Naoe Kanetsugu by Penguin Parade (Warning NSFW: +18)

Warning: This post contains +18 content, you have been warned.

I’ve had this wonderful looking figure sitting on my desk for well over a month now and I’ve not shown her to you all. That should be a crime . Heck I even had one figure overtake her in the review queue! Plus she’s cast-off done right, what was I thinking. Anyway without further delay I present to you Naoe Kanetsugu by Penguin Parade.

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For those unaware of who Naoe Kanetsugu is she’s one of the supporting characters from Hobby Japans’ Samurai Girls (Hyakka Ryouran) series. It has received the anime treatment so I’d recommend giving it a watch if you want to find out more. US residents have access to streaming via The Anime Network I believe. Kanetsugu was probably one of my favourite characters from the anime, although I also liked Gisen and Charles. She’s initially introduced as a spy sent to snoop on Sen Tokugawa, one of the lead females in the series, and the ever increasing number of suspicious residents at her house. However Naoe (yeah I should be calling her Kanetsugu, but Naoe is shorter) soon ends up becoming the sworn enemy of male lead Muneakira Yagyu. She believes he has somehow enslaved Sen and the other girls, but we all know no male lead is capable of such feats. Her role then dissolves towards acting as comedic relief – usually ending up in goofy outfits or situations. That reminds me, I should really go pick up the Blu-Rays of this series. We actually got a Blu-Ray anime release in the UK (much to the disapproval of the said publishers overtly vocal PR guy).

Onto the figure then. Naoe stands about 22cm tall at 1/8 scale, although 1cm of that is due to the thickness of her base. It’s odd, she’s the same scale as GSC Arsene but I perceive her as being much bigger. Naoe does have a wider base and a giant hammer, so maybe that’s why. Penguin Parade tend more towards making anime merchandise as opposed to figures, but in recent years they’ve managed to churn out a fair few such as Sousou from Koihime Musou, and Kuroko/Misaka from Railgun. Since Naoe is a character I enjoyed I decided to pick up their rendition of her. Granted she may not look like either the original artworks or anime version of her, but I still think she looks nice. Plus she’s the only cast-off Kanetsugu out there. On a side note I’m looking forward to Alters Naoe Kanetsugu & the Hobby Japan swimsuit version. She may end up being one of those characters I have multiple figures of in my collection.

All the trademarks of Kanetsugus’ character design are present and accounted for in this figure. Her giant Hammer, huge purple twintails, huge sake bottle, ‘Ai’ hair accessory – it’s all there. The keen eyed amongst you may have noticed there are a few minor details missing from her outfit. I’ll get on to them as I go through, but until then you can play spot the difference. Also feel free to let me know if I missed any in the comments section.

Her pose is really interesting and to me can be interpreted in a few different ways. The first looks as if she’s about to lift her hammer overhead and smash it into the ground. The second is a more seductive look, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to picture a pole behind her instead of the hammer. From some angles it can even look as though she’s stretching.

Her hammer is huge – almost as big as Naoe herself. However the hammer barrel is a little barren in terms of texture. It should in fact be decorated with flower patterns. It’s a good thing the hammer is therefore positioned behind her and not really the main focus of the figure design, so it’s not that big a deal if you ask me. In terms of weight the hammer’s not too heavy since the head is hollow. For display you get a little piece of plastic to elevate the hammer off the base, basically just lifting the hilt closer to her left hand. You can rest the hammer happily on her base too, it just hides most of it behind her back. That’s another point if you’re playing the spot the difference game, the hammer is missing a chain at the end of the hilt.

True masters of the hammer always Super Pound the head.

Domo on the other hand, he Golf Swings his teammates.

The cast-off comes with some instructions – 2 sides of instructions! I must admit despite mocking them I ended up finding to be rather helpful. The little black and white photographs illustrated with arrows made intuitive sense without having to understand the written Japanese. First you need to remove her hammer. Simply pop the end of the hilt off and slide from her grasp. Her head is next to go, it simply lifts off. Her arms are on pivot-able joints so you can spin them round and round. They need to come off too so don’t get too carried away with the spinning.

Next you undo the string round her waist, simple enough. Undo the buttons on her shirt. Yes, buttons, on a figure . Then you roll her top up and off over her head. The shirt is made out of a really flexible yet sturdy plastic. There’s no paint transfer or scratching either which is really cool. More manufacturers of cast-off figures should really give this material a go.

Anyway, removing her collar/tie from round her neck is next. Now the hardest part I found – pulling her in half about the waist. You may have noticed plastic wrapping under her skirt in all the above photos. That’s because I couldn’t get her to split in half initially. I gave up and just took photos as she was at this point, removing as much of the visible wrapping as possible.

Not a bad combo per-say, the skirt and no top is a good look. The string round her waist is also a nice touch, even if it does appear to be floating from some angles. For our spot the difference challenge there should have been bits of white material hanging off the string, but to be honest we’re becoming rather persnickety.

Her stockings/knee socks look really nice. The flower petals on the right hand side are neat. She is however missing an ‘Ai’ kanji on the left leg. Again it’s nothing major, just makes it look a little barren that’s all.

Ok pelvis, this is between you and me. You may have distracted me with the upper body cast-off, but I’ve not forgotten you.

After much tugging and wriggling she finally exploded in my hands – skirts went flying.

So here she is in her full cast-off glory. Okay so there’s an orange stain round her hips where I was struggling to separate her, but the rest looks nice.

I decided to be real classy and give her the tie back.

I love the way her back arches – super sexy.

Is it just me or do her arms look really thin compared to the rest of her body?

On closer inspection her pants aren’t really that exciting. Plus the join lines at her legs are a little too visible for my liking.

There’s also the horrid orange stain.

I definitely prefer her with the skirt on. It was a mini-skirt already, so by being able to remove it we’re not gaining all that much. Plus it’s an absolute pain to take off. Now that she’s reassembled on my desk again I probably won’t be trying to pull her in half anytime soon.

Actually since we’re inspect her nether regions now is as good a time as any to inspect some of her other details. Namely her huge twintails. They’ve been shaded beautifully and sculpted such that they look like voluminous hair. The loose strands and antenna have a sharp clean finish as opposed to looking like stray plastic left over from manufacture. She also has two bells tying each twintail in place which again have a shiny clean finish.

Her red boots are also nicely detailed. They’re an odd shape for shoe ware, very square-ish. Her base is a black octagon with golden flower patterns running round the edges – the very flower pattern that should have been on her hammer. The front facing edge has Samurai Girl written in Kanji (+ something else) on it. For mounting her on the base her shoes have 2 big pegs at the front which slip into matching holes in the base. As a result she stands perfectly stable with little chance of leaning.

One thing that I think may bother Naoe fans is her face. She doesn’t really look like the Naoe we know and love from the anime. And she’s not really anything like her original concept art. It’s a good job then I think her face looks beautiful for this figure rendition of her.

The orange eyes are nice and bright. In fact the same can be said for most of her colouring. Everything is saturated and bright looking which is something I like. Maybe with darker pupils she could have had more impact.

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Her breasts are a nice shape and size as well. Not too big and not too small – just right .

The thing I like most about cast-off figures is trying to find a nice looking combination somewhere between fully clothed and fully cast-off. And Naoe does not disappoint in this regard. She has removable parts that can be put back on in any order. My favourite is this one – the unbuttoned shirt look. Since her shirt is flexible you can potentially put it in any position – another reason why more cast-off figure manufacturers should move to this flexible material.

So here’s some open shirt goodness to enjoy.

Sometimes the partial cast-off looks more seductive than a fully nude cast-off. I wish more figures opted for the open shirt look. Open coats, open shirts, they all look great in my opinion.

The back of her skirt also has this metal like chain tucked away. Heh, maybe it’s the missing chain from her hammer. You can only really see it when the hammer isn’t in the way.

Not having the tie in place gives full view of Naoes’ cleavage.

So to wrap this up then, hopefully you can tell by the number of photos posted I really like this figure of Naoe Kanetsugu. She’s got everything I enjoy about cast-off figures – multiple states of cast-off that can be displayed. I’ll be displaying Naoe as seen in these last set of photos – with the unbuttoned shirt. There’s no real defects in terms of manufacture/paint finish to speak of – just the odd minor detail in her character design that’s been omitted. I did have trouble with the skirt cast-off and as a result it’s left a mark. But if you ask me the skirt cast-off is rather boring so to me it’s not that big an issue.

I might actually like this version of Naoe more than Alters’ upcoming rendition. Being able to customise her appearance is really nice, but then Alter do make really high quality looking figures. Plus I like the pose of this version more than Alters forward leaning pose. I’ll wait and see how the Alter one turns out though before passing judgment.

I’m glad Naoe turned out well. The Alpha Max baddies I got put me off Samurai Girls for a little bit there, so it’s great that I was able to pick up a really nice Naoe. Speaking of Alpha Max, they sure make it difficult for me to stay annoyed at them. Especially when they go and make Sakei Ai from Fault!!. She’s mighty tempting despite me not wanting to buy Alpha Max again.

Anyway enough rambling, I’ll leave you with some more wallpapers to enjoy.

Also be sure to check out this review of her over at figure.fm.

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