So when it comes to buying toys, I'm sure you'll understand when I say I have my particular tastes. While yes, I do enjoy the more ecchi stuff, I enjoy it in moderation along with some more tame things. But one thing I will always geek out over is the introduction of new engineering concepts into figures. By now, I'm thinking you've at least heard of the Seamless body, one made of Silicone and features a steel armature inside to allow you pose it. This type of body is great as it allows for some realistic looking curves while at the same time maximizing articulation, with only two real drawbacks - put on clothes can be challenging and of course, dust.
So maturity levels aside, one of the reasons you're not going to find any Seamless body figures from Hasbro or NECA anytime soon has to do with costs. I'm not saying they're priced like gold, but they do cost much more than your jointed body, and on top of that you need to dress up the said body, which also increases costs, as opposed to just a sculpted body you can paint. Seamless bodies are also kind of generic in that as a company you're probably going to mass produce one type of body and dress it up, as opposed to aiming to get the most accurate looking figure to start with.
What I've seen some companies do is the following - apply seamless components to parts where it makes sense, and make the rest jointed because, well, it makes sense. In the case of female figures, that's generally where fleshy parts are exposed, with the mileage varing depending on the character being portrayed and of course budget. I believe three such products caught my eye this year, with the first being delivered being Thunderbold Squad Whiskey Sour from Animester.
I've never heard of Animester before, but it seems they've done a bunch of other things, though only two action figures. Whiskey Sour, as per my understanding, is an original character, that is effectively a cybernetic Bunny Girl. Why a Bunny Girl? Because.. why not? The set was about $100 USD shipped, and like most Chinese companies trying to enter the market, are heavily leaning into the value proposition side of things by offering her at 1/9 scale as opposed to the more popular 1/12 scale.
The contents of the set aren't as numerous as with similarly priced Snail Shell, but at the same time its mostly quality over quantity anyway:
- 1 x Main Figure
- 10 x Posing/Gripping Hands
- 4 x Premade Faces (Neutral, Surprised, Ahegao, Masked
- 2 x Blank Faces (w/Labels for customizing)
- 2 x Knives
- 2 x Short Swords
- 1 x Spear
- 1 x Base/Stand
I generally don't use stands unless absolutely necessary, so as of the writing of this report, I've not touched mine. For what it's worth, it's look really sturdy.
All the faces including the ones you customize, feature adjustable eyeballs. Me, being terrible with decals, am opting to skip the actual customizing part of things. I found that compared to offerings from various other companies, the actual moving of the eyeballs required much more effort. I don't know what it is.. maybe it's a tolerance issue? Either way, it's not the end of the world, but it is annoying. I also find that it's not across the board on all faces, and that one eye will often be more difficult than the other one.
Without any source art, it's hard to comment on accuracy of the face, but I can say it looks nice. Decent facial features though the eyes, like many other Chinese products, are anime styled but not quite. It's hard to explain... but if you look at enough product you'll see the differences. Short hair is a good choice as it doesn't get in the way of articulation. Detailing of the hair is pretty good.
Weapon wise, I find that the Short Swords are kind of pointless - not much literally but in terms of functionality. They're barely bigger than the Knives, and but I guess you get more edge surface. It's just they look so small, almost like they made them for a smaller figure. It also looks like they dropped the ball on the design and opted to use something out of my Disney Store Black Widow set. The "Nuclear" labels are also on the comical side.
The Spear is nice, featuring a metal shaft. There's some sort battery functionality on this piece, and I couldn't find on the manual a statement of specifically what it is, but I'd have to guess LED light or something.
Jointed sections are the main torso and of course the limbs, of which the latter is a much more interesting discussion. There's some great sculpting work here, with the legs featuring a bit of metal in it to help with the balance. The limbs aren't as heavily armoured looking as with Wolf Girl, but at the same time they hold together better. Knees and elbows are double jointed, which to be honest was expected even if this was just a "flesh and blood" character.
Right out the box, Whiskey Sour is wearing what I can only describe as Pauldrons from Phantasy Star. They've got some articulation to them, but ultimately in the name of photography and posing, they were removed and thrown back into the box.
Clearly the silicone parts worked out quite nicely and unlike the Phicen stuff I've handled, there's some air brushing here for a shadowing effect, particularly important for the butt cheeks. The one underrated thing about silicone legs like this is that the actual glutes will behave pretty much the way you'd expect them to when you're compressing and stretching the area.
It's a bit hard to see on this picture, but there's actually seamlines on the side of the thighs that I've not seen on any other Seamless products. The actual quality of the Silicone isn't bad, much better than that VC Toys body, and is probably on par with Phicen offerings.
Surprisingly... or maybe unsurprisingly, the articulation on this figure is basically the same as its jointed counterparts. Part of it is pretty obvious - most of her make up is jointed. It's not bad what she's been given to work with, as there are double joints at the elbows and knees, as well as a decent ankle tilt. The seamless thighs don't add anything, but you do get some additional shoulder and neck range of motion, though the actual head itself only has a standard range of motion.
Where it hurts the most is the torso section. As this is a standard jointed torso, the range of motion is standard here as well. Other than the ability to do the splits to your hearts desire, the other benefit of a Seamless body is that with the right clothing, the torso can be posed in many more natural looking poses as the deformation options are better. Not just that, but the Seamless would actually allow the figure to have waist rotation, which many Jointed figure bodies forego in order to in order to keep the curves of the hips.
Paint Application wise, it's mostly clean. The most challenging paint apps are undoubtedly the yellow/gold detail applications. Some are cleaner than others, with the yellow lines on the forearms being a particular eyesore. As far as an unproven company goes, the remainder of minute paint applications and decal applications are pretty good, at least on par with what I've seen from Snail Shell. Quality of the paint itself seems lower than the stuff used on Japanese figures, and from what I can tell the entire figure has been given a nice even matte finish coat.
Build Quality is a bit on the weak side for this figure. The ears keep falling out and the hands have a tendency to not stay in place. The hands don't really grip the Knife and Short Sword very well. But perhaps they single most annoying thing about Build Quality is that the thigh swivels are so loose that the figure can't really stand unsupported unless her legs are effectively straight down - wide legged stances are just not possible, or at least with mine. The entire torso will just spin due to the weight.
So ultimately, what do I think? It's an interesting experiment, and does show my theory of a hybrid figure being economically viable, as it were. Truly, if they had gone with a full Seamless torso, this would be a completely different play experience. As it stands, this figure is a jointed figure, albeit one that has a very, very fine ass.
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