Friday, April 15, 2011

Revoltech Fraulein Mari Illustrious Makinami Part 4 [Final]

New and old of not much differences

The last posting of my review on Revoltech Fraulein Mari Illustrious Makinami, featuring the appearance of Soryu Asuka Langley from the same Revoltech series.

Because of the different first name, this Asuka from the TV series is technically not Asuka from the movie. ^^ The Plug Suit design is different, and she would be of another world not linked with Mari at all. Thanks to Revoltech Fraulein, there's no problem at all for them to be paired in the same posting. ^^






For your information, Fraulein Soryu Asuka Langley was released in March 2008, which made her two years older in this series as compared to Mari. More importantly, as Mari is the first release from the so-called renewed Fraulein line as mentioned in Part 1, a comparison between the two of them would show how much Revoltech Fraulein has changed between the two figures:

[Legs]



The thigh joint is completely different between the figures. Asuka has a simple rotating type, while Mari has a large peg joint that works in same way as Asuka's joint.

In terms of the knee, even though both of them looks very unnatural for me, I think the design has definitely improved for Mari, since the same chunk of fresh cut away as seen on the back of Asuka's knees (that sounds really horrible to say ^^;) is no longer present on Mari.

[Waist]


Not much difference appearance-wise


Mari is designed with a piece of soft material for the abdomen. The same feature is absent on Asuka.
And as you see, the length of the peg joint from the waist's Revoltech joint may differ, but the application is still the same.


Thanks to the soft material used, Mari can bend forward for a very wide degree, and in this case, taking the entire joint out of the Plug Suit, but the appearance of the suit when viewed from the front will not be affected at all.


[Arms]


Seems all the same to me, but the design for Mari's elbow joint seems to have smoother corner at the edges between the movable parts. It's nice to see that the black paint of the suit helps to provide some "camouflage" to the "sharp" splits on the elbow joint, and even the gold stripe on the forearm is designed to just touch the edges of the split, make the latter even less detectable. Still, the cut can be really nasty to look at sometimes. ^^;









It's quite unfortunate for me to experience bits of paints being scratched off on a few places for Mari:


Behind the waist and on the back of one of the hand units.


The "normal mode chest light" suffered the most paint loss - an entire ring of red paint is left on the chest area of Mari.

Never experienced any of that for Asuka though.

Only for fans of Mari Illustrious Makinami I suppose? That's probably the conclusion I can make for this Revoltech Fraulein figure, because the reason I got it in the first place is because of my liking towards the character.

Frankly, I haven't open the Figma version of Mari that has been sitting in my closet since December last year, so no comment on how the two competing product series would be like when paired face-to-face. However, when I start reviewing that figure, the comparison part will definitely be in. ^^

All reviews on Revoltech Fraulein Mari Illustrious Makinami:
Part 1: Hello again, Revoltech Fraulein
Part 2: Super unnatural leg joint design
Part 3: "Invert mode. Secret code: The Beast!"
Part 4 [Final]: New and old of not much differences

View full gallery:
Revoltech Fraulein Mari Illustrious Makinami

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks you have the only pics of the old asuka and mari I could find. Now if I could find the two asukas together for comparison.