After getting my hands on an Evil Witch Nagato Figma, I was curious to see what Revoltech had to answer with in their Fraulein series. Now let's take a look at what the Revoltech Fraulein Nagato has to offer.

Like other Revoltech Frauleins, Nagato comes in a compact oblong box that crams everything into one small box, unlike the Figma Nagato, which actually came with an expanded version of the standard Figma boxes to accommodate the increased number of accessories. Like the Evil Witch Nagato Figma, the Revoltech Fraulein Nagato also comes with more accessories than most other Frauleins.

Nagato comes with 11 extra hands, the guitar she used in the cultural festival, the hat, the sign used in Haruhi's movie a pair of wabaki, a book, an extra face, the standard revoltech stand and the evil witch's magic stick. I liked the 11 extra hands, which were really fun to use for creating all sorts of different poses with an otherwise emotionless Nagato.

Some of the improvements I must note about the Fraulein over the Revoltech is the way the guitar belt attaches to the guitar. Little pieces of rubber terminate the belt, and you insert them into the guitar, unlike the Figma's guitar where the strap is actually fitted over notches attached over the guitar. This makes them easy to break, and could easily pull off the notches on the guitar too, despite being more realistic, whereas on the Fraulein's guitar, the belt will simply pop off.

Now, on to the figure itself. One of the first things I noticed about the Fraulein is that, she doesn't quite look like Nagato. I had a slight problem with the eyes being too far apart. Another thing was the fact that the joints at the elbows were quite angular. This made the arms look really ugly when they were to a highly acute angle. Apart from that, Nagato feels a bit more busty that she really should be, but I have no complaints about that.

Apart from the shortcomings I mentioned though, the figure looks really beautifully shaped. The shape of the thighs and the lower abdomen is shaped the way most attractive girls would be shaped, adding lots of attractiveness points to this figure. The Frauleins also don't use a hole to hold the figures up, bue a clip, thus you don't get a spoiled view from the back just because of the presence of a hole in the back. This gives a very clean and very attractive look. I still do have a problem with the knee joints though. They look horrendous. Needs more work.

Thanks to Revoltech's trademark joints and their experience in making action figures, Nagato is very easy to stand up compared to the Figma Nagato. The center of gravity is also in the right spot, enabling Nagato to actually stand up straight, instead of the usual body slant we tend to need to do to balance the figmas for them to stand.

I also have a problem with Nagato's skirt. It's made of synthetic rubber that's pretty hard, and prevents Nagato from sitting up straight. This means she has to lean down a lot. The Figma's skirt is a lot softer, and is already bent upwards a bit, so it makes it easy for me to make Figma Nagato sit up properly.

One of the fun things about the Fraulein is that since the joints are not as tightly coupled as the Figma's you can pull the lower body off with relative ease (but enough to make it hard for her lower body to simply fall off after being subjected to shaking). Why would you want to remove her lower body? Well, to remove her skirt of course!

The Fraulein comes with a set of hands that are actually easy to replace, because they are designed in such away that they don't stay in so tight, and are still tight enough to bear the weight of the figure if you held it up by the hand. One of the things I am most annoyed about in Figmas is that their hands are EXTREMELY difficult to replace. The Evil Witch Nagato Figma is the worst, because her left arm has a hole that doesn't seem to be able to fit hands in. This was a source of great annoyance and almost caused me to break the hand joint of the Figma.

Here's Nagato playing the guitar. She's got a hand that has a pick just like the Figma and another hand for holding the guitar, which was obviously designed to hold the guitar better than the figma's hand. I must admit though, somehow, though I can't put my finger on why, the Fraulein Nagato doesn't look as cool as the Figma Nagato for some reason.

If you look closely in the picture, you will see yet another difference the Fraulein has compared to the Figma. The coat and hat are glossed slightly and given a bit of sparkling dust treatment. While this isn't much to shout about, I personally think its really pretty, and has the effect of giving Nagato the looks of a star. Though, it seems quite out of character for a costume haphazardly prepared by Haruhi for a makeshift movie.

This picture probably illustrates better the glossiness of the cape. I must say it looks quite good on her compared to the dull cape on Figma Nagato. One of the reasons I haven't used the other face in any of my pictures is because it is really fugly. And I mean seriously, I think Kaiyodo could do better than that. Either that or it takes quite a bit of practice to beat Max Factory at their l33t face making skillz.

Ah. She looks cooler from this angle. I must listen to her Live Alive music again...

The Fraulein also comes with Shamisen. The difference of this Shamisen from the figma's Shamisen is that this Shamisen is meant to grab on to Nagato's cape. The makers of Fraulein have ingeniously found a very nice and very clean way of doing this without having to make fugly holes and protruding parts on the cape.

Fear the Evil Witch! We need the Mi-Mi-Mikuru Beam!

Another cool thing about the Fraulein Nagato is that it wasn't as much of a nightmare to put the coat on her as it was the Figma Nagato. The Figma Nagato's coat was poorly designed at best being 2 separate pieces that you have to join together in a certain way after Nagato has partially worn it, due to the requirement of allowing the arm to go through the coat and fit into the connection hole at the back of Nagato. The Revoltech however, has got just one piece for the coat, so you just pull off the head, don it, and then push the head back on.

As I said before, the Fraulein's skirt gets in the way of making Nagato sit straight, which isn't the most desirable when she has to read a book.

The chair from the figma seems too small too. I wonder why they didn't include a chair with the Fraulein. I'm sure you could cram an extra piece of furniture into that box.

And finally, for those of you who are curious about the scale of the Fraulein Nagato to see if you can fit her into the Figma population, the answer is you can't. The Frauleins are made to roughly a 1/10 scale, while figmas are made to a 1/12 scale (for Haruhi and friends) and so don't really fit in with the other figmas, not to mention most 1/12 scale accessories and dioramas won't really work.

written by astrobunny \\ action, book, comparison, evil, figma, figure, fraulein, guitar, nagato, reading, revoltech, shamisen, wabaki, witch