Kotobukiya Phantasy Star Online

Racaseal Shino Ver.APSY

Kit Review

Straight build

Following the Phantasy Star Online RAcast Elenoa, the RAcaseal Shino Ver.APSY has now been released in plastic model form as well. Unlike the more cyborg-like Elenoa, Shino is a humanoid kit that feels almost like a finished figure.

The basic skeleton and overall construction are similar to the previous Elenoa, but the joints are even stiffer than Elenoa's — which was already pretty tight to begin with. -_-; The shoulders and waist in particular feel so stiff that you worry they might snap when you try to move them. Tight is better than loose, but it really feels like the mold tolerances weren't managed all that well.

This kit comes with more options than most other kits. For one thing, there were apparently a lot of complaints about the pointed feet (ㅡ,.ㅡ) on Elenoa, so a wider, shoe-shaped foot part has been added as an option here. That makes standing upright a bit easier. The weapons are also more plentiful than Elenoa's — barrel knuckles that swap in place of the hands, wings that attach to the back, a small machine gun called the H&S25 Justice, and a blade called the Agito. It's practically a full-option loadout.

That said, I believe a small handgun was also included with the prototype when it was first shown... but for whatever reason it was dropped from the retail release. It's such a tiny part that it can't really be a cost-cutting measure, so it's a bit puzzling why they'd go to the trouble of sculpting it and then leave it out. Especially when they went ahead and spent the money to do some really nice paint work on the skirt and other parts.

And like other standard Kotobukiya figure-style kits, you can mix and match one face with 3 different eye directions... but the eyes are printed in such a shifty way that it's hard to tell which one is supposed to be looking straight ahead. Look closely and you can tell the three are different, but two of them seem to be looking left and one to the right — I honestly couldn't find one that's clearly looking forward. ^^; Makes me wonder if mine just got printed wrong or something.

Anyway, thanks to its rich and beautiful proportions, this is a kit that gives you a pretty satisfying result even with just a straight build, and it feels like they genuinely tried to step things up in quality compared to the previous Elenoa in various ways. Aside from some joints that are stiff to an almost worrying degree, it deserves high marks for its looks and parts selection. It's a must-recommend for fans of the Phantasy Star Online game, and even if you don't know the game, it's a solid humanoid figure kit worth recommending to anyone drawn to cute, buildable humanoid models. :-)

Phantasy Star Online Racaseal Shino Ver.APSY | 2011. 10 | ¥3,800

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.