Okay, so about the prize that I won from the beNippon prize draw, I came home from work today and Haruhi and Tsuruya were already busying themselves with cutting the duct tape open. I gotta tell the mailman to put the stuff in a hard to reach place next time.

Mmmmm... Nicely packaged as always from beNippon. One of those things I love about these online stores is that they put so much effort into ensuring the box is actually in perfect condition when it gets to you. However, beNippon seems to go the extra mile by placing pieces of cardboard around the boxes and taping a decent layer of bubble wrap around the box itself, and finishing off with a decent sized newspaper buffer to safeguard againts boxdropping.

And the box is nicely wrapped in gladwrap too to waterproof it too, just like all the other figures I purchased from beNippon. Very nice. This Kureha figure is based off the Shining Wind PS2 game, so it was pretty nice to see Tony Taka's art on the box itself. I think this is one of the better figures I've seen that's not from Max Factory or Good Smile Company. If Kotobukiya keeps this up, they'll make for some serious competition.

Alright, now the packaging is all good and all but let's have a look at the real thing, since that's the exciting part. After opening the figure I was actually pretty surprised at how good looking it was. Like, the way the clothes were fluttering around and her cute little girlish pose suddenly gave me a certain idea for something.

First off, here's a nice big long exposure photo to burn your eyes with. I've never watched Shining Wind before, nor played the PS2 game, so I don't really know much about her besides the fact that she's a damned cute chic.

If you asked me, I think this figure looks a lot better if not as good as the Max Factory Kureha I saw on Danny Choo's site. Just because she actually looks alive, and not just standing there looking for the answer to something.

I love the way her socks and shoes fold up so neatly against her lower legs too. It just keeps adding points to her Cute level. I must say that I'm actually in the mood to buy the DVDs now just so I can find out more about her.

Look at those thighs @_@

Kureha also comes with a bow that was packaged in a really tightly sealed plastic bag, which made it really difficult to open because the tape used to seal it was strong, and cutting the plastic bag incurred the risk of cutting the bow too, something I didn't really want to do at all...

Kotobukiya also managed to make her face a lot closer to the original T2 style than Max Factory did, assuming they were trying to follow the design in the PS2 as well.

And don't worry, I don't have condensed milk with me so she won't be anywhere as dirty as the one you saw before.

written by astrobunny \\ kureha, shining wind, touka