This has to be the most sloppily painted authentic, new, straight from Japan PVC figure I’ve yet come across. I didn’t even bother to assemble it because it definitely needs to be fixed first. It’s a SEGA prize figure and like most of these it’s made in China, but usually SEGA’s quality control is better than this.
I have no complaints about the sculpt, I think it captures the anime version of the character better than some more expensive figures. The pose is good, and it has all the important details, even the ring. The right hand is molded to the sword. I forgot to include it. Note: dull shoes and glossy socks… :/
I think the face looks fairly accurate. But they didn’t make the remotest attempt at cleaning up mold seams on her hair.
That’s actually a blob of glue on her hair there:
Really shoddy glue job, and even the paint looks uneven:
Really, Japan? Come on! The hinomaru is weeping tears of blood…
Here it looks like for some reason someone took a brush to hide a white paint smudge (but didn’t care about the gold paint smudge above it):
This is a good demonstration of how, even with the exact same paint on hand (we can hope, unless they just used a brush with thinner to try to wipe off the smudge), it’s very hard to match the surrounding glossiness level. What they should have done to fix something like this is to finish the entire jacket with a coat of clear varnish after fixing the color issue, to get a uniform top layer.
There are more flaws all over but you get the idea. This is going to be a challenge…
I wasted over half a day trying to repaint her hair like this (in between watching anime while the paint dried):
But it was just not feasible, and in the end I soaked her in rubbing
alcohol to get all the paint back off (unfortunately that removed the
putty and such as well).
Hence, off with her head!
I finished the body first, leaving the head until my frustration with it has become a more distant memory. So I took some pictures of the headless swordswoman:
I completely repainted her socks and shoes, her jacket, the red and gold parts of her epaulettes, her cuffs, most of the red trim and almost all the gold details, and the green and red “stones” of her sword hilt. I like bright and shiny…
I gave her jacket a matte coat but it’s still more glossy than I’d like here. So, after some more work:
