NAME: Aya Natsume
SERIES: Tenjho Tenge
SCALE/CREATOR: 1/8, by Kaiyodo
RELEASE DATE: September 2005
Oh! Great…people seem to have a serious love/hate relationship with this guy. On one hand, his stories are a convoluted mess. On the other hand, his artwork quality is through the roof. If there’s one thing Oh! Great is good at, it’s designing some pretty hot girls. Aya Natsume from Tenjho Tenge is one of his more famous girls.
PACKAGING: 2/10
No shot of the package this time around. Aya came in blister packaging, which is the devil and should not be used for PVC figures. The packaging gets one point for being packaging, and one point for the design. Can we please start using boxes for BOME’s work? Please?
SCULPT: 5/10
The younger Natsume sibling may not be as hot as her sister, but she beats a lot of other girls in the looks department.
BOME is supposedly a famed sculptor, but looking at his BOME Collection…I can’t help but wonder why. Almost all of his sculpts have mind-numbingly boring poses. His Oni-Musume set is pretty good, but most of his other Kaiyodo releases are ho-hum at best.
Kaiyodo’s quality is seriously lacking here. Aya’s riddled with seam lines. They’re on her legs, her clothes, her hands, her hair…everywhere! The seams in her hair are especially unsightly. It’s a crying shame, since the hair is otherwise very pretty to look at.
PAINT: 6/10
Things look better in the paint department, but not by much. She’s painted neatly for the most part, though it seems the painters missed a few spots on my Aya. The back of her calves are gray-ish! Also, her hands an entirely different color from the rest of her skin. It almost looks like she’s wearing gloves.
Flame Haze version.
This is the “BOME Special Paint” version of Aya. The previous release of this figure had her with her ‘manga colors’…her hair was dark brown and her skirt blue. This version is based off her ‘anime colors’. So she’s a strawberry blonde with a green skirt.
POSE: 7/10
Seriously. Why are they always white?
BOME did a good job in this department. Aya’s pose is pretty simple, but it looks great. The way her hair flows around her body as she draws her sword is eye-catching. I haven’t read/seen Tenjho Tenge, so I’m not sure if this pose is true to her character or not.
I can only assume that says TENJHO TENGE.
Hey! A base that isn’t so boring! The pink base is one reason why I like the Special Paint version better than the original (which came with a black base).
OVERALL: 6/10
Aya barely makes it to an ‘above average’ score, and that’s mainly thanks to her beautiful hair. She does seem to be pretty popular with figure collectors, though. I have a few other Kaiyodo releases, so I know they can do a good job when they want to…I can’t help but wonder why their BOME releases are always so lacking, though.
- G.K. Sil Kamina
