Review: #205
Name: Black Lotus
Brand: figma (Accel World)
Allegiance: Nega Nebulus
Year of Release: 2012 (#152)
Variations: none as of this date
PACKAGING AND CONTENTS:
Black Lotus comes in a beautiful purple box as you would expect.
The back showcases some stock images of the poses that you could do with the figure and generally makes out how awesome the figure is.
The right side shows off the main stock image and if you have a number of these figma boxes, they make for nice display pieces if you have a row of them lined up.
The left side shows off another stock image.
The front also has "Black Lotus" and "Accel World" in English as well as the figma number.
Opening up the box, the figure and parts comes in two trays.
You get the main figure itself as well as attachable parts for her attack form.
A stand is provided since Black Lotus cannot stand by herself (plus, it's your standard figma stand).
There is another piece of plastic which attaches to the stand to make it longer, for more dramatic poses.
As well as a plastic bag to store all the other pieces when not in use.
FIGURE:
Now onto the figure itself, Black Lotus is a character from the anime Accel World (which is based off the light novel of the same name).
This is the avatar of the main character Kuroyukihime and it is one of the best designs, being a sleek mecha armor.
The detailing is fantastic, it translates the anime model design so well into 3D.
The head sculpt is amazing, the use of the transparent purple plastic as the visor is a great choice.
It is very angular, something that's hard to see head on, it looks great from various angles.
The antenna are thin and made of hard plastic, which means they can be a bit fragile and can snap if you put too much unnecessary pressure on them.
If you look closely, there is also a vague resemblance of a face behind the visor. In the anime, we only ever got to see the eyes shining through so it's interesting that this showed up.
Black Lotus doesn't have any hands, instead she has these shortened blades. One again, they're made of hard plastic and the tips can snap off without you knowing it.
Her legs end in sharp points, she cannot stand on her own, relying instead on the stand. In the anime, she hovers anyway.
The stand attaches to her back via a circular peg hole. It's holds her securely, you won't need to worry about her falling off.
The only soft plastic used here is the waist skirt, the reason being is that this allows more mobility when posing her.
She stands at about 16cm tall but is very sleek.
And here she is with Silver Crow, fellow member of Nega Nebulus.
Black Lotus looks good from all angles. There isn't much paint applications purely due to the fact that the anime model did not have much either.
A major selling point of the figma line is in addition to recreating down to the finest detail the designs is the articulation.
Each figma product has many points of articulation for you to recreate some of that character's iconic poses, or create new poses. Black Lotus is no exception.
She has a fantastic range of articulation, with balljoints head, shoulders, elbows, upper torso, waist, hips and knees.
I tried to recreate some of the stock image poses and it is actually quite a bit harder than they make it appear to be.
The range of articulation is good, with no joints being restricted. The waist skirt lifts out to the sides too to accommodate any posing of the hips.
One annoying thing is that the front and back pieces of her waist skirt are detachable and they're not pegged on very tightly. Therefore, you'll often find them falling off and you having to annoying peg the back on again without ruining your pose.
The other thing is that you can also recreate the awesome iconic pose of Silver Crow carrying Black Lotus as they stay in the sky surveying the Accelerated World.
So, Black Lotus comes with all these other extra parts which allows her to turn into her attack mode. This involves her longer blades which replaces her hand.
Head with extended antenna, the transparent plastic representing the energy glow from the anime.
Legs which also extend, with transparent plastic as well.
Shoulder pads which open up, featuring air vents.
And parts of her waist skirt, also extending with transparent plastic.
You have to detach the original limbs and reattach these new ones in order to get her attack form. It's quite easy and painless except for her head. Hold her head the wrong way and pull too hard and you'll snap one of her antennas off.
The head antennas also look to be quite fragile. While her head sculpt looks cool, the antenna is quite long and can look unusual from some angles (mainly when looking at it head on).
The transparent purple plastic is used here to represent the powering up and energy flowing through her. It creates a nice effect particularly when you have a light source.
In painstaking detail to the anime model and because this is an adult collectible, not a figure to be played roughly, there are a lot of hard pointy bits. The blades themselves are extremely long and thin, which, while it looks cool, means that it's easy to be broken if she ever falls off the shelf or something else falls upon her.
She retains the full range of articulation and this is where you can get some amazing fighting poses.
The bit sticking out the back of the blades are adjustable and can swivel on its joint.
I find that as her legs are longer in this mode, it's harder to get her to stand up straight in a neutral pose as her legs reaches the base of the stand.
You can use the stand extension here to create some flying poses. Black Lotus is light enough that the stand can still hold it, but you still have to be careful as the joint can sometimes collapse under the weight at the slightly touch.
The same waist skirt pieces falling off issue is still present here.
Keen eyes will also pick out that I managed to get two right shoulder pads which sucks. Still, at least it's not very noticeable.
Since her torso has two points of articulation, this allows for more expressive poses but is also annoying when you unintentionally move it while posing, and this happens a lot.
Black Lotus looks the most badass in her attacking mode and is probably the main draw of the figure here.
OVERALL:
A fantastic figure that provides a lot of play value in terms of two modes and heaps of poseability possibilities. While she might seem fragile with the many thin hard pieces of plastic, it's not that horrible and she is simply stunning. The design is great and will please any fans of the anime because it recreated the character so faithfully in plastic form. Highly recommended if you're a fan of the character, even if the aftermarket prices are a bit high.
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Some extra photos I took which seems a waste if I don't post it up:
Thanks for your time!