So I generally have gotten out of the high end statue game, as prices are really not that friendly and I'm OK admiring from afar. When I do get a statue, I generally don't even consider a copy or bootleg. But sometimes, some statues are so rare you really don't have much say in the matter.
A few reviews back, I took a look at the Alter 1/8 Xenosaga 3 T-ELOS. As I had mentioned, there weren't exactly many pieces devoted to the character, but there was one which was the most impressive of them all, a Garage Kit of a 1/4 T-ELOS by Volks. There's a lot of things that don't get sold outside of Japan, and sadly this is one of them. There was also a 1/4 scale KOS-MOS statue, beautiful piece. I think there were both prepainted and self paint varieties, but the number of was so low overall, basically you had to be there or else you weren't getting one.
Naturally there's some money to be made, so recasting companies made their own copies of these statues, with the most famous one being i. I have very little experience in the Garage Kit world, but even I had heard about this place. As part of their offerings, E2046 released their own copies of these 1/4 scale statues, and while easier to get, these still aren't super common, but because there are so few originals, chances are if you run into one of these statues, chances are more likely it's a copy of some sort than the legit carticle.
I managed to find one locally and decided to buy it to learn about what these statues are like, and of course, to see T-ELOS in person.
I generally start to struggle to light up anything that's 1/6, so by 1/4 I'm just doing whatever I can get a clear photography. So basically, with most of these recasts if you don't look too closely you won't really notice anything out of the ordinary, but if you know, it's not that hard to tell when something is a copy. At this distance, things look good, which is a great start because some things are so bad that you can already tell..
So one of my first challenges was actually getting the thing home safely. I mean, I had a car so that wasn't the issue, but between the previous owner randomly gluing parts and the loss of the assembly manual, I had to learn real quick how this figure was put together and well, there were some dues that were paid during this learning process.
Aiding in the "first impressions" side of things is just how big it is. I mean, short of a ruler, having other items with known sizes for a frame of reference is helpful. So here are Woody and the 1/8 T-ELOS, the larger of which kind of makes it half way up the thigh. It's only Quarter Scale too, and they only get bigger from here.
The concept of recasting, from my understanding, is rather than making parts from the original molds, you use parts to create molds from which you product more parts. Because of this, the competence of the mold maker and the quality of the source part is utmost importance. I don't know how much was lost in translation between the original kit and this recast, but I quickly noticed a few things, like poor fit parts that left gaps (covered by other pieces), larger than anticipated seamlines, such as on the hair (front and back) and general fit issues between parts, most notably, unfortunately, the visors and the face. Details are a bit soft, but without an original present I can't say for sure this was due to recasting and not the fact this is a 2013 statue. I have seen other Polystone statues that have sharper details, so it's not the material. The base is also hollow, which isn't something I've seen on any Polystone statue before.
But again, unless you know what you're looking for, you're probably not going to notice unless it's really not subtle.
The beauty of this recasting process, however is that decisions can be made that change the whole energy of the statue. E2036 added a cast off feature, though it's more of a topless feature, securing her top to the chest with magnets instead of whatever the original statue utilized. So compared to the KOS-MOS version, this statue lacks the additional painted areola and nipple area. Some people also were not thrilled with the scribe lines that are on the breasts, but for me it makes perfect sense because, well, T-ELOS and KOS-MOS are androids and the scribe lines are just another way of highlighting this. I suspect these lines were on the original kit anyway, as all photos I've seen show the breasts are separate from the covering.
The other thing that E2046 did was give T-ELOS her own Gattling Gun, which is a secondary weapon the KOS-MOS statue wields in addition to her Dragon Tooth. It's actually quite impressive how stable they got the thing to attach itself, as well as the giant size of it (quarter scale and all) but unfortunately due to the number of intricate details this is probably the piece of the statue that suffers the most from the recasting process.
Other areas of recast worked out better in terms of clarity. Now some of the details were a bit fuzzy, but more in the "was it this fuzzy on the original" kind of way as opposed to being blatantly warped.
The rest of the statue looks great. For all its faults, the one thing I couldn't help but notice is just how smooth all the finishes are.. well, the ones on the body anyway. This is most notable on the various curves of the body, and the underlying sculpt helps to ensure that all the fabric and musculature details are well defined and easy to note.
Paint Application is overall pretty good. My first E2046 kit and all, theres some less than stellar panel lining on the Gattling Gun, but overall the rest is clean. I know it's not perfect, especially on some of the tighter areas, but based on my experience with Sideshow statues, there's some questionable paint apps there as well. The shading added to the hair and other larger monotonous areas helps to break things up. My only real question is how they arrived at this skin one. Don't get me wrong - Caramel and the Purple look sexy together, but in the game and even the stock photos of the OG kit she's a darker Brown as opposed to the Bronze she's approaching n this statue. There were also some other colour substitutions, but they're not as bad to me. Loss of decals is unfortunate, though.
Build Quality wise, as mentioned I'm fairly confident that most of my problems are due to the recasting process. Having said that, there is one area of question, which is the way the visors clip onto the forehead, as it looks like they don't really hole in place. Connection is via some tabs that are on the visors, which secure into the red disk on her forehead. Now, ignoring the poor quality of the recasted part, this still remains a finnicky way to connect those pieces, one that requires some very accurate molding. Why wasn't a method utilizing magnets implemented? It's not like there's a shortage of them.
So that was an interesting experiment. I learned a lot about recasts and what to expect. It's definitely nothing that I'd want to get into as a major hobby unless I miraculously learned to paint competently. The final product isn't terrible by any means, and by comparison to the bootleg PVCs I've dealt with, this form of bootleg is certainly much, much better in comparison. Plus, you don't feel AS bad if you do some damage to these. But ultimately, its not cheap to buy these and I think going forward I'd just treat the inability to get a legit one as Divine Will - it's just not meant to be.
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