For the longest time, I was just so busy everyday that my life consisted mainly of waking, working and sleeping. And now that I have a day off of work, I'll take the time to finally type out Part 2 of this wedding figure review, the Tuxedos!
These are the near second priority of those who bought this set (the first being the white wedding dress) hence the price for them spiked quite wildly before the re-release was announced. I managed to grab the re-release version (finally!) and now let's start the review!
Packaging
You might want to read the first part if you are interested in how the outer box looks.
This links to that specific article.
Here, I'll continue by looking at how the item box itself looks.
This is the box packaging for each individual item. All 6 boxes look exactly the same and thus, this is typically in shops as blind boxes where you choose a box to purchase without knowing exactly which of the 6 types is inside.
This works especially well for this set as there is the blue gown, which is seemingly unpopular. If this were not a blind box, chances are that there would be a lot of leftover unsold ballgowns as compared to the wedding dresses and tuxedos.
The side of the box (which I forgot to snap an image of) showed the 6 different variants as well as more warnings on how the Nendoroid head isn't added.
The back on the other hand, is essentially the usual packaging and warnings. Nendoroids come with many small parts so if you have children, you have to be wary of things like Nendoroid more too.
The figure inside is in sealed plastic, with a layer of bubble wrap to secure it. This helps to protect from most impact damage which occurs during transport. While it can be better, but for the size of the item, the number of items in a box and the price of shipping, this is definitely sufficient. I have yet to receive a Nendoroid more that has been damaged due to shipping.
Base
Unlike the gowns, the tuxedos come with their own stand which has three hearts as a base, as seen in the image above. This is obviously due to them being unable to stand on their own, unlike the flared skirt parts in the gowns which help to balance out the weight.
Unlike the gowns, the tuxedos also come with a hole in their backs to connect the stand to. Due to this, the base can only be placed behind the Nendoroid, which makes it very distracting. This difference between the tuxedo and the baseless gown figures is quite jarring.
Posing and Assembly
Similar to the gowns, not much assembly is required. Note that you can change the hands easily to fit other poses or have them hold items. The legs and arms can also be removed, but they are much harder to find substitutes for.
Sadly, both the white and grey comes with the same mold, making there a lack of diversity when posing the two together.
Sculpting and Painting
Let's start by taking a look at the front of the outfit. First, let me highlight why I chose Nico as a model for this outfit, despite her not fitting the role well. Nico's hair is in pigtails, which makes it easy for one to look at the details at the back of the attire.
Right. Let's go!
Looking from the front of her outfit, you see that there is utmost detail put into the pockets and seam lines. These make it look exactly like what you would expect on a blazer. The material looks sleek and smart too, though it fails to replicate the texture of the real product.
The sculpt for the buttons are immaculate even on the sleeves. I'm happy GSC didn't forget those on the sleeves as well. Let's return to the image before this to look at the inner darker grey vest.
The buttons on the inner vest is smaller yet still delicately sculpted. While I was hoping to see pin-striped vest, it is just a simple dark grey one, which is accentuated by the neck tie. Which brings me to the point that I love the neck tie.
I love how poofy it looks and the creases where it is tied down. It looks realistic.
Her shoes are in a paint that reflects light well, making them look polished. However, it is quite plain otherwise.
Looking at the back of the figure, we see that there is a slight crease at her small back, but that is about it. The attire is more or less one smooth piece, which is a realistic but kind of a disappointment also because creases take a lot of detailing to accomplish!
Painting wise, there are no paint spills and the different shades of gray complement each other. The white cuffs stand out quite well against the otherwise plain grey color palette. However, this also brings the next point that the color choice is too monotonous and looks quite horrible with white (and maybe even black) colored hair characters. Also, characters with hair colors that don't suit this scheme might appear quite flat in contrast.
Next, we will look at the white tuxedo. I prefer this tuxedo, mainly because I am not a big fan of gray colors. As the sculpt is the same as the one above, I will not take that much time to delve into sculpting but instead I will focus on the colors instead.
Firstly, the gold/light brown and white matching is alright in my opinion, but the necktie might require a different color or shade to match better to the vest. As it looks now, it seems like a mere extension of the vest.
From the image above, you can see that I tried to match a white hair character to the white tuxedo to see how it looks. The matching of a white hair character to the tuxedo makes it look yellowish instead. The pale color scheme makes her look quite flat... while making the white shoes pop instead.
Matching her with Tsukiko shows that black (and possibly brown) would suit this white scheme well.
I can't wait till Oikawa and Iwaizumi arrives so I can try these on them!
~ Reina-rin
