Sakura Taisen 3: Pari wa Moeteiru ka - Real Figure
Guest Review
by William Van Hecke

Review date: 12/29/2003

Manufacturer: Bandai

Released: 2001

Availability: HARD

Type: Gashapons

 
 
Personal Story:
On my trip to Tokyo in the Summer of 2003, I was determined to collect Sakura Taisen gacha-gachas. In my mind, models (the kind you build yourself) and gachas are the best values. Models provide many hours of relaxation, and gachas are just so dang cheap. I knew about the newer Bandai series but had not seen these Sakura Taisen 3 figures until I stumbled upon the Coquelicot figure in a couple of shops around Tokyo. She was adorable. Nowhere, though, could I find the full set. A couple of weeks later I was shuffling around eBay and found this set for sale cheap. Needless to say I grabbed it up.
 
Introduction:
This is a set of the five main girls from Sega/Overworks/Red's Dreamcast mech-strategy-meets-dating-sim masterpiece Sakura Taisen 3. Erica Fontaine, Glycine Bleumer, Coquelicot, Lobelia Carlini, and my personal favorite Hanabi Kitaouji, are all represented.
 

Sculpt:
I was really impressed by how Coquelicot looked when I first saw her in the store. The plastic is very smooth, and the details on each character are nearly perfect. Assembly-seams exist but are forgivable. The poses are perfect for each character; I particularly like Hanabi coquettishly readying her bow. Each girl is portrayed with her weapon of choice (which they incidentally never actually use in the game[except for Glycine pulling out her battle-axe when she's upset and Erica pulling out her machine gun in the middle of town]), and there are little wrinkles in the battle uniforms and everything. The faces really look like the girls and are actually cute, which is more than can be said for some other SakuTai figures.

The plastic is rather soft, allowing the tails of the uniforms to bend a bit. The sad thing is that thin parts like Glycine's battle-axe are hopelessly warped by their hibernation in the capsule, and I don't know of any way to straighten them out. To tell the truth, though, I wish all gachas were molded in this kind of satiny plastic.

It's hard to get these figures to stand up and to stay standing. They come with little (inexplicably flesh-colored) supporters that kind of halfheartedly grip on to one of the girl's feet, and then wait until you're convinced that the figure is stable and you've gone to have lunch or something, before they give way and fall over.

 

Paint:
Quite good. The flesh-colored plastic actually seems very slightly translucent, giving the skin a nice radiant quality. All of the chosen colors are perfect matches for the girls in the game. A really nice touch was that different parts have different finishes: for example the uniform jackets are glossy, while the leotards are flat black. There are a couple of places where the paint splotches over into areas it doesn't belong, but this is minimal.
 
Overall: A-
The amount of detail in such tiny figures makes me wonder how they could cost just 200 yen each. They're beautiful, especially for someone as in love with these games as I am. For the price, I can't imagine not picking them up.
 
Where can I find this?
Certainly not around Ikebukuro or Shinjuku, which is where I was looking for them at first. Luckily some Singapore and Hong Kong types seem to put these up on eBay quite often for just about US$10.
 
Other Images:

 


"...po!"

 


"If this battle-axe weren't so flimsy, I'd chop you up."

 


"Ohayou Ohgami-san!"

 


"How 'bout money?"

 


"Ichirou! I'm like Iris except tolerable!"

 

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