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Astro Toy
Figma Ryuko Matoi

by David Cabrera,

Figma Ryuko Matoi
Maker: Good Smile
Series: Kill la Kill
Price: $50-60

After a little sidetrack into the unknown, we're back on Kill la Kill. See Nendoroid Mako previously. This time we have the figma of the main character Ryuko wearing her battle armor, the living, speaking, blood-sucking sailor uniform Senketsu.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the anime, this is a pretty daring outfit. If you have watched the anime, you eventually get kind of desensitized to it and forget that this girl is facing her progressively more powerful enemies in half of what an ordinary person would use as underwear. But that's the source of her power, and don't you forget it! Kill la Kill's justification for its gratuitous nudity is among anime's... most interesting, I want to say?

The simple black-and-blood-red color scheme is painted in well here: no slips or smudges on my figure on tough areas like the red lines or the hair highlights.

Even Senketsu looks alright! (Technically Senketsu is the outfit, I know.) His eyes, the bow of the uniform, move up and down a bit, but they feel extremely fragile-- like something very tiny inside is holding them on-- and I wouldn't poke around with them a lot, nor push very hard, for fear of snapping them off.

Being as Ryuko is practically undressed, there is little to get in the way of the movement of the figure. All the usual Figma articulation is here, including the segmented torso (right at the boobs!). As the skirt covers nothing, it's not even a factor when posing. The suspenders are made of soft plastic and they move with her body.

As a robot nerd it pains me to see the peg hole is smack on top of the “exhaust”, as it totally ruins this particular detail. It was that or ruin the line of her back, I suppose.

There is not a lot in this package aside from the base figure. You get two extra faces that cover the basic range of Ryuko emotions—frustration, smugness, shouting anger-- and two variants of her scissor blade.

The regular scissor blade has a little wiggle at the handle so that Ryuko can hold it from the inside if you choose to have her hold it that way. You have your choice between either too-loose or too-tight hands to grip the blade.

The big one (Decapitation Mode!) is practically a spear. In the show, this would always be the single strike that finished the enemy off: we wouldn't really see her swing it so much as we'd see her pose with it after her opponent was taken out.

For fun, I decided to try out how this figure would get along with the large, diecast metal scissor blade I bought for myself during the TV show's run. (This does not come with the figure.) Typically I have my 12” figures carry this, like DX Mazinger or my Real Action Heroes. The handle should be too big for the hand, but we have the “too loose” hands I described before, so it worked! Just barely. And with some stretching. This is some “don't try this at home” stuff, so don't try it at home.

The GSC store exclusive is another re-enactment of a gag from the series, a paper cutout of Mako that Ryuko can rescue from danger n' stuff. Again, you won't have this unless you preordered the figure from GSC's online store.

So there's very little in the box here-- it is the standard figma-- but it's a very well-made piece and I can't fault it for not being an extravaganza. A definite buy.

Though we paid $60 to preorder from GSC and get the extra part (that's the idea! That's why they have the online store at all!), you would certainly pay less looking for this figure now, probably the usual $50.


When he isn't killing time on fighting games and mahjong, David Cabrera makes moe 4-panel comics about videogames at Kawaiikochan. You can follow him on Twitter @sasuraiger.


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