Yuki Nagato - Live Alive, The Another Side - SEGA PVC Figure

In the last couple of months, I started to gain an interest in anime figures, although before this figure I only had bought one such figure; the Mikuru Asahina gashapon figure. I had briefly toyed with the idea years ago, and I had bought an unpainted resin figure kit of Rei Ayanami from the Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96) anime. This figure remains, to this day, unpainted and unassembled!

Anyway, enough of that old figure... this package arrived from Japan a few weeks back...

Inside the package was this figure! A pre-painted figure that barely requires any skill to assemble; no glue, and no paint. Just a minute or two needed to put together by slotting a few parts into their respective slots.

In recent weeks, I've been going through a phase of watching the anime of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006), hence my previous review of the Mikuru Asahina gashapon figure, and I've been enjoying watching it so much, that I decided to go ahead and buy another figure; the Yuki Nagato Live Alive PVC prize figure from SEGA.



I actually received this figure almost a month ago, but didn't open it until recently. I wanted to do a video of the unboxing and also write a review. Now, finally I have been able to review it; I would have done it a lot sooner, but much of my time since it arrived has been taken by trying to learn a few video and sound editing basics, in order to achieve this. Hopefully my skills in this area will improve with time and practice, but anyway, here's my first attempt.



For those of you who haven't seen the anime, Yuki Nagato is an alien being; an artificial humanoid created and sent by the Data Integration Thought Entity, an alien entity that supervises our galaxy. She was stationed at North High to observe Haruhi Suzumiya, who unknown to herself, can change and manipulate reality. Two other characters are sent there to watch over her too; Mikuru Asahina, a time-traveller from the future, and Itsuki Koizumi, an esper.

Nagato has many special abilities, such as the power to control and manipulate her surroundings, freeze time and many others.

Review

This is a SegaPrize figure and was produced in 2009. As Yuki Nagato is an alien being who shows little emotion and has a monotone voice, this figure brilliantly illustrates this with quite an expressionless face! You may, or may not think this is a good thing.

It's a well sculpted piece, with a very good likeness to the character in the anime, although this figure looks as though she's a little taller. It also has the subtitle "Live Alive", however in the episode of the same name, Yuki Nagato is playing guitar, but is not actually wearing this outfit. In fact, she is wearing a long cloak over her school uniform, and a witch's hat. Haruhi Suzumiya wears an outfit similar to this though, albeit a brown version.

The figure itself stands at approximately 18.5cm (about 7¼ inches), including the base. It's pretty straightforward to assemble, although the guitar cable can be a little fiddly to insert. Her left foot fits snugly into the base, but her right foot is quite loose.

The moulding of the figure is generally good; a few mould lines can be seen, but they're not too visible. For example you can see them here on the legs, arms and both armbands.

Also, where the front and back parts of her hair are attached, the line that separates them can be seen quite clearly if looking from above. However, if looking from most other angles, it's not as visible, so really, in my opinion, this is not a big problem.

Guitar fans will notice that Nagato's guitar is based on the Gibson SG; the level of detail is good, but not perfect. There is some nice detail located on the guitar, including the frets along the guitar neck, the volume and tone controls, bridge, pickups, scratchplate and headstock. There are, however, no strings, which isn't a problem as the overall effect is still really nice. There is, however, a join where the guitar neck meets the guitar body, which isn't quite straight, and it's quite visible if you stop to inspect it.

You can also see that in her right hand, is a plectrum. The paintwork here is okay, but slightly impinges on the hand, though you have to look quite closely to see this.

The pose isn't particularly exciting, but I still think she looks pretty cool. Again, she doesn't move a great deal while playing guitar in the anime, so the pose is quite apt.

Apart from these small faults, I still think it's a nice figure; Yuki Nagato looks great with that guitar slung around her neck; there is some really nice detailing and the bunny costume is nice too.

If you haven't seen the Live Alive episode of the anime, or just fancy watching it again, take a look below :)
The concert performance starts at 09:58.




All Photos by AZNPopCulture

Music: Modern Rock Boy by Jason Shaw (http://audionautix.com/)

Licensed under Creative Commons License 3.0