Blanc Neige Swimsuit ver. by Kotobukiya

What, no NSFW tag?

That’s right, no exposed boobies in this post. But there is hot swimsuit action! This is probably one of my most anticipated of all the swimsuit figures I’ve order/pre-ordered recently – Blanc Neige from Tonk Taka/Segas’ Shining Worlds franchise by Kotobukiya. I’m glad to report Blanc has met my expectations and is a fantastic looking swimsuit figure. Read on to see more of the beautiful Blanc Neige.

Blanc Neige, from my very limited high school French I believe translates to ‘White’ ‘Snow’. Very fitting, or perhaps cliché for an ice witch. It’s interesting Blanc Neige here is listed as a Shining Winds character when usually she’s listed as a Shining Tears character. Maybe Kotobukiya is trying to make a distinction between this one and the pre-existing one from Max Factory. Or they’re cashing in on the recent success(?) of the Max Factory Shining Wind girls. Another peculiar feature is her hair length. Usually we see Blanc with short white hair whereas here it’s much longer – a change I very much welcome.

The figure itself is 1/7 Scale and stands about 23cm tall, so she’s not going to be towering over or dwarfed compared to Max Factorys’ swimsuit line-up. The illustration Blanc is based on is shown on the box with her sporting a purple bikini and pareo combo. ‘Pareo’ that’s a new one for me, my clothing knowledge goes as far as “hat, top, bottoms, shoes”.

5 Licensed by Sega, man I must be lucky.

Her choice of purple clothing is very fitting. Not too bright and not too muted, just a gentle soft purple. She’s got a calming yet sexy aura about her.

My first thoughts when opening the box were ‘she looks a bit rough’ and ‘what’s that horrid translucent plastic’. Her hair looked rough with visible bubbles in the paint, and the clumps were distracting to look at. But then when you step back and take a proper look at Blanc you begin to see just how beautiful she truly is. Sure Max Factorys’ girls look crisp and clean close up which is nice, but Blanc has a superior body sculpt and pose that really makes her stand out as a swimsuit figure. Plus I like her character design which allows me to easily overlook certain flaws that may annoy others.

It’s been a while since I last had a Kotobukiya figure so when I opened her up I was greeted by the sticky plastic they like to package their figures in. That means I had to work out how to remove all her pieces before I could display her. To take her pareo off you need to pull her in half about her bikini top. This is good because the seamline is invisible. The only issue I had is there’s nowhere to really grip and pull her in half, so it took quite a bit of wiggling to separate her. The pareo then just lifts off.

So for that reason we’re going start looking at Blanc without the pareo.

Something interesting with Blanc here is she comes already attached to her base using a screw. I wonder if she had leaning problems or they just wanted to make life easy for us. The downside to this is you can’t remove her from the base without undoing the screw.

The angles below are my favourite angles to view Blanc Neige from. The shadow/light transition across her face at these angles highlights her beautiful facial structure and features. I also like her pose. It’s similar to UBW Rin Tohsakas’ in that she’s in the process of turning. This is great since we can see all the good parts from one angle and don’t have to rotate her a lot.

I’m sure I’ve said this many times before but white/grey hair anime characters are usually my favourites in terms of design. So that already puts Blanc in a positive light for me. If she had a black bikini she would have looked smoking hot maybe with a gold or red trim, but the purple is nice too. It’s not in-your-face bright and obnoxious yet it’s not a drab looking washed out purple. The silver patterns jump out from the purple which is much more interesting to look at than just a plain purple too.

Her hair could have been a bit better I think. It looks rather clumpy here and the paint job is a bit rough. Although I imagine you will be spending most of your time staring at her front.

Blancs’ body sculpt is beautiful to look at. Her ribs and collar bones are slightly visible, her breasts are a perfect size, and her waist is slender.

I’m sure bum lovers will like these shots. She has a gorgeous rear which is further accentuated by her string bikini.

Putting her pareo back on I’m still not 100% sure I like it. I’m liking it better than when I initially saw it, although the transparent colouring looks odd and a bit tacky. It can look more like a plastic lump than an item of clothing at the wrong angles too. But when you do manage look at it from the correct angle it creates a completely different look for the figure. Without it she simply looks sexy in her bikini. With it she still looks sexy, but with a little more mystery. For now I’ll be displaying her with the pareo on since I can’t be bothered taking it off again.

If you were wondering how she looks next to the other Max Factory girls in the Shining Wind series she fits in quite well. Her scale matches and her overall aura doesn’t jar with the other Shining Wind swimsuit girls. There is however slight difference with the bases. The sand colour tone for Blancs’ is much lighter, although it’s hardly a game breaker.

Blanc also comes with an extra arm, rather odd I thought since on first inspection it looks the same as the one she comes with attached. So armed with that false knowledge I went on my merry way taking photos of her. Then I notice this lump sticking out of her thumb. I immediately thought it was a manufacturing error, just as well they gave me that second arm! Well no I was completely wrong. I later realised that the first arm with the lump is for use with her pareo and helps attach her hand to it, making it look as if she’s lifting it slightly. The second arm without the lump is for display without her pareo, derp on my part. Kotobukiya even give instructions on this, in Japanese if that counts as a defence?

To me this Blanc Neige is my current favourite figure rendition of the character, she might even be my favourite swimsuit character beating Alpha x Omega Villetta Nu. That’s a tough call though, both look stunning. I also really enjoyed taking pictures of Blanc. She simply looks stunning so I ended up with loads of them. Plus there’s nothing loose which can fall off, so it doesn’t become frustrating trying to rotate her at different angles. She does have a few flaws such as her hair where the paint is rather rough looking, but on the whole she’s a wonderful figure to own and look at.

I’m slowly acquiring a little collection of figure wallpapers it seems . Here’s some for Blanc Neige:

1920 x 1280 | 1920 x 1080

1920 x 1280 | 1920 x 1080

1920 x 1280 | 1920 x 1080

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