After more than a year, I am glad to share that the Figured as Much review series is back, at least in a limited capacity. The postponement of this series was ultimately due to the after-shocks left by the COVID-19 pandemic. This resulted in all my figure orders being stuck in a warehouse in Japan for more than a year now, unable to be shipped to Australia. As they are slowly making their way to be, at least the ones I didn’t cancel, expect to see a few more figure reviews go live in the coming weeks and months. To kick things off, I would like to start off with the very first figure that arrived on my doorstep last week.
Continuing their ongoing work with the popular anime/light novel media franchise No Game No Life, manufacturer Phat Company released a fanservicey figure of Izuna Hatsuse in April 2020. The second prominent pre-painted figure released for the adorable fox girl – the first being a school swimsuit style figure from Aquamarine in 2018 – this figure features Izuna wearing an eloquent Japanese kimono. Oh, did I say wearing? I guess the more accurate word would be undressing. Unlike other characters in the franchise, including Schwi Dola, Shiro and Jibril; for some reason, Izuna (who is downright adorable in her own way) cannot get away with just having a typical figure based on her standard garb, having to add some twist or fanservice costume to the mix. That said… is this figure worth adding to your collection?
I think the apparent prompt that question is… who will you be displaying this figure to? If you have lots of foot traffic around where you present your figures and your parents are not fond of your otaku ways… then perhaps this is not the figure for you. There is no getting around the fact that this figure does feature a youngish looking fox girl in a state of undress – despite not breaching the line of being erotic in nature. On the other hand, if you can stomach the typical nudity and fanservice found in No Game No Life, you should have no issue on that front.
Phat Company has been behind many amazingly figures around No Game No Life. The most substantial element is their attention to detail and adaptation of Yuu Kamiya’s original colouring style, which makes each character’s outfit and, in particular, hairstyles, pop. The same goes for their newest figure, being a true delight to photograph as I enjoyed the small attentions to detail on the kimono. It was also nice that they added some texture and realism to her tail, unlike Aquamarine’s school swimsuit figure, where her tail had the colours right but looked like her tail was a solid piece of plastic rather than being made of hair. I would argue it still isn’t perfect, but the winner was easy to determine with the two side-by-side.
While Izuna’s kimono is definitely the highlight of this figure, other elements made it well designed for its purpose. Her undergarments are adorable and thoughtfully designed to factor in her big floofy tail, her facial expression screams “Stop looking at me -please”, and despite the fact I would rather her not be in a fanservicey pose – they do enough to make sure she doesn’t cross the line when it comes to nudity. Plus… the colouring of her hair and big floofy ears was exceptional.
Following other Phat Company NGNL figures, Izuna is positioned on a chessboard base. The base itself is optional, given that she is depicted sitting on the ground and therefore doesn’t require any additional support from the base to stand up. But the consistency is welcome and complemented the purple-and-white checkerboard design of the packaging, which you can see in all the photographs within this article.
This figure is not perfect, however and does have a few elements which let it down. First of all, there were some inconsistencies in the painting, and when viewed up-close, it doesn’t completely meet the high standards I have come to expect from Phat’s NGNL figures. I am not sure how many of these inconsistencies are due to being in storage for longer than a year, and how much comes down to manufacturing. However, I would argue it arrived in the best possible condition on the delivery side of things with top-notch packaging. The second issue is that the figure is clearly designed to be viewed from a top-down angle, as Izuna’s removable head looks very awkward (from my perspective) when looking from the ground up. In my opinion, they should have gone with a non-detachable head.
Despite a few inconsistencies in the manufacturing process, this is an adorable figure that I will be keeping on display, albeit discreetly given the NSFW nature of it, for the time being. I would have preferred something more SFW aligned in line with all other characters, but she is downright cute from a technical and photographic standpoint.
Oh, and for those who are collecting them, this figure comes with mini-figures of both Ino Hatsuse and Miko!
