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Taiga Aisaka Miss Contest ver. review

English mode activated, since I barely receive any feedback when I write in Portuguese =P

Before starting to take proper pictures of this figurine I needed to repair her neck because it was broken when the figure arrived to me. She have three interchangeable heads and a ball joint neck that makes possible for us changing her head position a little bit. This is an unusual feature that Wave provides to some of theirs figurines.

Since the damage was easy to fix, I preferred to do it myself instead of demanding a replacement with the seller. The repair was quite simple and in essence is the same thing I did to Rize's base (read my last review), but this time I took some pictures that show the repair step by step.

Below is the ball joint still attached to her head, we can see clearly where it broke.

The ball joint is a separate plastic piece glued inside her neck as evidenced below.

Since the peg of the ball joint was bigger than Rize's feet pegs, I decided to make a rod from a piece of a big paperclip, instead of a cloth pin. Below we can see the paperclip and the pin vice tool with a drill attached. I choose a drill with a diameter slightly smaller than the diameter of the metal rod of the clip.

After drilling the ball and attaching the rod to it I was able to detach the ball off the head.

Here we can see the hole I drilled inside the neck. If someone need to do the same repair, be careful to not drill too much inside the ball or the neck.

After cutting the rod and trying the fitting I saw it was a little longer than needed.

So I cut off a small piece of it. The two shots, above and below, are badly focused, sorry for that. But they are enough to show what I did.

Finally here is the ball pinned and glued back in place.

Good as new. Nobody can tell now it was once broken =)

Someone can ask if it would be easier if I just glued the ball back in place. For sure it would, but the way I did it made the ball joint much more stronger than it was. Attaching and detaching the extra heads puts a lot of stress on the joint because the fitting is very tough and it could break the joint again.

I'm not convinced that this ball neck is a good feature for figurines with a fixed pose. It compromises the aesthetical of the figurine and can easily broke as we saw. Little gain for so much pain =/

Here are all the tools and materials the repair demanded: pin vice, cutting pliers, a piece of a paperclip and cyanoacrylate glue.

Now I can proceed with the review itself =)

I just loved Toradora. To me it was the first shonen anime that had a good romance development inside the story. Taiga and Ryuuji took the place of Miyazawa and Arima from Karekano as my favourite anime couple =)

This figure displays Taiga the way she was dressed to take place in a contest to choose the most beautiful girl of the school in episode 13 of the anime. Also her looks probably is a reference to the movie Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet but I haven't watched that movie until now.

Changing the direction of her face can give a different feeling to her pose, this is nice indeed. I'm about 50% to 50% if I like or not this feature.

As I mentioned earlier, this figure comes with three interchangeable heads with different facial expressions. The hair is the same for all the three. Below is her second face, I disliked this one so I didn't take many pictures of it.

In that episode, Taiga was sad because her father didn't come to see her as he promised, so two of her extra faces have a sorrowful look to represent that. The third face is the one I liked most. We may think why this pretty girl is sad? That's because Taiga had too many reasons to be sad before falling in love with Ryuuji.

Here we can have a close look to her tiara, it didn't have complete fidelity to the anime design but is pretty. The little red gem isn't glued in place so we need to be careful when handling the figure. If the gem falls on the floor or carpet, we can lose it forever because it is very small.

This figure is cast-off since her skirt can be removed without much effort. A service for ecchi fans =)

Her panties aren't just plain white, they have nice detail on them and with her stockings they compose a sexy display.

Taiga would be mad if she catches us spying on her panties!

Her skirt is just a lump of thick plastic without much shading and any detail on it.

Her little wings increase the kawaii factor by 10! I just love cute girls with wings =)

Because of her outfit was improvised by Ryuuji, Taiga is wearing common shoes that doesn't fit with her dress. This is a shame because this figure could be cuter if the shoes were more suitable to her looks.

To make things worse, the sculptor made her shoes too long and weird. A low skilled work without doubt.

Now is time to play a bit swapping the heads of my two Taiga figures. I wasn't expecting any rejection problems since the character is the same =)

Forgive me for being so silly, Taiga =P

This combination could be really good if her neck wasn't too long. I even felt tempted to cut it down a little to take the shot but that would be too much. =P

The little wings aren't meant to be removed but since it wouldn't cause almost any damage I did it because I felt too much tempted to try the shots below =)

Have you ever seen that paintigs with Cupids that are just head and wings? Let's see if Taiga performs well as one of them =)

The aureole was borrowed from my Djibril figure.

Her back without the wings, I just glued them back after taking these pictures.

Such pretty and sad face makes my heart melts...

Her hair is well sculpted and have a nice color with a bit of shading, but I think that Taiga's hair is a bit longer in the anime.

This figure is a real 1/8 scale, this is nice since most of Wave figures are 1/10 only.

Her base have a uncommon octagonal shape and is made of clear plastic, it isn't particulary beautiful but it fits well to the overall look of the figure. There are two pegs for her right foot and one for the left.

Here are the differents parts of the head unassembled for close visualization.

This is only my third Wave figurine but what I can tell about the craftsmanship of this one is that Wave still have much to improve before theirs figurines reaches the level of the ones by Alter, Max Factory, GSC or Mega House.

This figure isn't one of the most inspired or well made that I've seen. It is a bit rough and the paintwork is too plain. But it really resembles Taiga and thus gives the feeling of the character, thanks to the faces that are very good. So it is a must for Toradora fans.

Taiga's words about my review:

Baka Kamugin! Baka, baka, baka, bakaaa!!

=P


Release details:

Name: Aisaka Taiga, Miss Contest ver.
Origin: Toradora!
Maker: Wave
High: 19,5cm
Scale: 1/8
Price: 7.500 yens
Release date: January of 2010