Alicia Florence from Aria the Natural is a classic beauty of the blonde hair blue eyed school of alluring. She possesses an easy-going smile, a peaceful aura, and a sense of humor, timeless qualities which fiercely need to come back into style. Alicia is the third in Toy Work’s series of 1:6 scale figures of characters from the truly wonderful Aria. This series of figures from Toy Works has so far been somewhat disappointing and it was my hope that they right their course with Alicia.

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Alicia is my favorite character from Aria, which I’ve only experienced via three volumes of the manga, two artbooks, and a desk calendar. It’s so sad that the manga hasn’t done well in the USA, causing a release “hiatus,” otherwise known as cancelled. My only hope is that ADV Manga are waiting for the release of the anime here in R1-land in order to cross-promote it with the manga, but I won’t hold my breath for the anime release either. The lack of violence, sexual innuendo, or crude humor makes it a tough sell over here. Even if I did finally break down and decide to watch a fansub (hate watching stuff in a tiny window on a monitor), I doubt I’d be able to find an seed at this point.

Enough with the lament over the lack of lisenced and translated Aria and onto the figure review!

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Toy Works misses the mark with the faces on this Aria line, especially with Akari (reviewed at moemoerabu.net). They got closer to the mark with Alicia. The face is less flat and the eyes are rendered slightly better, but the straight-on likeness is still off by a bit due to the sharp angle of her jawline and a prominent nose structure. However, they did get Alicia’s personality right, which is important.

When I look at this figure of Alicia, I can feel a relaxed ocean breeze, with gulls and the sounds of water and all that stuff fuzzy seaside stuff. The Neo-Venezia wind infuses her undine uniform with life adding volume to the fabric drape and energy to the ribbons fluttering from her cap. It’s too bad I couldn’t find a 1/6 scale gondola, though the shipping would have been insane. Actually, I probably would have cried since she’s screwed onto her base and likely wouldn’t fit in the model anyway.

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The strand details of Alicia’s hair is the sculpting highlight. Because of this, the figure looks almost as great from behind. One benefit of the detail work on her hair, other than eye-candy, is how it masks the mold lines pretty effectively from many angles.

As great as her hair is sculpted, the paint lets the figure down a little. The paint debris around her hair can be seen from a couple of feet away, which puts a bump in the illusion of silky hair. There’s some nicks as well, but the number of nicks is about average for hair. The paint on the rest of the figure is clean and the shading restrained. The patterns on Alicia’s uniform are sharp and even as they should be.

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Overall Impression
It’s not a bad figure if you can overlook the likeness issues. The figure has a pleasant visual flow and keeps the character’s personality. The overall build quality is pretty good overall, though the oar she carries is pretty soft and prone to bending when kept at anything but an almost straight vertical. If you’re a big Alicia fan and buy a large quantity of figures, it’s a decent pickup, especially since there aren’t many other options. Those who are a bit more selective or are sticklers for likeness might be a little disappointed.

Product Information

• Product: Alicia Florence
• Sculptor: Shikanaru
• Maker: Toy Works
• Scale and Material: 1/6 scale PVC (large 1/6)
• Released: Late-December 2006
• List Price: 7,000 JPY
• US Release: None Announced

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