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Title:
Meiya Mitsurugi from Muv-Luv Alternative (Volks X-brand Version) (NSFW)

written on July 24, 2010 by Tier

This entry was posted in Figure Review and tagged 1/6 scale, bodysuit, Figures, hentai, meiya mitsurugi, Review, volks, x-brand.
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Description:

Meiya Mitsurugi from Muv-Luv Alternative (Volks X-brand Version) (NSFW)

Twain once said that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. If he’d lived long enough to collect pervy girly figures, he’d have explicitly included scale sizes in that list, too.

Despite knowing almost nothing about the Muv-Luv universe, I’m a big fan of the character designs – particularly the piloting suits, which I regard as being the coolest in all of anime culture. Yes, cooler than the Evangelion plugsuits, which rank second in my esteem. Meiya seems to be the poster girl for the Alternative franchise, and she’s been given love from several manufacturers. Perhaps the most amatory has been Volks, who’ve done a whole series of mecha, model kits, and prepainted figures of Meiya and the other Muv-Luv characters. This particular figure falls into that last category.

Meiya was crafted by Chorosuke, who is probably Volks’s best-known sculptor. This figure is quite old; the box says 2003 on it. It’s part of Volks’s X-brand series of figures, which I think is the classification they used for explicit model kits. It doesn’t seem like they are collaborating much with age-soft now, as I haven’t seen any Volks kits of the Total Eclipse characters.

The box says this is a 1/6 scale figure, which is a blatant lie. A check with a tape measure indicates that she’d be around 19 centimeters tall standing straight up, which puts her closer to 1/8 scale, except she has relatively realistic proportions for an anime-type character, making her appear even smaller than that. So in the end, she’s closer to 1/9 scale. I have no idea how they screwed up the math that badly; multiplication really is not that difficult. They even make devices that will do it for you if it’s too complicated to do by hand.

Compounding my annoyance with the misstated scale is her paint job, which is very, very rough. Furthermore, her skin has a noticeable yellowish cast which makes her look ill – fortunately for my pictures, my camera’s auto white balance setting does a real nice job of correcting for it. Admittedly, that comes at the expense of authenticity, but I doubt many people will be crazy enough to procure this figure, being that you’ll have to go through Yahoo Japan or some other such Japan-based supplier to do so. I paid a bunch of money for Meiya on YJA, so to receive a double whammy of small size and sloppy paint is very disappointing.

Oh, and there was one other problem, which I guess is also a paint problem – or rather, a lack of paint. For some reason, Volks didn’t bother painting her nipples.

Now this sort of thing is untenable. There’s no reasonable explanation for this decision, being that her nipples are still sculpted and aren’t likely to be mistaken for anything else. Being unwilling to accept this failure, I took out my paint and painted them in. Now, I’m completely clueless about model painting and so getting the right color was more difficult than I expected. I rolled with a light brown color at first, being that that’s what real human nipples look like, except it looks kinda funny on an anime character. So I wiped the paint off and mixed together some sort of pink color, which looks a little better. It doesn’t look natural in the least, but I guess it looks more anime-esque. I guess I learned how difficult it is to paint nipples on a little anime figure today.

After all that, though, I will say that I like this figure’s pose a lot. She’s supported only by the toes of one foot, giving her a very striking presence. Chorosuke has done a nice job giving her a very pretty face that’s somewhere between anime-style and realistic.

And of course, there are the more perverted charms of this figure, such as the torn bodysuit and the chained-up wrists. Her sword and scabbard come in a single piece along with a chain to tie them up to her wrists. Peculiarly, there’s some scribbling on her backside, and I’m not sure what it’s supposed to represent.

Meiya’s been on my shelf for a few months since I had planned to rip her when I wrote her review, and I don’t derive much joy in bashing a figure. However, looking at her now, I find myself liking her a lot more today than I did yesterday. Okay, I’ll admit, her having painted nipples does a lot to raise my opinion of her; maybe it’s a silly reason to like her more, but that’s the way it is. Her size is still disappointing, and the expense incurred to procure her still stings a bit, but that money is long gone, and at this point I suppose it’s better to take her for what she is rather than what she should be. So for what she is – a cute mecha pilot in a tight, torn suit with her wrists chained up – she’s pretty cool.
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34 Responses to Meiya Mitsurugi from Muv-Luv Alternative (Volks X-brand Version) (NSFW)
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Chag says:
July 25, 2010 at 12:56 AM
Another week, another larva-less post. Oh Tier, you are such a tease.

For an ancient figure, the pose on this thing is pretty freaking nuts, isn’t it? Is all of her weight resting on that peg on her toe? Doesn’t this look like a recipe for disaster? I’m curious: what’s the peg made of, and does the figure feel secure on the base? Man, I am just full of questions this week, aren’t I?

Nice job on the nipples, by the way. Home-made tentacles, home-made Japanese doors, home-made S&M equipment, now home-made nipples — you ought to have your own figure-collecting handyman show.

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Tier says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:43 AM
I will admit that pictures of it do exist.

Yeah, I knew it was an old figure but I didn’t think it was quite that old. It does indeed look precarious but she’s balanced pretty well because her base (the mecha hand) is very dense. It still looks really weird how she’s extended so far in front of it, though. Gee, you know, I’m not sure what the peg is made of; it might be made of metal. I tried to tug her loose while I was taking pictures but I didn’t want to mess around with her too much, since she was originally a model kit and feels a bit fragile.

I ought to become the MacGyver of the figure collecting community, or maybe Bob Ross … we’ll just put this happy little spreader bar here. Don’t know where it goes, don’t really care … in our world, everything is happy. Now you can take this cat o’ nine tails, go over to your sub, and just beat the devil out of it.

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Fabienne says:
July 25, 2010 at 1:32 PM
the body looks nice and the suit of her looks also good, Im a fan of fancy looking boots.
btw the nipple paintjob looks like the work of a pro,good job, without colored ones it would look a bit wrong I think ;D
her face expression seems a bit arrogant to me with her spiky nose.

I love your setting for this shooting, the chains and the blue scifi colored background are very fitting.
well the setting looks cool in most of your shootings but I wanted too mention that,too 😉

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BioToxic says:
July 25, 2010 at 4:51 PM
Her paint job looks quite jagged; at least round her hair and face. Although her boots look fantastic and her suit looks appealing.

With that daring pose gravity will be having a few words I imagine.

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Tier says:
July 25, 2010 at 11:06 PM
>> Fabienne
Yeah, I like those boots XD Kinda remind me of ski boots. I wonder how you drive a big giant mecha while wearing those. Chorosuke did a very nice job sculpting the tread and protrusions on the soles.

Thanks XD The figure looked very strange with pale yellow nipples.

That’s the look I was going for … I’m trying to get away from the all-black background that I’ve used in the past. I’m glad that it came out okay XD

>> BioToxic
Yeah, around her face, hair, her outfit … pretty much everywhere. I guess it must’ve been painted years ago, but it’s still a little strange because the two Sengoku Rance figures I’ve got are exceptionally nice as far as paint and overall workmanship go. Maybe they had the interns doing the paint on their smaller figures or something.

Gravity does not suffer any lawbreakers, but fortunately she seems to be balanced all right so far. I like the poses that Volks picked for this one and for their 1/4 scale Meiya figure, I wish more sculpts would feature dynamic poses like those.

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Ashlotte says:
July 26, 2010 at 10:00 AM
The thing that I love so much about Muv-Luv suits is they have a nice balance between a heavy armor mecha sorta feel in areas like the boots and shoulders combined seamlessly with the dead sexy skin tightness in other areas instead of just being basically a body suit like the ones in Eva.

Ah anyway good looking kit from Volks although she has that “Looks absolutely nothing like the characters face” problem that all their old kits had, but I know you don’t give a damn about that! :p

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gundamjehutykai says:
July 26, 2010 at 11:56 AM
Easiest way I’ve found to paint nipples is to paint them them in a light pink and then go over with a very thin layer of whatever skintone you’re using. It helps to blend the nipple in while still making them noticeable. At least that was what I thought when I did my 1 GK which required me to do them up.

Anyway, isn’t it time you went off and did, I dunno, a whole kit now? you no longer have the “I can’t paint” BS answer anymore!

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Tier says:
July 26, 2010 at 5:21 PM
>> Ashlotte
Yeah, I always liked that mecha girl fashion that they bring. Not to mention the transparency of the suits … okay, I will mention that, because it’s important. It’s an awesome fashion decision and one of the things that makes the suit design so great. The Evangelion people kinda tried to do that with the test suits but I think they failed hardcore.

I do not! When I assess a figure, I’m looking for quality workmanship, an interesting sculpt, an attractive design, and a good measure of sluttiness, but fidelity to the original character design is not something I put a high priority on.

>> gundamjehutykai
That sounds pretty good, one of my biggest worries was blending it in so that it didn’t look real bad. It didn’t help that the sculpt has some lining that makes the nipple stand out from the breast. I will have to keep that in mind because there’s not really a great deal of documentation on how to paint nipples on an anime figure.

It probably is! I keep meaning to buy an airbrush so that I can try one out … I guess I could start off trying brushes, but I’m really bad at blending in the brush strokes. It’s not too bad if I’m painting a big slab of wood or posterboard but I bet it wouldn’t look very good on a figure kit.

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super rats says:
July 27, 2010 at 12:19 AM
I usually let the camera adjust for color too and auto adjust in photoshop elements, so pictures are generally less yellow than figures are in general. I then tweak from there, generally pushing things warm instead of neutral or cold. Besides, most people don’t calibrate their monitors anyway, so color fidelity isn’t that important since most monitors aren’t setup to accurately reproduce colors anyway. Stuff that looks warm and saturated on my home monitor (which I do calibrate) looks washed out on my work monitor. Stuff on my laptop looks cold. Oddly, my phone comes closest to my calibrated home monitor.

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softz says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:48 AM
Oh man… I didn’t know Volks’ have such quality in their history. In fact, after seeing your gigantic Ueshigi Kenshin, I got pretty impressed with Volks. But, like you said, the paint-job is real bad. I guess probably technology wasn’t as advanced back then ?! *LOL*

However, she still looks pretty striking in the non-close-up photos, where the jagged paints were not clearly visible. It’d be a heart-breaking scene to see you ripping her. *LOL* But, seriously, did you ever rip/bash any?

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Tier says:
July 27, 2010 at 2:14 PM
>> super rats
I usually do something similar, unless I’ve going for a particular effect, and then I’ll switch to shade or tungsten (or 2500K) white balance. I really wish I’d started shooting in RAW format earlier; I didn’t start doing so until just a few weeks ago, mainly because I have a strong distrust of software bundled with hardware. Canon’s DPP software is actually really nice, though, particularly for white balance adjustments. There are a ton of shoots I’ve done (Mio Akiyama’s in particular) where I screwed up the white balance setting and the software could have saved the photos.

I probably ought to calibrate my monitor since, as you say, I’ve never done so. My monitor has a very unpleasant green tint that I’ve never been able to figure out or remove through its color adjustment menu, and I’m sure that I overcompensate for it by bumping up red and magenta values too much during post-processing.

>> softz
Yeah, Volks has been wildly inconsistent in my experience. Kenshin is awesome. Senhime is awesome. Metatron is not that great. Meiya is not that great, either. I don’t really get it, so the only explanation I can think of is that they put their best painters on the Sengoku Rance figures.

I think the closest I’ve come might’ve been on Wind Goddess Rafale, and if I re-wrote that review I’d probably rip her just because she’s leaning over very badly. But I don’t really ever tear into my figures since if I paid money for them, I saw something in them that I liked. Now if I were getting figures for free, I’d review more negatively. Especially if someone were giving me nendoroids.

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VF says:
July 27, 2010 at 3:08 PM
Interesting sculpt, but yeah, as you’ve said the paint job isn’t the best. Really looks rough in your close-ups, and is her ass supposed to be some sort of translucent material? It’s skin coloured, but there are wrinkles, so it looks kind of weird to me.

I really like what you do with the ambient lighting and backgrounds lately, makes the photos more lively indeed! =)

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super rats says:
July 27, 2010 at 4:02 PM
Trying to visually calibrate a monitor takes far too long and inaccurate since your brain begins to compensate your color perception as you do it. I have a Pantone Huey to calibrate my monitor. It was about 60 USD when I bought it four years ago. For the enthusiast, that’s about as exacting as you need. Basically, if it looks good on your monitor, it’s about as good as you can do since you can’t control other people’s monitors or even know how much color they’re actually capable of displaying.

I don’t shoot RAW just because it’s a pain.

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Tier says:
July 27, 2010 at 8:07 PM
>> VF
Yeah, the Muv-Luv Alternative girls prepare for warfare by dressing in shiny see-through suits. It’s pretty cool. Here’s a picture from the game which shows that.

>> super_rats
I might have to look into that, since spending hundreds of dollars on camera equipment (and figures) and hours of time shooting and processing photos is silly if my display isn’t accurate. It looks like it’s not much more expensive these days, too.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that it takes me longer to process photos now, having to check white balance and then convert to TIFF before processing. It wouldn’t have even been worthwhile for me to do on my old computer, since it had neither the hard disk space or processing power to handle RAW files, but I’m very happy with the flexibility it gives me now, since white balance is one of the things I’ve often screwed up on in the past.

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Tommy says:
July 28, 2010 at 12:36 AM
I’m a big fan of the character designs – particularly the piloting suits, which I regard as being the coolest in all of anime culture.

Really? I can’t really tell because I can’t see much of it. 😛

She looks like she’s in rough shape. I guess you can’t expect too much if she indeed is a 2003 release.

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Tier says:
July 28, 2010 at 2:01 PM
Yeah, it’s in pretty bad shape, isn’t it? XD She’ll probably have to hit up the uniform supply store after she gets herself loose.

Sculpt still looks pretty cool seven years later, but it’s pretty amazing how far figure manufacturing processes have come in a relatively short of period of time. Admittedly, I guess she’s hand-painted, but even so you can see how the better figure makers have made a pretty strong commitment to quality control in newer figures.

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Tommy says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:17 AM
I agree. I would be pissed off if the paint on my $150 purchase looked like this nowadays.

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Tier says:
July 29, 2010 at 10:56 PM
Man, I wish this thing only cost me one-fitty.

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The Endless General says:
September 10, 2010 at 9:08 PM
The only things I picture when I think of Muv-Luv are of course the piloting suits, and that scene where Marimo gets her head bitten off. I can honestly say that was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen animated. Unfortunately, like a bad accident, I couldn’t look away. Ugh, I can still see it now.

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Tier says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:43 PM
That was a freaky scene, though I’ve only scene the still CGs. I recall that it caused a ruckus in the eroge scene back when Muv-Luv Alternative came out. Hmm, now that you mention this, I feel compelled to seek this out. I will watch this now.

Hmm, that looked tasty! Yep, pretty freaky. I’m not a big guro fan myself. I recall watching one of the Urotsukidoji episodes and I was liking this one tentacle scene until the girl just blew up with her guts spraying out and her head flying off in some random direction. After that I was like, “That sorta ruined the mood right there.”

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The Endless General says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:53 PM
I just don’t know how she didn’t see it coming. I mean, something like that probably wouldn’t just silently descend upon you without a sound or anything. I can understand the reaction fans must have had; seeing a beloved character meet a sudden, horrific demise. I’m not a huge guro fan either; I remember that scene in Rin after she got her sternum blown apart…….I was kinda glad they didn’t completely show her, uh, recovering lol.

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The Endless General says:
September 10, 2010 at 11:53 PM
Do you know if anyone has translated any of the Muv-Luv games? It seems like it’d be entertaining to play.

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Tier says:
September 11, 2010 at 12:15 AM
Yeah, watching it unfold, it seemed like it came way the heck out of left field. It seemed like the director was going solely for shock value or something. I don’t mind unexpected surprises and tragedy in drama but this seemed kinda gratuitous. It kinda reminds me of the beef I have with the guys who wrote the New X-Men comic book a few years back.

Oddly, it seems like a lot of characters that I like in recent series have been suffering unfortunate and unexpected deaths. Even in hentai. It’s kinda disconcerting.

Rin is Mnemosyne? I still gotta get around to watching that, I’ve got the DVD in the pile someplace. I did get to see Rin’s piercing session (and the aftermath) though … man, that was hot. Now that you say that, I think I’d like to see how she got regrown or put back together XD

Edit: much as I like padding this site’s comment count I’ll just combine these responses. Amaterasu Translations has done translations for Muv-Luv Unlimited and Extra and plan to do Alternative. I haven’t tried them out myself, though.

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The Endless General says:
September 11, 2010 at 12:29 AM
The piercing session is still my favorite scene in that series lol. It defines awesome. For being immortal, Rin sure does get her ass kicked a lot lol.

I’ve noticed the trend in a lot of the stuff I follow too. I’m ready to give up on Claymore, since all of my favorite characters have already been killed; usually in really anticlimactic ways.

They really should’ve elaborated on how Marimo didn’t notice that BETA. It’s like they’re having a tender moment one minute (I’m guessing based on the music as I’m also Japanese illiterate), and the next the BETA’s mid-snack.

Tier says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:34 AM
Yeah, Claymore was one such series. So was Ga-rei Zero, even this hentai flick called Black Widow had that problem. I’m playing through Zanjibaru now to determine whether all the characters die at the end or not. I will be disappointed if they do (although I have some reason to think that they don’t).

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The Endless General says:
September 11, 2010 at 6:09 AM
Haha, I remember Black Widow. That dude that watched all of these horrible things happen to his friends whilst doing nothing…….what a tool. I would expect the unexpected with Zanjibaru; they’ll probably die lol. I really should watch Rin again; I haven’t seen it in months.

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Tier says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:11 PM
Yeah, that was all kindsa WTF. Man that larva scene was awesome though. I wish that it were longer. Like, the whole anime should’ve been about that scene.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that happened, but I do have a completed game savefile and it appears that one of the cutscenes is a good ending. Though who knows, maybe a bad ending gets dropped in right after that.

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The Endless General says:
September 11, 2010 at 11:15 AM
suddenly feel very compelled to collect Muv-Luv figures. Fancy that.

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Tier says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:11 PM
Most curious! I’ve got one more in the review queue, though it’s actually one I’ve covered before so it’s nothing new.

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The Endless General says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:56 PM
I wish they had one of Marimo, that’d be cool.

I do remember that larva scene quite well; definitely the stand out of the whole thing lol.

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Tier says:
September 12, 2010 at 1:50 AM
We need more of that sorta stuff. Well, sorta … I’ll be honest, in real life, things like worms and grubs freak the hell out of me. It’s sorta peculiar that I enjoyed that scene in Black Widow, but I found Inyouchuu Shoku kinda hard to watch.

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Aya says:
August 30, 2012 at 4:55 AM
I currently started working on this Garage kit and I have to admit, she is very, very small and all the little details are hard to paint. Thanks for the photos, they are a nice refference for me. Good Pics of this GK are hard to find, because she is very old and I was lucky because one of my friends gave her to me, to do the paintjob.

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Tier says:
August 30, 2012 at 4:52 PM
You are welcome! I am glad they are helpful. Yeah, sometimes I’ll remember garage kits from the past that I really liked and I’ll look around for photos and I won’t be able to find any. It doesn’t help that I think Volks took down a lot of pages for some of their older kits (I think their Sengoku Rance garage kits are no longer visible on their website, although maybe they just moved the pages).

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Aya says:
August 31, 2012 at 8:45 AM
Maybe this is helpful for you:

myanimeshelf.com –>figurines database

There you can find tons of Pics, from old Garagekits and figures too.
I cant see it on your pictures, but Meiyas Hair is made of clearparts.Does it show on your figure?
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