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Review: Ex_resinya! Fate Testarossa

Greetings one and all to…ummm…yea, it’s yet another crap weather day month! Yaaay~

So if it’s gonna be melancholy weather why not go with a melancholy character? Today will take a look at Fate-chan by Cospa.

It’s a rather odd that for all my love for the Nanoha series, I have yet to get a Fate figure until now. Part of that has to do with none of them quite having the look I’d like, and the other would be that I’m not actually the biggest Fate fan. I’m ok with her younger self, but she loses a lot of appeal as she ages in the series for me, whereas I think Nanoha just gets better and better!

The one thing I had hoped for was a pair of Nano and Fate figures that really fit together well, because in addition to getting me into loli, the series also got me into yuri thus I adore the two of them as a pair. With the releases of the new movie it looked like my wish might finally be granted with several companies making paired figures of the two, but sadly these all fell flat for one reason or another…

The Wave Beach Queen figures are extremely sub par looking (Especially Fate), the FREEing figures look like trading figures with their tiny size and woefully low quality, and lastly the Cospa figures are absurdly overpriced (After I had already written this Koto actually announced a nice pair of the two as well.). Thankfully, Cospa Fate has been going on sale a lot lately and I decided to take the plunge when AmiAmi put a big fat discount on her!

"If you love big you'll love this box! It's almost as deep as it is wide..."

Unfortunately, I was not prepared for the insane shipping fee that doubled her final cost! I mean just look at that sonuvabitch — you’d think I’d bought like five or six 1/8th figures or something!

"It's pretty bad when even Alter trounces you in box size..."

Now you might be saying “Well I guess its a huge figure then!”…Well no…No it isn’t. There is a HUGE amount of absolutely useless empty space here…I mean what the hell was Cospa thinking when they did this?!

They could have easily fit her weapon behind her…Removed her cape and put if flush behind her…Cut down on the massive empty space between the bottom and her! This is literally the worst box I have ever seen space management-wise and I would personally relish kicking whoever designed it’s ass!

"You notice how Masao's box is just about the same dimensions as her? Be nice if Cospa could do the same..."

So Cospa decided that even if by some chance the price got slashed you’d still get reamed on the shipping…great. Not a good first impression folks here I’m gonna be honest. I mean, even for domestic sales this is a dick move. You ever seen pictures of figure retail stores in Japan? They aren’t exactly swimming in extra space and have to squeeze product in wherever they can! As someone who works retail I’d be furious with these idiots for making something that wasted so damn much display space! You should be ashamed of yourselves, Cospa! Ah God, ok ok get over the box, Ash, move on move on…

Well let’s crack open are needlessly large box and see if the prize inside is worth all this grief…

"One of these days I'll learn to photograph problems before I fix them...Oh well there's plenty of others things wrong like the above to show anyway."

The first thing that stands out to me is she has some sort of oily…errr….something on her upper body? I’m not entirely sure what it is, but some of it rubbed off easily enough —  not exactly the best first impression of a figure, that’s for sure.

"That cape takes up an absurd amount of space for better or worse."

Aaaand…she is a smallish figure like it seemed through the window. Brilliant. She’s not that much taller than an 1/8th adult figure height-wise. Thanks to her billowing hair, cape and weapon she does have considerable shelf presence, but she really isn’t nearly as large as the box might have you think.

"Why Cospa, why do you do this?? Ugh..."

Secondly, Fate only has a single peg to attach her to the base, which is bizarre, considering she’s rather spread out with the cape, not to mention she’s also not the lightest figure in the world. Why they decided it was a good idea to only secure her to her hollow base with one peg is beyond me. *Facepalm*

"She has a great confident pose...Sadly her base doesn't instill as much confidence..."

Thanks to that brilliant design decision, she wobbles like crazy. Fortunately, her pose is a rather stable one, so I don’t think anything problematic will happen, but would it really have killed them to either give her other foot a peg or two ? (Since writing this I actually learned of at least one owner whose Fate apparently can’t even stand on her own already…)

"Her stomach is still pretty nice, but yea not nearly as much definition as I'd hoped for..."

One of the big attention-grabbers of this figure was her midsection. While her stomach still has a nice smooth look to it with a pronounced belly button, that nice subtle muscle definition you saw in those original promo photos doesn’t seem to have translated into the production version.

"Her hair really reminds me of noodles and has about as much detail as some."

Fate’s hair has both ups and downs. On the plus side its large size and sweeping shape are very impressive, but the actual detail on them is rather pathetic, as they look nothing more than yellow noodles. The hair also suffers from minor mold lines across its surfaces.

“Her face is quite attractive though thankfully!”

Fate’s bangs are also extremely under-detailed, but thankfully her face underneath is really good. In the prototype photos, the face was probably been the thing I disliked the most about this figure, and ironically it’s one of my favorite things on the finished product! It has that cool confidence I’ve come to expect of Fate while in a fight, and the slight downward angle of her head gives her a nice “bring it on” feel!

"The cape looks pretty cool I gotta admit, but like the rest of the figure it's not quite painted as well as I'd like."

Looking behind her you’ll see her rather massive cape. It is a lot like her hair in that its general appearance is very impressive, but the actual detailing on it is disappointing, to put it mildly. Furthermore, her cape isn’t removable for reasons that I can’t fathom. While it does add a lot of flair to the figure, it’s also extremely large and some collectors may have wanted to take it off to save space or even to give her a more sleek appearance.

"Could do without that nasty bit of mold line...Sadly its not the only one on her."

Fate’s arms aren’t terribly exciting, due to the complete lack of detail and having an almost borderline plastic paint applied to them. Her gloves are also short on detail and have some obnoxious mold errors with the same mediocre paint job that was used on the figure as a whole. Her skirt for whatever reason isn’t attached to her, but merely loosely rests on her hips…This would be ok if you could actually remove it, but just like the cape you simply cannot.

"Sadly not a thong, but it does have some appeal just the same."

Her bum is fairly well sculpted, but once again the underwhelming paint leaves you wanting more. The story is basically the same on her legs and boots. Very basic detailing and barely passable paint with some mold problems thrown in as well. Bardiche is no exception to the paint problems, and it also lacks any additional parts to enable mode-changing.

"Give it an A for looks, but as something that's supposed to make sure she doesn't fall over, it fails pretty hard."

Her base is probably one of the best sculpted things on the figure, looking like a convincingly cracked piece of asphalt being churned up by her magic aura. Sadly, it is hollow, which make it feel cheap and more than a little unsteady as a base.

Pros:

  • Great pose
  • Very attractive and accurate face
  • The billowing cape, flared out hair and base really sell the pose

Cons:

  • The paint work is sub-par across the board
  • The detailing in sculpt is extremely basic
  • HUGE FUCKING WASTEFUL BOX
"Hair has a few black smudges here and there and not what I'd call detailed."

Well then another negative review down…yay.

…Ugh, so yea, she isn’t actually all that bad of a figure in general. Her pose is really great (I would have loved to have had a figure in this pose with Alter’s quality) and she is solidly constructed with a hefty amount of weight (although that fact comes back to bite you in the ass because of the less-than-secure 1 peg hollow base design), but Cospa calling this Ex-Resniya line I quote “the ultimate collection for figure fans, combining creativity with skill. Going beyond resinya!, Ex_resinya! is the ultimate line for discerning collectors!” is the biggest joke ever as the sculpt and paint quality is around Kotobukiya’s level.

That in and of itself is fine I guess, but the fact that they also are trying to charge us a premium price makes this annoyance a whole lot more problematic. If you wanna mouth off about your superb quality as some sort of silly advertising ploy, go right ahead, but don’t try to charge collectors for that supposed quality when it in fact does not exist!

"That's not image grain by the way that's just how the paint looks...Don't ask me why they did that."

As it stands, I would say she should have been sold at 8-9k BASE price. The fact that she sells for more then Alter’s Nanoha figures is one of the biggest farces I’ve seen in this hobby. Personally, I wouldn’t buy her for anything more then 3 or 4k taking into consideration the 4-6k shipping price.

Anyway, looking forward I doubt I’ll actually buy the matching Nano for this set, which is ironic of course, since as I said at the start of the article I bought Fate here because I was hoping they would make a nice set. However, for better or worse, unlike Fate, Nano already has several fantastic figures of her that I enjoy greatly, and the pose on Cospa’s version just doesn’t stand out as much as Fate’s does. Perhaps if Cospa had gone for a badass back-to-back look for them I would have taken the plunge, but looking at Fate in hand now, I just don’t think they’ll look as good together as a pair as I was hoping they would.

"Still even with all my bitching she's far from a complete train wreck, but she could have been so much more..."

So, yea…let”s just say this experience has not improved my already disappointing view on Cospa as a figure company and I doubt I’d ever buy another figure from them again. Frankly, I think Cospa should just stick to making random bits of merchandising and leave the figure making to the big boys, as the only thing premium about this “premium” figure line are its price and box size.

Ah geez so yea another lackluster review…Sorry about that guys just hasn’t been much lately to get excited about…

I’m hoping when the weather clears up a bit I can get a double review out that’s at the very least a bit more visually interesting!

(Chag: on an unrelated note, there’ll be no Double H this week due to a dry, dry week on the pre-order front. Sorry! ><)

14 replies on “Review: Ex_resinya! Fate Testarossa”

Yea you can kinda still see some of the detail in that area if the lighting is just right, but otherwise it’s not quite as pronounced as I had hoped.

Haha yea the cap has some problems with it but it captures that billowing look pretty good.

Nice review and great photos! I was thinking of buying her when I first saw her on sale at AmiAmi… but I decided not to after seeing the paint job in the promo photos, looks like that was the right decision. I would personally want to give those 2nd/3rd-rated companies a chance if they have really well posed figures, but time and time again, I was turned off by their sloppy works after seeing the actual product at my doorstep. =/

Yea…I try to get at least one figure from every company just as a reviewer so I can get a feel for their quality, but more and more I just feel like sticking to GSC / Alter / Max Factory / Megahouse these days…I have a few more figures coming from makers I’ve never tried before so hopefully that works out better then this one did. >_<

Haha I have! Fortunately I do have some positive ones in the que. Now if only it’d stop raining every day…

Well, after the big original price, big price cut and big shipping fee, it’s definitely good to see what the figure is actually like…too bad the same descriptor can’t be applied to the figure’s actual size! =P

It’s a nice figure. The sculpt of that cape looks amazing, and the big banana hair doesn’t bother as much as I thought it would, but you’re right, the asking price for this really is absurd. This entire episode surrounding Fate reminds me a lot of my Shuraki Rize in that they’re both heavily discounted figures that turned out to have huge shipping fees and significant flaws. For you it’s the overall quality, for me it’s the bloody stand and cast-off. Oh well, at least it’s a life lesson! By the way have you been bitten by surprise shipping fees like this before?

Nah I usually have an idea of how big the figure is and thus the box, but since this was non-scale I never really thought about how big she was so when I got whomped with that shipping fee I really wanted to hurt somebody… >_>

I wish Ami and the others had estimated shipping fees posted for each figure like HLJ does.

Oh interesting you were brave enough to spent so much money for a Cospa figure.
I liked their Nanoha figure, but the price + crazy shipping cost made me pass.
Im usually very cautious to order figures from in my opinion third or below ranked companies.
This year I ordered a Sega figure for the first time hope she will turn out nice enough.

Well from my screen your Fate doesn’t look that bad, ok her face definetly makes up for some things, there aren’t many Fate figures where I like the face, but this and the
banpresto one are nice exceptions in comparison to the usual plain  expressions
of her face. I also like the overall look of this figure.

Too bad you were mainly dissapointed by your purchase, but cheer up your pics of her are nice ^-^

Haha what can I say as a reviewer I feel compelled to buy these kinds of things just to enlighten myself and possibly entertain you all with my pain. :p

I have 3 Sega figures and I’m pretty impressed with the quality for the price…If the weather actually stops being shit I’ll get the review of the other two I own up.

Yea I don’t like Fate’s face on most figures either.

Hmm…yeah Nanoha got me into loli and yuri too.

I also don’t own a Fate figure for being such a Nanoha fanboy. Would have been nice to buy that Alter loli Fate figure they did to match Stanby Ready Nanoha.

Cospa seems to be using their usual mode of operations charging a premium for their figures as they do for their other merchandise. The figure itself is nice though, the pose and cape make Fate feel quite imposing. The base scares the hell out of me though, only one peg, on a hollow base for a relatively heavy figure? Yeah, I can see how this is gonna end up playing out.

Yea the show is a terrible influence! :p

I thought about it but I wanted a more sedate looking pose for Fate.

Haha yea that cape is really heavy so I dunno what I’m gonna do about this problem…

“Her bum is fairly well sculpted, but once again the underwhelming paint leaves you wanting more. The story is basically the same on her legs and boots.”

>Bum and legs
>story
>PLOT
I see what you did thar

Anyway…It seems you keep getting the short end of the stick Ashlotte. With Griffon’s Yukari and Cospa’s Fate, you must have really been bummed out. I really do applaud you for taking chances with these figures though, I bet it’ll help countless who reads these reviews. It sure as hell made me glad I did not jump the gun on the Aegis figure they released a couple of months ago (even when it was discounted a bit).

It really does show in your photos how unmotivated and unpleasant you felt during the review. I can clearly feel your wounded heart through the weather and your frustration through the choice of location. No more salt on the wounds. I simply look forward to tour next review!

Haha it seems that way doesn’t it…Ah well I have a bunch of slightly more positive reviews in backlog I just have to actually get some nice weather to shoot em! >_>

Ah yea I always say if you want to know what I thought of a figure just look at how much effort I put into the photography hah…

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