Thursday, June 2, 2011

Plum Konomi Magic User Review

 愛佳でいくの!!柚原このみ マジックユーザー 1/7 PVC フィギュア

Edit: AmiAmi has sent a replacement wand and I have received it!

I ordered a large package from AmiAmi on Mon and it arrived here today, on Thur!  That was fast, and the shipping fee only cost me about 4000¥which is currently about 50$ USD, Ouch!

So as I collect alot of To Heart 2 stuff, I keep an eye out for any new items in the market. And here we have Konomi magic user by PLUM. As you might think, this statue resembles the konomi witch figure closely. The good news is if you passed on the konomi witch, the magic user figure is attainable at half the price! 

So what about this company PLUM? Who are they? Well, PLUM stands for Pretty Lovely Unique Mechanism. Sounds like a recipe for magic to me! They seem to dabble in all sorts of things. Have you every played G-Darius? You know, the old shooting game where you fire at big robotic fish on the sega genesis? Yeah, I loved that game. Well, PLUM makes a plastic model of the space ship. They also seem to make plastic model kits of Japanese temples... I guess bandai does that too, so we are cool here. I think this is their official blog link.

side of the box
back of the box

The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was, "Phew! What a smell!"
This thing just came off the presses, you could smell that polyurethane smell everywhere.
The packaging is good and similar to Kotobukiya, but the plastic is thin and flimsy,
but that is fine as it does the job

However, there was a sinister event waiting for me around the corner
Wha... I just opened this, where are the whiskers!
OH NOEZ, my product is DEFECTIVE!

Much sadness thus henceforth ensued. I'm just kidding. I love all my figures unconditionally. Now, if I had dropped the figure and broke it, then I would be crying.
Yes, I checked the box. Yes, I checked it again it is not there.
I contacted amiami to see what they know but they are probably still sleeping at this hour.

So let's talk about the quality of this figure. Bottom line: Good but could have been excellent. You see, What PLUM tried to do is make something modern but very affordable at the same time. What I love about this figure is that the hat is magnetic! I have always advocated that Figmas should have magnetic accessories. Hats, scarfs, whatever. I even thought about patenting my own figure magnetic system, wouldn't that be cool! But alas, reality states that adding a magnet increases costs and that is not good with the modern exchange rates.

The figure has been glued together. You cannot separate her at the waist as is common with most figures. Also, her little bag has been glued to the skirt. Why did they do this? Probably because it is cheap, but they should have used more magnets! The paint job is good and the pvc material is decent. But the other big issue with this figure is the scale. This is marked as 1/7 which is true compared to other figures, but not so if you compare Konomi's size to other To heart 2 figures. Konomi is supposed to small and petite. PLUM's magic user is a little thick. I would have preferred it a bit smaller and thinner or maybe list the scale as 1/6th.
Overall, I am pleased with the figure but I would like PLUM to take more care in production. As with all new companies sometimes you have to work out the bugs. I too have received defective Figmas when Good smile first started making them. Quality control is a standard you strive to live up to, not something to check off on a list.