Nice packaging. The box shows a large artwork of Ayame with the moon at the background. The back is just blank. I always wondered why is the Bandai logo blue. After some research, I found out that the blue Bandai logo is a Bandai Spirits logo and their products are aimed at older demographic.
The back may be blank, but the sides of the box shows more artwork, product shots and texts/info.
Ayame have a very basic design. She's a ninja girl but what makes her different from other kunoichi characters is that she pilots a Gunpla that have a "unicorn" ability.
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| Viewing Ayame on 4 sides. |
Even though her design is simple, she got a nice color palette. And this figure is really presentable and nice to look at.
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| She's cute even when masked. |
I defaulted her masked face. The eyes looks good. I used the water-slide decals for the eyes and they're much better than stickers. No need to paint the eyes, just don't let the decals get soaked with water again.
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| Ayame's long twintails. |
She got a nice hair, it's simple yet stylized. She got a couple of long ponytails.
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| Looks like a chopstick-style hairpiece. |
The twintails are tied by a nice yellow hairpin at the back.
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| Basic-looking ninja garb. |
She's wearing a dark violet ninja garb. The only details on this garb is the seam lines and some wrinkles.
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| Ayame's back |
The back, just like the front looks really plain but have a feature that requires a separate accessory.
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| Nice scarf. |
She's also have a red scarf loosely wrapped around her neck. The red scarf really stands out because of her design and colors. By the way the color of the neck in inaccurate, it must have the same color like the mask.
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| The armor pieces looks similar to a Gundam's side skirt armor. |
A white sash is wrapped around her abdomen. The sash have white armor-like pieces on the sides. Their color is inaccurate. They must be painted metallic silver. The skirt looks good and it's split in two pieces to give the legs more movement range.
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| Ayame's arms are mostly covered by these purple puffy gloves. |
The shoulders have a nice skin tone and have a nice purple puffy ninja sleeves that goes up to the biceps. The designers at Bandai made Ayame's sleeves work by making the hands separate so that they can move.
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| The hands looks nice. |
If they remained true to the Ayame's character design where her sleeves covers her hands except its fingers, then that means that the hands of this figure won't have articulations and holding accessories will be impossible.
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| Long boots. |
Ayame is wearing a pair of long black socks and a pair of long boots. Both socks and boots are dark violet. The boots have two white lines (stickers) on the side of each boot.
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| The shoes looks armor-plated. |
The feet area of the boots have a white part. It looks like an armor piece.
ACCESSORIES/OPTIONAL PARTS
Ayame doesn't have different types of accessories. For weapons she got a kunai. For interchangeable parts, she got three alternate faces and a pair of gripping hands.
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| That's few. |
There are lots of extra pieces left on the runners too. You can also use the extra parts for this build.
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| Kunai |
Ayame have only one item for her to hold and that's her kunai. Its design is modernized with some lines on the blade. Its color is inaccurate so painting is required (metallic silver) if you want the accurate look. There's an extra kunai in the runners, you can use that to make Ayame dual-weild kunais.
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| Ayame got three alternate faces. |
The three interchangeable faces are unmasked and have three expressions: serious, smiling and worried. The smiling and worried faces have blush effect that needs to be painted. These expressions can change depending on which set of eyes you're going to use. I wanted to use the sparkly eyes but I want the normal face look and expressions for this figure. I wish she had a fourth alternate face.
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| Gripping hands. |
For hands, she got a pair of open hands that I defaulted on the figure. She also got a pair of gripping hands
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| Optional back attachment. |
She got an optional part that goes to her back. This part will enable you to mount Ayame on the display stand. It got three peg holes, you can attach anything that will fit on those holes.
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| Back mount part equipped. |
It's easy to connect the part on the back but it requires you to dis-assemble some parts of the figure. Remove the head and the scarf and attach the part. It will snap into place then re-attach the scarf and the head.
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| Ayame's bust... ( ͡° ͜Ê– ͡°) |
This model kit have another special piece and feature. You can make a bust-style figure-rise of Ayame. The kit have enough parts to assemble this extra torso, extra head and extra pair of arms (I didn't assemble the arms because they're all purple).
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| Display stand |
The kit also provides a basic display stand. It gets its job done pretty well.
ARTICULATIONS
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| Prepared to be punished! |
I think Ayame have the same articulations like Diver Nami. But Ayame's character design have some differences that will affect the articulations.
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| Removing her mask. |
The head can look left/right, it can tilt side to side and can look down just fine. It can't look up way high though because the scarf and hair limits the upward movement of the head.
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| That's a nice smile. |
The twin tails is articulated. It's ball hinged and the tails can spread out because they're hinged and the hair piece hides that articulation.
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| She's worried. |
The chest is on a single ball peg/hinge it can turn side to side. The figure have a nice ab crunch and have a nice range of movement moving back.
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| Doing some stance. |
The arms can fully rotate and can go up/down and forward/backward. They have butterfly hinges on the shoulders that have little movement. They got bicep swivel that's hidden by the purple sleeves.
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| Kunai ready! |
Elbows have double hinges and have a nice elbow bend. The hands have ball sockets and got a decent range of motion.
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| Ninja pose. |
The waist is just hinged and can only move forward and back and it got a nice movement range. The side armors on the waist are articulated too.
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| Dual aerial kunai attack from above! |
Ayame can kick really high thanks to the hinged ball pegs That makes the legs have more movement range when you pull the leg down. The skirt is articulated. It's in two piece and connected by ball hinges. The skirt pieces will move out of the way a bit when you pose the legs.
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| Dual-wielding kunais. |
The knees are double hinged and have a good enough bend. I wish the knees can bend more for this figure.
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| Target eliminated. |
The feet moves really well. They can point up/down, turn left/right and pivot without any problems.
SCALING
Now that I got a second Figure-rise Standard build. I can now do a height comparison with my other FRS build, Diver Nami.
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| Ayame and Nami |
Ayame and
Diver Nami have the same height based on their anatomy and eye level. I think Nami should be a little bit taller. Still, seeing both figures side to side with each other is nice.
QUALITY ISSUES
I didn't find anything unusual while building the figure. The runners looks good too, no warped and brittle pieces.
CONCLUSION
Figure-rise Standard Diver Ayame figure is another solid addition to the Gundam Build Divers line of FRS model kit figures. Ayame's design looks really good and this figure is really articulated. It lacks accessories though, probably because I got spoiled by Diver Nami's number of accessories. But it got a nice optional bust build feature and have extra parts that the figure can use. The quality of the build for its price is really amazing. This model kit is really cheap and the finished build is really good. I really like that they added water-slide decals for this build, they look much better and cleaner than stickers (which are also included). I recommend this if you a fan of the show or if you just like building models and anime girls.
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| Doing her promo pose (as seen in the box). |
Cheers and Happy Collecting!
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