autaku

From Muramasa: The Demon Blade – a Wii game with a gorgeous hand-painted visual style – comes the possessed princess Momohime, now lovingly crafted as a 1/8 scale figure by Noritaka Fukumoto for Alter. I’ll admit that I’m yet to complete Muramasa but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played so far and it’s just such a beautiful game to look at, so when I saw the previews for this figure I was pretty quick to make a pre-order. It looked incredible in Alter’s official promo shots, but those can often be misleading as certain elements become too difficult to mass produce or, more simply, quality control isn’t quite perfect. As a figure collector, you come to expect those differences and, within reason, accept them. With Momohime, Alter have managed to deliver a work of true craftsmanship that has absolutely no trouble living up to its promise.

Quite simply, I’m yet to find anything to complain about with this figure. Everything about Momohime is impeccably crafted with stunning detail, with a well-realised pose, vibrant colour and a base that contains no extraneous pieces: everything you see is part of the scene, depicting Momohime moving across rocks in a stream. The promo shots included a clear disc as part of the base which would have been fine, but Alter have managed to surpass that by balancing Momohime atop the rocks so that the disc is not needed. The base looks fantastic with a great transparent effect used for the running water, and rest assured that Momohime is very stable and feels very stable despite the relatively small base and her seemingly precarious one-legged pose.

The only notable seams on the figure are high up on the sleeves, one of which (the left arm) is fairly hidden by pieces of armour while the other (the right) exists out of functional necessity. Aside from those, there is a visible joining point between Momohime’s fringe and the rest of her hair, but this is also very well hidden thanks to the comb and flowers in her hair. In short, aside from the right arm there are no prominent seams of joins and from many angles you won’t see any at all. That join line on the right arm is there because you’re actually able to swap out arm and hand parts to display Momohime with her sword fully drawn and with or without the sheath, which is a really nice option and justifies the seam.

Every piece of Momohime’s outfit has been recreated with impressive detail and Alter have achieved a consistent sense of motion with clothes and hair that appear to fold and flow naturally. The various patterns on her clothes and accessories are printed cleanly and sharply, and the black armour has a somewhat rough finish that emulates smithed metal quite nicely. The outstanding detail established by the sculpt have been matched flawlessly by the paint, and the finest example of this lies in the flowers pinned in Momohime’s hair. Individual flowers are clearly defined and further detail is brought out by the use of shading. It’s clear that Alter put a lot of work into this figure and the result is simply stunning.

I could go on, but with no faults to speak of I’ve probably made my point already. If the quality control on the entire run is as good as this – which is to say, about as close to perfect as possible – then Alter have managed to deliver a final product that not only lives up to the promo shots, but in some areas even exceeds them. To call this figure “impressively crafted” would be apt, albeit a grand understatement; below you’ll find plenty more photos that attest to that. With Momohime, Alter makes a fine case for the argument that figures can be works of art that should be a welcome addition to any collection.

Alter’s 1/8 scale Momohime is available (at time of posting) from J-List and AmiAmi.