Kit Review

Straight build

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Upper body

A skeletal body with nothing but bones..
The ribs and spine are a little creepy.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Arms and hands. The middle of the forearm is completely hollow; (1/3)

Arms and hands.
The middle of the forearm is completely hollow;

The back with butterfly-shaped wings.

A head with a grim reaper-like look..

The weapon known as the Eye Freezer.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - The legs. (1/2)

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - The legs. (2/2)

Leg section.

The middle of the legs are hollow too.. and there are clear green parts fitted inside.

True to its Virtual-On mecha roots, the back has a game console attached to it.

You can choose between a Dreamcast cover or a Sega Saturn cover.

The Eye Freezer.
The folded scythe form is called Launcher Mode.

The scythe part.

The clear green parts on the back.

A separate hand for holding the Eye Freezer is included.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - The tip of the Eye Freezer extends, but it's done via part swapping rather than a moving me

The tip of the Eye Freezer extends,
but it's done via part swapping rather than a moving mechanism.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - You have to choose between the long or short version when building. It doesn't look like a

You have to choose between the long or short version when building.
It doesn't look like a section that would be hard to make articulated..
Makes you wonder if the design was really that difficult to pull off with a moving mechanism.

Built out into the elongated scythe shape.
This form is called Scythe Mode.

There are only 2 leftover parts, shown above.
Pretty minimal.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Some quirky articulation.. ^^; With no skirt armor, the legs can raise up quite high, and t

Some quirky articulation.. ^^;
With no skirt armor, the legs can raise up quite high,
and the forearms fold quite a lot.
I guess that's what you get when it's nothing but a skeleton..

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - The elbows and knees can rotate horizontally, which makes it a lot easier to pull off actio

The elbows and knees can rotate horizontally,
which makes it a lot easier to pull off action poses.

The claw-type hands move individually.

The wings move forward and backward too.

The skeletal waist and neck sections can move up and down about this much.

The waist rotates 360 degrees!

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Action pose. (1/5)

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Action pose. (2/5)

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Action pose. (3/5)

Action pose.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Action poses with a grim reaper vibe, scythe in hand.. It really does look sinister ;; (3/5

Action poses with a grim reaper vibe, scythe in hand..
It really does look sinister ;;

Parts for attaching to Kotobukiya's universal stand are also included.

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - Stand action (1/3)

Stand action

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] - When you put it on the stand holding the Eye Freezer, the center of gravity is off and it's

When you put it on the stand holding the Eye Freezer,
the center of gravity is off and it's a bit tricky to get a good pose..

Together with other Virtual-On series kits.

The Kotobukiya Virtual-On plastic model series — born from the meeting of Katoki Hajime's flashy design sensibility and Kotobukiya's obsession with color separation — reaches its third entry, and it's somewhat surprisingly the Specineff.. As a huge personal fan of Sega's Virtual-On series, this wasn't exactly a mecha I was hoping to see get a kit.. but here we are. Raiden and Temjin felt like obvious choices, but Specineff of all things..?

For starters, the design itself evokes distinctly unsettling imagery — grotesque, bizarre, grim reaper-like. The bare, bony ribs and spine, the hollow arms and legs, the hunched silhouette, the grim reaper scythe-like weapon, the eerie face.. The overall vibe is very dark, but in terms of being "unique," it's a design that's truly in a class of its own.

Anyway, this is a kit where Kotobukiya's dazzling color separation wizardry is on full display. It's essentially a kit developed purely for the sake of color separation, nothing else. Maybe because it's nothing but a skeleton, but the joints are considerably sturdier compared to other Kotobukiya kits. Hardly anything falls off, nothing feels loose, and the articulation is excellent, making action poses pretty easy to pull off.

That said, with so much color separation going on, gluing is pretty much essential for a large portion of this kit. If you glue things properly and get everything secured, it's a solid and stable kit — but if you just trust Kotobukiya and snap it together without glue.. you're likely going to run into some real headaches.

In the end, the kit quality itself is arguably more solid than Temjin or Raiden in some ways, but whether you'll enjoy it really comes down to how you feel about the design. No matter how you look at it, it's not something you'd call pretty... but if you're drawn to its unique design and color combination, I'd say this is actually a better quality kit than other Kotobukiya offerings :-)

Virtual On Specineff [DNA Side] | 2009. 6 | ¥5,800

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.