Categories
Figure Review

Review: 1/8 Kujikawa Rise (Swimsuit ver.)

Hello one and all, and welcome! With Menace‘s abundant curves taken care of, it’s time to take a look at someone with a slightly more slender frame!

The road that got me to this point was a rather strange one that began when I developed an interest in Persona 3. Eventually I ended up playing a large number of PS2 RPGs, culminating with Persona 4.  In all honesty I didn’t much like any of the RPGs I played, and while Persona 3 was a good deal better (specifically the music is just plain godly…listen to the OST like…now!) than most of the others, it was still plagued with a great many glaring flaws (*cough one giant tower dungeon cough*). Thankfully, Persona 4 corrected almost all of these and it is without a doubt a game that makes owning a PS2 completely worth it!

Of course, being the figure collector that I am, the first thing I did after finishing the game was rushing to see what figures had been made of the girls from the series. Sadly there wasn’t much to pick from…I had wanted to get Yukiko as she was my favorite, but since she was an exclusive from some time ago, the mark-up was far more than I was willing to pay, thus I settled for this Rise. This isn’t to say I dislike Rise, though! Honesty, all the characters in Persona 4 have their own unique charms and I’d be happy to own a figure of all of them!

Rise in particular has a very cute character design with her petite build and her fluffy hair. The fact that she was voiced by Teh Rie just made her even better, and while her personality swings around a lot during the game as she resolves her conflicted feelings about being an idol, she was always enjoyable to spend time with so having a figure of her is a great joy for me!

This particular figure was based on the above official illustration, which is rather rare for Alter. As this is my first swimsuit figure from them (and probably the first figure I own of theirs that shows so much body sculpt), let’s see how they tackle swimsuit figures, shall we?

"They don't sit quite as nicely as the phone, but she still holds those tiny glasses pretty well!"

Despite having a pretty straightforward assembly,  Alter does the nicety of giving us some instructions on how to slot her tiny little accessories. Getting her glasses on isn’t too horrible although they are extremely small so you have to take a lot of care with them. Her hand can either hold the cell phone or a second pair of folded glasses, which is an unexpected nice touch. Her hand is more shaped to hold the cellphone though, as the glasses just sort of awkwardly plop in her hand. Thankfully they didn’t fall out even when I gave her a little shake so the fit isn’t quite as precarious as it may look.

"She easily has some of the best curves of any Alter fig I've seen."

As she is a swimsuit figure, the most important part is obviously her body. Alter’s high quality is of course known to virtually anyone in this hobby, but when it comes to body sculpts I find that Altertend to be a little on the under-detailed side and rarely if ever match up to say, MegaHouse or Native, so I’ll start with that aspect first.

The paint is rather excellent on her with a nice pale color that still has enough shading to give her that lifelike look as opposed to in Chag’s words, “looking like a corpse.” Speaking of shading, Alter also gave her joints — especially the knees — a nice rosy hue to them that I always like!

"Much like Ranka nyan ver. these are your two best reasons for buying this figure hands down!"

Moving our eye to the body sculpt they gave Rise a lusciously long pair of legs! Proportions-wise, these puppies are quite long, but since I love me some legs, you won’t hear any complaint about them from me. Alter also put a fair amount of detail in her feet, although it’s nowhere near the amount Menace has. Going northward you’ll find some seriously wide hips! For a slight girl those things are quite a sight to behold and they transition nicely into her stomach which has a fair bit more detail to it then your average Alter sculpt.

"Alter really did a nice job on her fingers...Which is a rather odd thing to have noticed, but hey there ya go!"

Her arms are appropriately thin and Alter put some fine detailing into her fingers going so far as to not fuse them together on her right hand despite them being next to one another. Her shoulders though are rather underwhelming. They have a distinct lack of shape to them and she has only a very small hint of collarbone showing. This is kinda disappointing when the rest of the body sculpt was going so well.

"Sadly there isn't much going on in the back as it's altogether rather flat."

Her backside isn’t much to look at either sadly. They did give her some very nice detailing on the back of her knees that I appreciate, but her butt is distinctly flat. It’s even more jarring when you remember that her hips are so wide! The contrast between having such a nice thin waist with wide hips and then a flat as a board butt is rather off-putting. I know she’s slim, but slim girls can have a nice ass too!

"Her back for example really doesn't have anything going on whatsoever just..flat."

It is nice that Alter gave some love to her between her cheeks and her legs, but it feels like the sculptor just gave up after that point. Further evidence of  that can be found in her back sculpt which isn’t really anything to get excited about…She has a nice curve to her lower back, but that’s about it. The detailing isn’t very convincing and her upper back is just a bore being mostly flat looking and lacking in shoulder-blade detail.

"Anyway, enough about her boring back lets take another look at whats most important with this figure! Mmm..."

So to sum it up, Rise’s body sculpt  is very much showcase for her legs! They are extremely nice legs though so I shouldn’t begrudge Alter too much, but it would be nice if they had lavished that same amount of love to her upper body as well.

"Mmm shoes...delicious delicious shoes!"

Her swimsuit is pretty much what’d you’d expect from Alter with excellent sculpting and not a single paint error to be found anywhere. Her shoes too have a very pleasing level of detail with the various straps and bows.

"The amount of attention to detail put into this tiny thing alone boggles my mind!"

The same can be said for her accessories with the little Kuma key chain taking the cake. For such a tiny little thing, it has been painted precisely with scary amounts of attention payed to it. Hell, even the little strap part has “persona 4” printed on it in tiny letters!

"Her face isn't terrible, but it could really have been much better..."

However, Rise’s head was the one thing that made me hesitate on this figure, and while I don’t dislike it as much as I feared I would, she doesn’t entirely look like the Rise I know. The biggest problem is probably her lipstick. Instead of the nice subtle pink in the original illustration we got a much more adult looking red. That coupled with making her smile much smaller and removing the wink changes the feel from being a cute innocent girl to a more mature look. Not entirely a bad change, but it’s one I wouldn’t have made.

"Her hair still retains most of its trademark appearance thankfully being rather full looking."

Other than that, the facial structure and eyes look pretty much like Rise. Her hair sadly has absolutely no shading, which is kind of sad considering how big her hair is and how much it dominates the figure. It is fairly well sculpted swishing around in the imaginary breeze, and it definitely has that “fluffy” look her hair possesses so I wouldn’t say I dislike its overall look.

"This is probably one of the most simple yet awesome bases I've seen."

Lastly we have the display base, which is actually a pretty cool piece of plastic! It has the iconic lines that were used in a lot of the interface of Persona 4, as well as the logo from the game printed onto an clear plastic platform of the appropriate yellow color. I couldn’t have asked for a better base for this figure.

Pros

  • Lovely long legs
  • Excellent Alter quality paint throughout
  • Well sculpted hair
  • Great base

Neutral

  • Rather un-exciting sculpt on her back and upper body in general

Negatives

  • The changes to the face really didn’t need to be done. Borderlines on making her look out-of-character.
"She looks pretty damn good from any angle I found while shooting her."

So there we have it! Man, swimsuit figures can be a pain to review haha…Ah well, I’m still glad I bought her. It is a shame that Alter continues to lag behind in the body sculpt department. If they could just nail that they’d probably easily eclipse any other figure maker for me. It’s still a pleasant surprise that her legs look so nice, so I’ll just focus on that one positive spot. =P

"Couldn't leave without a good foot shot as they are some nicely sculpted feet~~~"

Oh well, here’s hoping that with the upcoming anime, figure makers will get off their asses and finally show us more figures from Persona 4. You here me figure makers? I want my Nanako figure!!

25 replies on “Review: 1/8 Kujikawa Rise (Swimsuit ver.)”

OTL… you beat me to it… I was also planning on doing a Rise photo shot for this hot summer months. I was gonna do it for primarily three reasons: Rise if my favorite P4 girl, Alter is my favorite figure manufacturer and no one really payed any attention to this figure. With that said it makes me happy to see you give it some belated attention.

As for the figure itself, I liked it over all, orange is my favorite color so swim suit is a OK with me. I like the curves Alter gave her and don’t mind the lack of in her back side since that’s not my thing. I do agree about the face will not entirely out of character the original illustration is definitely more Rise with that wink and full smile.

Over all though, I quite like it, luckily enough she was not an exclusive like Yukiko so getting her is not much of a pain either.

Haha sorry about that…Honestly I bought her before the anime was announced and I’m kicking myself now because I know some better figures from the show are bound to show up. >_<

Yea I like orange as well…Haha well I love all the parts of the female form so having a rather bland back and bum kinda bothers me. :p

Yea I originally wanted Yukiko, but the prices she goes for these days…no way.

I'd love a figure of Rise standing in her idle hands behind back legs apart stance and one of Yukiko laughing her ass off…Guess will see if either of those wishes comes true. :p

Aww, too bad about the lack of shoulder blades and collar bones. I’d be a lot more interested in this figure otherwise! She still looks nice though and I really like her knees! The removable glass and phone are cute too.

I have Persona 3 sitting here and I keep meaning to play it but never actually get around to it. >.<

Yea I’m not quite sure what happened there…Lots of curves and then bam flat. >_<

Eh I'd suggest playing Persona 3 on the PSP if anything, but P4 is very much worth playing right now! :p

I’m not familiar with Persona so I was surprised that the character was so young after seeing your pic on MFC, she definitely looks older in figure form. But sexy long legs and glasses, yeah! I do love my backsides though so that is a shame but at least when she is displayed, you won’t be able to see the backside most of the time anyways.

Yea they kinda dropped the ball a bit by making her look so much older…Long legs and glasses go together nicely though this is true!

Indeed it is a shame that its so boring back there…

Bahhh, I think Rise’s face bothers me a lot more than it bothers you. I’m not a fan of heavy lipstick to begin with, and Rise does look significantly older like that along with her mature-looking proportions. And when you throw on those glasses, she really looks like a saucy office lady in a bikini. It’s not a bad look per se, but it’s a little too detached from the Rise I know for my taste. I wonder why they decided to deviate so far from the original illustration, hmmmm.

Still, at the end of the day it’s still a quality figure from Alter, so she’s handsome regardless. You make a very good point about the body sculpts of Alter figures, as Alter seems to be more known for its costume detail as opposed to anatomical detail, but Rise is still plenty hot enough, mmmmmmm.

Btw, I saw somewhere on MFC that a good way to get a convincing “wet” effect on figures is to dab the water droplets on the figure with a cotton bud. This produces small droplets that are more in scale with the figure. Seems like a really useful trick to me.

Haha true…I have a serious fetish for glasses and long legs so I probably enjoyed her overall look so much that the fact that she doesn’t look enough like Rise didn’t bother me as much as it normally would…Hopefully we get a more accurate one with the anime release. >_>

Yea Alter does great on everything else, but their body sculpts are rarely detailed sadly.

Hmmm…thats an interesting idea I’ll have to try that one out!

You know what I hope happens?  The Persona 4 anime is popular enough that someone makes figures of the Shadow versions of the characters.  Now that’d be awesome.

That and Figmas.  Could always use more Atlus Figmas damnit why can’t EO3’s Princess get one.

I’ve never actually seen a slim girl with a bum bigger than what’s on Rise. Bigger usually means bigger in other parts too. I’m a leg person too, and I think Rise’s slender legs look hot, if only they could make all swimsuit figures like that.

Haha true I just like shapely bums what can I say!

But yes more figures with long slender legs would be lovely~

Yea I actually should have taken more shots with them on as they are my preferred way to display her!

thx for making me nearly poor with your last Menace review additional to that I had to pick her up personally from the customs office X< But Im glad that I ordered her in the end, she's super hot and detailed ^-^

Rise has really looong legs ^o^ and her two colored bikin looks quite trendy. As you've already said the red lipstic is too prominent, but the additional glasses make up for it. I also like the level of detail at the single fingers and on these small accesoires. These were pretty pictures again, My fav picture is Alter-Rise-Review_16.jpg, the background environment looks so nice, you live in florida, right?

Haha sorry sorry their aren’t many new figures lately I actually like so I just keep reviewing backlogged stuff. :p

But I am glad you like her! Just don’t lose that loincloth like me. >_<

They are indeed looong! I don't usually like to touch my figures much because I don't want to damage them or anything, but I found myself unconsciously running my fingers up and down those babies several times while doing the written for her haha!

But yea I still would have liked it if her face was more on the cute side then the mature…shame that.

Indeed Florida! If you want greenery / tropical looking shots I have that covered in spades…Sadly a lot of other types of shots are harder to come by (Anything with hills or urban looking specifically…Lands flat as a pancake around here and all suburb hell.).

Its okay, it is my fault for not ordering her at that time, but my excuse is that the she looked less nice in the promo pics 🙂 Haha she’s gorgeous, the white bandage stuff fits good, but I’ve put the loose blue piece in a storage box.

Haha I see, well Rise could look a bit cuter that’s true ^^

How nice, I like tropical, but every location has it’s limits somehow.

I kinda feel I ought to own a Persona figure, given that I really liked P3 and P4.  Of all the P4 figures that are out there, though, I kinda think I like Wave’s Rise best.  Not that I’ve seen it up close, but I really liked her school uniform and I much prefer it over a swimsuit figure.  Though then again, it’s Wave versus Alter.  I hate pigeonholing manufacturers – it annoys the hell out of me when people do that with Yamato – but I mean, it’s Wave versus Alter.

What also annoyed me was that Rise wasn’t playable in P4.  I got the artbook for preordering the game, I flipped through it and I was like, “Aww hell yeah, I’m macking on Rise and she’s gonna get the best equipment” and then I find out she doesn’t even fight.  So disappointing.

Haha you should…I can’t remember what P3 character you like, but theirs a few decent ones from it. I didn’t get the wave one for the simple fact that it cost a lot more where as this one I got for slightly less then the MSRP brand new. I do love their uniform like you and I really hope we can get some with it!

Heh for me I cheated and blew through the combat played it for the story so I hardly even cared about who I had in party. :p

Rise is so cute and I’ve wanted a figure of her for a long time, but I always seem to miss my chance. My initial impression of the Alter one wasn’t super. Having read your review, I still think I like the Wave one more. Generally I’m not a fan of swimsuit figures, but with this one the face also bothers me a bit. Definitely a step down from their Yukiko figure.

Yea except the Wave one costed even more then this one and I wasn’t really feeling the pose. I’m dearly hoping Alter takes another crack at P4 with the anime coming, but with my luck it’d be some mediocre manufacture hah.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *