A 1/8 scale PVC Taiga has spent the past couple of months on my desk and I didn’t mind it at all. The highlights of the figure are a seated pose, the chair, and the sort of a china dress. In the real world, the china dress never looks as good as it does on anime characters or in movies. It’s such a form fitting garment that it can be unforgiving. Anime characters can be impossibly skinny and proportioned to have the long slender legs needed to work the dress. That’s the beauty of animated girls and their deformities. Nevermind Taiga is supposed to be a shrimp.
Wave produced this figure (Abira sculpted it). Overall I like it, since Taiga looks a lot less bothersome than other Taiga figures I’ve seen, but I have a gripe with the base. It’s awful ugly. I’m tempted to cut off the peg on Taiga’s extended foot that gets planted into the base so that her foot would rest flush with the ground. That way Taiga could sit on the chair and I could throw away the ugly base. The chair has some seriously thin legs though, so I wonder if they might bow if required to hold her weight. As it is now, the peg actually supports all her weight and she barely even touches the chair. The chair bears none of the weight. There might be some stability issues using the chair as the primary support with such a narrow footprint, but I don’t plan to do P90X in my second floor apartment anytime soon. Anyway, thought the figure was pretty enough to do a quick set.
She has two hair configurations, twin-tails or no tails. Even though I am a twin-tails fan in general, I think the no tails look runs less interference on the main features of the figure. At this point, I don’t remember which is the default and which is the alternate setting, but she sported the no tail look while she was on desk duty.
I really should continue with Toradora. I saw the first episode. Not really a huge fan of Taiga yet, the cute and compact girl archetype doesn’t appeal to me that much and yuck, her apartment was freaking gross, not to mention that her personality hasn’t really come out in that one episode. I’m actually more interested in finding out what Ryuji is all about. However, I expect that since he’s a male lead in an anime, I shouldn’t expect him to be an interesting character in the long run.
Actually, Ryuuji’s character development is much more interesting than Taiga’s. I got a bit disappointed with Taiga’s, but that’s probably because I don’t like tsunderes all that much.
As for the figure, I never liked it all that much. It’s beautifully sculpted, but a bit too vertical for my tastes. Or perhaps it’s that long chair that creeps me out. I’ll never know.
Ah that’s cool that they actually do something with Ryuji’s character. I do like tsundere characters, they don’t bother me like they seem to for a number of people. Taiga’s never been a character design that I particularly like, just the expression, the dress, and the chair just called to me when I saw it.
Quite a nice figure. I like the overall idea and the sculpt brings it to life. I can’t believe how detailed they were with Taiga, showing the depressions of the musculature of her shoulder blades and back when you’re extending your arms far front like that.
The chair itself is designed where I want a full scale one for my house. It would look nice by the bar counter in the kitchen.
I know the chair is pretty cool. The thing that’s kind of interesting too is the chair’s proportions being narrow and stretched out to match Taiga. I have seen chairs like that, so it’s not odd to have a stretched out chair, just saying it matches the figure and costume, which is why the base annoys me since the rest of it is so nice.
It’s a beautiful figure in a beautiful settings. I’m amazed at the detail they put into her. Not just her face, but the skin and the body itself.
Oh yeah, when I noticed the detail on her back, I just had to do a heavy shadow shot to bring those details out.
I really didn’t like Taiga after watching a couple of episodes. She really got on my nerves, I felt there was nothing to like about her, she reminded me a lot of Louise in that respect. It was the wrong mix of tsundere I think. Shana had a good mix if we stick to the same voice actor.
That said, she’s definitely cute when she’s done up right. This figure never fails to catch my eye, likely the long legs and china dress but the whole thing seems to work so well. Ignoring the base of course.
Why do figure manufacturers make such horrible bases 95% of the time? They pick an ugly colour and it ruins so much, just make it clear or design something interesting like the upcoming Houmei or Volks’ Horo.
We’re on the same page there for all three characters. I haven’t given Taiga a fair shake though with just one episode, but her design isn’t nearly as appealing as Shana’s, which for some reason sparked my imagination mainly because of the flame haze.
Houmei, the Alter version? Alter’s figure makes her seem older (and so somewhat a different character) than Tony’s illustrations suggest, but I am looking forward to it. One of the ones I was most anticipating.
Yes, sorry, Alter’s Houmei. I suppose she does look older but I don’t actually see that as a problem, I found her to look stunning in that figure. Price tag though ooouch.
I think Taiga’s more likeable than Louise if that says anything for you. But I still consider both to be ‘bitchdere’.
Ah! I had totally forgotten about this figure. I was a bit sad about not getting her due to her exclusive nature but I can’t help but be disappointed. I don’t find her to be a bad figure but definitely not the price I would have paid to get her. Still I like how her slim body makes that dress work.
As far as Toradora itself, watch it. It’s not just a random harem story with a tsundere lead. In fact I don’t find Taiga to be a tsundere at all, plus Toradora is one of those nice shows where the main cast gets some nice character development.
Lovely figure~ There haven’t been many good figures of Taiga even after all these years…this is the best I’ve seen =D I personally think she’s one of the most well written tsundere characters – a prime example of the trope done right.
It’s good to see some people chime in that Taiga is a good character.
Throughout the whole Anime I never really got warm with Taiga and even in the End I didnt really like her.I was really impressed with Amis Character Development though and overall ToraDora is definately one of the better Shows out there.
The Chair does indeed look pretty troublesome and from my guess id say it wont be able to hold her weight. ^^;
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