After opening up my Chouyusha Haruhi box, I decided also to defile my Saber Lily Figma Special Edition box that comes with the Fate Unlimited Codes game that sold out weeks after its release. Since I play with my figmas, again I felt that there was no reason to keep them all sealed up in a box.

The box did greet me with some surprises too. Printed on the cover flaps of the box are little Dark Saber and Tsun Saber icons. I find the tsun saber pretty amusing.

Another surprise was a break away from the traditional figma stand scheme which includes a hole drilled into the figma which you can insert an arm into to support the figma when it does poses that it simply cannot possibly stand up with on its own. Here you can see that they've actually copied Revoltech's little clip that holds the figure to the support arm. Frankly, this is one of things I miss in figmas.

The support hole still exists however, its the back of Saber' waist. So you have a choice of fitting the clip on to Saber, or using the standard arm pin to connect to Saber.

The figma itself is one of the most detailed figmas I've seen too. Her costume, more so than Chouyusha Haruhi, is made of many many parts. The skirt itself alone could be made of more than 10 carefully crafted pieces of plastic.

Here we can also see extensive use of some glossy paint for her armor platings. The problem with this sort of paint is that it tears off much more easily than the other sprayed paint because of its very flat profile.

From behind, you can see that the same amount of effort to make the front look good also goes to the back. Although every other figma looks pretty good from the back, the arm hole usually spoils the look of the body. Its been rectified somewhat by sailor uniform flaps that conceal it, like Shana, but I still prefer that they use clips instead.

Special mention must also be given to the very detailed engravings that go on the sword. These are so tiny simply trying to apply paint on them with normal fastmasking techniques would already prove to be quite a chore. Not to mention having to make sure that the mould embosses all those gentle curves and edges that make up Excalibur's design.

The faces that come with Saber Lily are always looking sideways. It seems the guys expect us to have the other Saber figma as well to obtain faces that make sense for a forward charge pose or something. Though, I must admit, the sideways looking faces give me the opportunity to create some interesting poses.

Excalibur fits much looser into Saber's hands than most other figma long weapons. Shana's sword was probably the worst fit into figma's hands and easily broke under pressure when two hands are used to hold the sword.

One can tell that a lot of design consideration and hard work has been put into the making of this figma. Something tells me that whenever a figma gets sold together with a PS2 game, it somehow ends up being really really good. Look at the way the light bounces off her armor and sword inscriptions. The joints on Saber Lily are very well made and hidden, and someone must have studied how the shape of a joint can affect its obviousness in a photograph to be able to pull amazing figure designs like this off.

Here's a shot of her narrow-eyed squinting face of indifference. The best way to use this is to pose the figma in a "you insignificant dog" pose.

While there aren't any hands that come with Saber Lily that can effectively hold Excalibur's scabbard, I actually managed to force a part of the scabbard into Saber's default open hands, and I found that I could do that to good effect, but I feel scared for the paint on the scabbard itself. This might be an avenue for some fanmade hands to hold the scabbard.

Finally, no review is complete without a good view of her thighs and beautiful zettais.

written by astrobunny \\ codes, excalibur, fate, figma, figure, game, lily, night, ps2, saber, sp004, special edition, stay, unlimited