I don't have much of the merch any more, but I LOVE QUEEN'S BLADE. It's weird, as Fate/Stay Night was an actual eroge/erotic light novel but had the more reserved character designs, Queen's Blade/Gate had the more exotic designs that catered to fetishes (mostly,... not the Cameo characters) but ultimately the property is ecchi.
I can't remember if I've explained it before, but Queen's Blade is the side of things which is all original designs for the franchise. Queen's Gate the mechanism that allows for licensed characters to enter into the battle game, and the gatekeeper is Alice. To make things even more complicated, there's two versions of Alice - a little kid, and a full grown adult. I cannot for the life of me remember why this is the case or what causes the growth spurt. I can only say that the only child merchandise I can remember was the Megahouse statue, but there have been several instances of the adult form getting merch.
And that, friends, is my explanation as to why I bought this Revoltech figure. Well, that and it was cheap.
So Alice herself is a licensed character, created by famed eroge producer Nitro+. She follows the general rules of licensed character, which is to say she exists, but with one specific difference - she has no issue getting naked. This is why this is the only Queen's Gate merch to feature castoff capabilities. She comes in two different colour schemes. I got this as part of a lot, and is sadly missing one hand.
Like Woody, this figure is infamous in the Revoltech world because of its pack ins. I mean you have the usual assortment of faces, weapons (Twin Uzis and a Whip), but it was actually this figure that educated me as to which fetish Alice was geared towards.. and apparently it wasn't the Lolis.
It was the Golden Shower crowd.
So yeah, you're seeing two pairs of additional underwear, one for battle damaged mode, and one that is soiled a nice, bright yellow.
Alice very much reminds me of Morrigan from Darkstalkers, except even more daring with her wardrobe choices. The bat theme, long green hair. I'm pretty confident that this wasn't coincidence when Nitro+ was doing their thing. I also think Capcom was the only major fighting game company to not have a licesned character.
Anyway, outfit fit is pretty much on point, but the proportions aren't quite there. Not to say they look bad, but rather, that accuracy wasn't really a strong point and it's actually very much like that with many of the line. General details are there. We didn't exactly buy these for the strict adherence to source material. But given the age, overall it's not too bad, and because of circumstances still remains the best articulated Alice you can get even to this date.
Faceplate wise, they're again, OK. Not the greatest, not the most accurate, but workable. The best one is the battle damaged face, mostly due to the fact there's actually more on the face. I think overall the actual face itself is fine, but it's the shame of the underlying faceplate that is throwing things off.
Articulation wasn't a strong suit of these figures due to a few factors. First off, there was no waist joint or back arch/ab crunch . The other issue was the way the thighs were cut, and the sheer reliance on the Revoltech joints, where which were ratcheting single joint articulation pieces... so no ball joints. So effectively, the upper body was OK in terms of posing power, but the legs were kind of meh. Modern Revoltech get around the limitations of the joint system through various means, but ultimately this limitation is something that exists. Having said all that, the joint system does allow you to increase range of motion by pulling the joint out further. The hair posses some joints for some posing options.
Anyway, while not great, you can still do some decent poses with the figure, even more if you actually weren't lazy and busted out the stand.
Converting to Battle Damaged mode/Cast Off effectively requires you to pull apart the figure and dress it up accordingly. The underlying body is nice and curvy, but isn't anatomically correct.
Paint Applications are probably some of the better ones for that era from Kaiyodo. Painting a figure from this line actually looks like it required skill, as compared to the generally tame characters that were being released up until this time. Quality of the paint work itself ranged from kind of rough to competent. While there were a few paint applications that look like a masking error had occurred or incomplete, none of the paint was lumpy. I wish they had either given the figure a coat of flesh tone or used a colour of plastic that looked more like Alice had a complexion. Decal work is sharp and gets the job done.
Build Quality wise, my biggest grip is that I hate the Revoltech system. Seeing how I can't get away from that, the rest of the figure itself is pretty solid, outside of some parts where additional sanding and other related finishing steps would have been nice. I didn't encounter any mechanical issues, and while you still have to pry the hands open to get the weapons in them, these hands aren't closed fists so my concerns over wear and tear aren't as alarming - they're basically a non factor.
So there you have it. This is one of those figures that you pretty much have to click with the IP, otherwise you'll never actually get one. It doesn't help that these are pretty old and are a pain in the ass to find - on the plus side, it means that it generally makes it easy for most collectors to continue on like this never existed, leaving a greater chance that any unloved figures out there will connect with the proper audience.
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