[Toy Review] Hatsune Miku Nomura Version Variant Play Arts Kai

My first toy review of the year! This is a Variant Play Arts Kai of Hatsune Miku, designed by Tetsuya Nomura. She's a VOCALOID/Japanese 3D digital diva, or something. Why do I know someone (or something) like her? Well because she's so famous that she's almost everywhere. I'm not a fan of Miku, but I like her design. I bought this action figure of hers because it's a PAK, and yeah she's cute. Welp, I already researched the basics about Hatsune Miku so let's review her figure and see what it got.

PACKAGING

[left] Front side of the box

[right] Box's back side 

As a PAK standard, she got a colorful coffin-type box. The front shows a large product shot of Hatsune Miku and lots of usual logos we see on every PAK packaging. The back of the box shows more product shots of Miku.

Front cover opened

When you open the front cover, you can see Miku and her accessories through the box's window, the back of the cover shows another product shot, some info about Miku and a commentary about the figure.

Hatsune Miku ready to party!

Packaging includes: Hatsune Miku figure, Leek vegetable, Right Gripping hand, L/R fists, Display stand (instructions on blister packaging)

THE FIGURE

She's one of my most anticipated PAK action figures. I like this toy already but I still made an unbiased review on her. The figure have great presentation. Everything looks fine but some parts looks kinda weak at first glance. 

Viewing Hatsune Miku figure on four sides.

Miku's so cute, she made me smile. I've read somewhere that Crypton Future Media Inc. gave a strict instruction on Nomura before designing Hatsune Miku. So his take on Miku is very close to the original design. The result is they just made Miku look realistic. Now she can fit in the world of Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts.

Oh-oh! Miku-chan! So kawaii!

Miku's face is based on the 3D render made by SQEX Visual Works. It's accurate, like she got out from her holo projector... but what's up with her Angelina Jolie lips? I guess this is part of Nomura's doing. Paint job is nice, eyes and lips (that looks chapped) are glossy.

Looking at the back of Miku's head

The back of her head features her two extra untied shorter hair which the original Miku has. That's consistency.

She holds the record for the longest hair in Play Arts Kai history so far.

Her cyan hair is OK. Her long pigtails doesn't look like it's in motion because of the realistic approach but it looks good on some angles. The hair is translucent, nice! I haven't seen this type of hair on a PAK toy for a long time.

Her headphones also serves as her hair clip

She's wearing this super cool headphones with mic. The hair clips on Miku's pigtails are also part of her headphones. Its microphone is soft so that I won't break so easily.

Closer look on the headphone's detail

The headphone's sculpt looks good, but they should have painted some smaller alternating white paints on the hot pink areas to make some LED lighting effect like in Miku's 3D render.

Hatsune Miku's variant outfit.
She's also wearing a cyan necktie

She's wearing her original get-up with some design touches by Nomura. Her glossy/metalic sleeveless top is detailed with seems/stitches and few rectangular pins on the left part of the chest, collar and necktie. Mini cyan ruffles are also present on the bottom parts of Miku's sleeves and skirt.

[left] The digital terminal on Miku's sleeves

[right] The sleeves have some plaid pattern and straps

Both arms have nice skin paint and have black glossy arm sleeves that goes from her bicep to her hands. Both sleeves have an inaccurate digital terminal that's not painted well, some straps and plaid patterns (by Nomura). The cyan/white parts looks fine.

The left bicep have a number 01 painted on it and her hands have colored fingernails. I didn't see any sculpt problems on all hands but some of her nails are not painted properly.

The tiny lights on Miku's skirt.

The skirt is black with tiny braille-looking LED designs. The striped white/cyan thing around the skirt looks good.

The strap. See the other straps and the plaid pattern, Tetsuya Nomura added that.

Miku got her original strap on the left part of her skirt which its sculpt and paint app looks OK, but its back is flat cyan, not sculpted and painted the same way as the front.

[left] The long glossy boots

[right] The sculpted keyboard pattern of the boots

Miku's good-looking long legs is pretty much proportionate, nice skin paint too. She's wearing a long pair of black and glossy boots. Its design is consistent to the arm sleeves with keyboard design sculpted on the sides. I don't like the ugly sculpted copyright info at the back of her right leg. They should have put this at the bottom of her shoe.

The feet looks good with added musical note design added.

The boots' outsole have cyan colored bottom and striped hotpink/cyan on the sides and a single cyan musical note sculpted on them, The slight change on the boots is one of Nomura's designs because I didn't saw this on Miku's original art.

Miku isn't human, but she looks human, so no panty shots! Wow! Ahem! I'll just quote Solid Snake on this one... Miku, "You've got a great butt". Man, talk about details. Those creepy perverts must be celebrating right now as they read this.

ACCESSORIES

Miku only have a vegetable, an extra right gripping hand and a pair of extra open hands. That's no good, SQEX should've added an extra face/head or more hands, pigtails and other effects for variety.

Wow, that's alot! (Sarcasm much)

What, no microphone for her to use if she wants to sing? Oh that's right, she's already have a headphone with a mic on it. It would be nice to include her Yamaha DX7 keyboard on which her design is based of, but it may require some licensing.

Miku's leek.

The leek is Miku's signature accessory. I guess to remind people that eating vegetables is good for our health. Well, I eat vegetables. The leek looks simple and it's soft and flexible.

The gripping hand for the leek.

The gripping hand is for holding the leek and hopefully some third party accessories.

Fist hands. Look at the poor paint job on the fingernails.

The extra pair of fists is almost useless, because you will be using the default open hands on most poses. Wheres the pointing finger? Miku did a cute pose at the end of SQEX's CG animation. I want to pose her PAK figure that way too.

Here are some photos of Miku with her leek and extra hands in use (more photos in the ARTICULATIONS sections).

Miku receiving the leek vegetable...

...and she wields it to become... 

...an Ultima Weapon Keyblade!? What the!?
If you look at her, she passes as a Keyblade weilder, she also looks alot like Aqua.

Singing a high note.

The lack of accessory quantity makes me more creative in posing this toy. And yes, she can hold some third party accessories like Keyblades, because her gripping hand is softer. Her open left/right hands are soft too.

Standard PAK stand.

Miku is like classic Kairi Play Arts with same amount of accessories except that Miku comes with a standard issue Play Arts Kai display stand.

ARTICULATIONS, POSING AND SCALING

Look, she's about to sing and dance!

Miku can sing and dance gracefully, I expect her PAK counterpart can pose like that too. Her joint design is almost similar to Harley Quinn (B:AK). She may be a PAK figure, but she's got fewer articulations... Don't worry about it too much.

Dramatic hand gestures for singing.

Miku can look around and tilt her head nicely and can rotate full 360. She also have a neck joint. The pigtails is also articulated by ball-hinges and can hold the weight of the pigtails.

[left/right] Flaunting the leek.

Upper body articulation have decent movement. Her chest and tummy is soft for better ab crunching and leaning. Her waist articulation is located under her skirt.

[left/right] Dancing time!

The ball-hinged shoulders makes the arms hold poses, they can also twist and rotate. Miku's soft chest piece (with ugly cuts) makes the arms cross to the chest easier.

"Come sing and dance with me."

No bicep swivel on the arms, weird because it's perfect for this figure. Anyway, the semi-hidden ball-hinges on the elbows and wrists can swivel too. The sleeves limits the wrist movement.

Hatsune Miku sitting down to take a break.

The skirt is two-pieced which helps Miku's legs raise forward/sideward really well. The legs can twist and have hidden leg swivel joints and it's located at her boots. Now, why did SQEX remove the bicep swivel joints again?

She's reaching out to her fans.

The ball-hinged knees have nice range of movement. It looks weird if you look at it from behind.

She really likes to perform.

Miku's ankles are ball-hinged and it's almost unnoticeable thanks to the figure's design. Like always it moves well but SQEX didn't give her a toe hinge.

This Miku figure is durable and got strong joints while having a smaller and lighter build. She's also highly poseable even with few articulation points and can stand pretty well.

This figure belongs to the 10-incher PAK figures. So let's compare her scale to the rest of my large scale PAKs. Take note that she must be a short/petite girl.

The colorful crew

Sorry Sora (KH3D), you're still the shortest large scale PAK in my collection. Surprisingly, Miku is a bit taller than Lightning (LR:FFXIII). Serah (FFXIII) is obviously shorter.

With AVALANCHE

No problems when Miku's with the FFVII:AC characters: Cloud, Tifa and Barret.

A digital diva with a zombie killer and a cyborg ninja

Leon (RE6) is shorter, but almost the same height as Miku if he's standing straight. Raiden (MGR) is taller than Miku.

Miku is a popstar while Harley looks like a rockstar.
Catwoman looks like Miku's guardian.

The pigtails duo, Harley (B:AK) and Miku looks great together, they both have almost the same height. Miku also looks great with her taller fellow Nomura-designed V-PAK, Catwoman.

QUALITY ISSUES

I didn't see any toy-breaking flaws on this Miku toy that I got, even after a very thorough inspection. I encountered a few paint problems though, her right knee have some cyan paint which can be fixed easily. There are also some extra mold plastic on the figure that's also easy to fix.

CONCLUSION

The things that I like on this Hatsune Miku Variant Play Arts Kai figure is her realistic look, build quality, strong joints and high poseability. Her cuteness and charm is a plus. This (I think) might be the largest Hatsune Miku poseable action figure to date. She lacks accessories, this is bad considering its price which is a bit more expensive than FFVII:AC Cloud that came with lots of stuff. This is just good for Hatsune Miku fans and PAK collectors that wanted a Hatsune Miku figure. It's great to have Miku in my collection because she looks like a FF/KH character. This will make an interesting crossover scenes.

I really enjoy making this one. I hope you guys like it.

Let the show begin!

Cheers and Happy Collecting!