Welcome to the Solaris Blog! ヾ( ʚ̴̶̷ .̫ ʚ̴̶̷ )ﾉ”
We’re doing something a little different with this post — it’s time to take a first look at Kotobukiya’s 1/8 ARTFX J Himiko Toga figure that just came out!
NOTE: We took all photos shown here and made minimal edits to them. We slightly adjusted the color/lighting, dust was Photoshopped out, and we cropped each photo. However, we did not remove any blemishes or imperfections.
So, without any further ado, let's dive in!
In terms of first impressions, as usual, Kotobukiya nailed translating Toga into a 3D figure that walks a razor-thin line between adorable and deranged.
Even when she’s not using her Transform Quirk, Toga’s design is all about misleading appearances. Without her knife, she looks like a spunky high school girl who’s a bit of an oddball.
It’s the small details like the oversized moe sleeves on her cardigan that show off her personality and the quality of the figure reflects them in a way we’ve come to expect from a brand like Kotobukiya.
She’s a very charming young lady.
That said, there is slight ridging on her knuckles from where the mold was cast...not great, but also not unforgivable in our eyes.
Speaking of eyes, we never realized Toga’s pupils and irises are slightly warped in some scenes in the anime until we compared the figure’s eyes to screencaps. The painters seem to have gone for a combination of accuracy and interpretation in order to convey her off-kilter energy.
It may be surprising how much painting on a character’s eyelids correctly matters, but it could be the difference between making them look cute versus unintentionally crazy (even though that’s accurate in this instance...).
Case in point with the G.E.M. Tenohira Tanjiro...yikes.
Aside from that, her perpetual dark circles, blush, and fangs make her look positively feline.
Toga’s hair is the one thing we have mixed feelings about. On one hand, we honestly love her stabby space buns because they look like weapons in their own right and the textured lines create just the right amount of detail to mimic actual hair instead of leaving us with completely smooth orbs.
On the other, this is where the plastic looks particularly rough; if it weren’t for those textured lines, we’d be very disappointed. However, we will say that we didn’t notice most of those bumpy edges and ridges until we really zoomed in on the photos — it’s something to keep in mind if you plan on taking photos of your own, but they’re not really noticeable unless we’re holding the figure and squinting.
The spiky parts are also a little bendy so please be careful when handling her!
At this price point, the minimal imperfections aren’t a dealbreaker and are standard as far as mass-produced figures go. We’re always hopeful for an immaculate sculpt and paint job, but that’s something that’s harder to achieve than you may expect.
The top of her socks and parts of her face also had what we thought were blemishes, but they came off after gently wiping them.
We talk about this in a lot of posts and we’ll say it again: simulating fabric is very important and Kotobukiya delivered. One thing that sets Toga’s design apart from the infinite number of schoolgirl designs out there is that her cardigan looks so dang comfy.
Even though this is a weird perspective for a photo, the way the cardigan falls and bunches up creates a realistic silhouette that makes us want to throw on a slouchy sweater of our own.
The little flip of Toga’s bow and skirt are also nice touches to an otherwise stationary pose.
Reflective surfaces on figures usually make us bit wary, so when we saw how her shoes caught the light we were initially worried. However, no matter the angle we shot from, they actually mimic polished leather in a crazy impressive way. The same goes for Toga’s socks — they look like a solid navy at first glance, but have a great matte shine and the slight bunching of the fabric at her ankle adds to the realism.
We could’ve done with a similar matte shine on the rocks, but that’s personal preference at this point. We’ll take it over a plain white or black disc any day.
Although simple, Toga’s knife is one of her signature weapons. We’re happy to say that it looks identical to the ones she wields in the show and had no problems securing it to fit in her hand (thank goodness).
Overall, Toga is a solid addition to the ARTFX J series. In certain cases, it’s a struggle to find things to say about a “basic” design, but that’s not the case here because of the amount of care put into the figure. Despite the issues we had with her hair, the number of fun details like the shine of her shoes and even the sculpt of the bend of her knees outweighed our nitpicking.
It’s not hard to phone it in when it comes to figures of popular characters, so we’re very happy to see all the effort Kotobukiya put into its recreation of this villainous darling~
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