself into. These have been covered in the article about assembly already, hence I will not go through it again.
This view shows that it is kept as authentic as it goes as I still remember all those buttons (in red) that I would push to open the cover where the large rectangular part will open and I can change the game cartridge in order to switch games. While the clear plastic part (the right strip on the rectangular part) is not transparent as it is on the console), it tries very hard to give off the impression that it is and I think it succeeds quite beautifully!
Unfortunately I don't really recall anything much on this side of the console except that it is meant to connect to the TV and in that sense this succeeds well in recapitulating it. I also recall that the connection to the TV was with three plugs, each of a different color, which this figure has... and even allow you to connect it yourself!
Here you go, three colors, all plugged in! Connecting these three plugs is the most enjoyable thing I have ever done as far as it goes for assembling figures. I never thought that assembling figures can be so fun (I'm usually worried I'll break something) but this was just mind-blowing~
The gaming consoles are detailed too! The L and R buttons as well as where the cable connects too are all in red, which distinct itself quite well against the flat green console. The direction pad and the other 4 buttons (O, X, triangle, square) are all included and there isn't any paint spillage too!
The only underwhelming part about this is that there seems to only be one button between the two pads... whatever happened to START and SELECT? But on hindsight, I have no idea what model this is and there might very well have been only one button for this model.
Here's how all the components of the base attach to each other and look when it's all assembled. Do note that the wires are a little flexible but take care to not bend them too much or they might still risk breaking. In fact, the wires do feel like the most fragile part of this entire figure.
Next up, I will be reviewing Chiaki and Monomi finally so stay tuned for more details on how their sculpting and painting fare <3
~ Reina-rin
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