Figure: Shana

• Character: Shana
• Series: Shakugan no Shana
• Sculpted by Tsukuru Shirahige
• 1/8 scale figure produced by Kotobukiya
• Slideshow (12 images)

1024×768, 1600×1200

Tsukuru Shirahige’s sculpt of Shana has her kicking back and snacking on melon-pan. The 1/8 scale figure from Kotobukiya comes with a clear yellow plastic base, which I forgot to take a picture of, but it really doesn’t take too much to imagine a clear plastic disc, so you’re not missing too much by not seeing it here. One of the things I like about a figure in a sitting pose is that they usually don’t need to be attached to the base that comes with it, so there’s flexibility when it comes to displaying it. There was this fuzzy rug I’ve been wanting to use for a while from a Barbie furniture set that I got as a cheap closeout item from WalMart, so now it’s Shana’s display base instead of the boring yellow disc that came with her. The lounge chair, the table, the magazines, and the soda can are also Barbie furniture pieces. Shana does come with a spare melon-pan, however.

768×1024, 1200×1600

My baseline for Shana are the character designs from Noizi Ito’s GU-RE-N artbook, rather than the animation or interior manga artwork. One of the things I like about Shana in Ito’s illustrations is she’s got sass. She smoulders while still being cute. Tsukuru Shirahige’s sculpt has more cute and a lot less smoulder and sass, so for me the attitude of the character is a little off. Where’s the scowl?

Ito draws Shana with long tendrils of hair that feel like flames whiping around when the wind blows. The sculpt does capture her hair nicely and was one of the reasons I bought the figure. The physical proportions of her body seem about right for the character design, so save for the lack of sass, it seems to be a good likeness.

768×1024, 1200×1600

768×1024, 1200×1600

The level of sculpted detail in her clothing is just good enough to keep it from feeling plain, maybe a little undefined, and there’s mold lines all over her blouse, bow, skirt, and even the melon-pan. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non-illustrated melon-pan. What that means, I have no idea. Her shoes look pretty good though.

1024×768, 1600×1200

Like the other Kotobukiya figures I have, Shana has a modest number of nits in her paint, a lot of them in her hair, though I wonder if that’s more of an issue with the molding and the composition of the PVC they use. The clothing just doesn’t feel like it got a lot of attention, like they did enough with it so that it didn’t look bad, but didn’t go that extra step to make her outfit a highlight.

Overall a good figure and pretty much what I expected out of Kotobukiya. The good points are the overall cute factor and that she’s not attached to her base so if you want you are able to customize a base, so to speak. In spite of the paint imperfections, Shana’s hair on this figure looks pretty cool. It looses a point or two for the relaxed facial expression and the clothing fold physics are just passable.

1024×768, 1600×1200