Flash Review: Rizfis Luttiva Mente by Good Smile Company
Today’s review is a bit of a special one. This happens to be my very first scaled figure and has basically traveled across the Pacific twice to finally end up on here. Rizfis Luttiva Mente or Rize for short is part of a collaboration between Good Smile Company and Red Entertainment and is the 5th of a series of figures known as Shuraki Trinity. The unique thing about Shuraki Trinity is that each figure came with an ‘artbook’, drama CD, and the figure (hence the Trinity part) to flesh out that character and her story. For such old figures, they still stand out in collections today due to their striking colors, sculpts, and dynamic poses although they are not without their problems.
First I’ll start off with a little story about how I got my start in figure collecting. I was living in California at the time and had gone to Anime Expo and the San Diego Comic-Con for several years so I had seen figures before but had never been too impressed with them. But in the summer of 2008 while I was wandering through the AAA Anime booth at Comic-Con, I saw her: Rize. I think it was the blue that caught my eye at first and the superior sculpt, the giant dress, and that badass halberd that won me over. I literally did a double take on her. I was with a friend at the time and he was marveling over Nida, another Shuraki done by the legendary Shunya Yamashita. While Nida was really awesome, especially with that giant sniper rifle, she didn’t quite stand out to me as much as Rize did. A few weeks later, I ordered Rize off of Amazon and she was at my doorstep. I’ll admit, I was a bit embarrassed about her at first since she had such a short skirt as well as a cast-off option; I’d put her away when friends or family came to visit but after time, I stopped doing so. I was deathly afraid of her falling in an earthquake and breaking so I’d either set her on the floor or put a pillow under the shelf when I went to work; keep in mind that I was used to rock solid Transformers, Revoltech, and HG Gundams before this.
The funny thing is even after all this care, she ended up breaking on her own. The culprit? That big beautiful dress weighs a ton in figure standards. And with only 4 shallow, flimsy pegs to hold her feet, one or two of them were bound to snap. This is a problem with all Shuraki Rizes, basically everyone’s breaks at one point unless measures are taken beforehand. I used poster putty to hold her up for awhile but one day, when I was packing to move, some more pegs broke and there was no soft pillow to break her fall this time and the halberd suffered some breaks as well. After bringing her to Australia, I figured that its time for some super glue since she won’t be moving anytime soon and from the pictures, you really can’t tell shes broken. Unfortunately, the big dress also causes her to lean backwards and my figure is a victim of that to a small degree. So these days, I have a figma stand helping to hold her dress up and with a few creative props, you can’t even really see it. I’ll take a picture of that someday when we eventually do a post about our display setup.
As you can see, that dress is BIG. Rize’s box is the biggest out of all the Shurakis because of it. It’s made of a thick plastic, I think ABS, but still way too heavy. But damn, it looks too good, I can’t bear to take it off. The blue in the dress is slightly translucent.
As far as Rize’s story goes, I can’t really understand the artbook or the drama CD but from a nice little pamphlet that AAA Anime included she’s apparently an Italian Shuraki who provides light-heartedness in the normally grim White Raven organization who sound like they’re the bad guys. However she has a ‘secret’ side to her and guessing from pictures in the artbook its some badass berserk thing. Whatever, it sounds pretty confusing and without listening to the drama CDs included with each figure, probably not worth digging into. The CD is pretty much useless to me, it does have 1 song by Rize’s voice actress that’s pretty mediocre but thats about it. The artbook is a small pamphlet that has various illustrations of Rize done by her character designer, Yano Takumi.
Here you can see the fantastic details that have gone into Rize’s outfit. I love all the laces and buckles and the gold etchings in her corset are really nicely done. Paint application is fantastic, the laces on the bust and sleeves even have designs printed on them!
Another part of the ‘Trinity’ name is the fact that all Shuraki figures have 3 forms: the normal outfit, a battle damaged version of the outfit, and completely cast off is them in their underwear. Here is Rize in her battle damaged outfit, you can take her head and torso off to swap out the skirt/dress, corset, collar, and one of her blue sleeve puffs. They did a really good job in showing a tattered outfit here.
Also the base is really well done. Its soft PVC and transparent with little crystals and a cracked ground plus its blue fits nicely with Rize’s vibrant blue. Now if only it could hold the figure properly, it would be perfect.
With her skirt tattered, you can get a better look at those delicious thigh-highs. While the battle damaged outfit is pretty neat, it is a shame that that beautiful dress had to be all but obliterated although it is understandable due to the extra bulk and costs that would have added. You can see here that Rize has an interesting pose, if you stuck a microphone instead of a halberd into that right fist, she would look like an idol! Apparently that was intentionally done by Yano-san, good on him.
You can see here how well Rize is endowed. Lets talk about the halberd. It comes in 3 parts, you’re supposed to slide the rod in her hand and then attach the axe head and that sharp bit at the end but unfortunately both ends snapped in her latest fall so I’ve had to super glue both ends on and wrestle the staff into her hand so its pretty much permanently there now.
And now Rize’s taken it all off for us! This is actually my least favorite incarnation, something looks off about the proportion and her large breasts being squished like that looks unnatural without a corset to contain them. Her underwear is done pretty nicely and I was really impressed with the shading on the skin, it looks better than a lot of swimsuit figures out there.
Highlighted in this shot is the one irk I have about the character design: the shoes. I understand that they’re kind of like Magical Girl boots but especially in this cast-off, it looks kinda ridiculous and unsexy. Give me some heels though, and I’ll be a happy boy.
And her back. Unfortunately Rize doesn’t have much of an ass but at least her underwear is pretty nice. You can see here her back and shoulder blades are nicely sculpted helped by a little bit of shading. A note about the hair, it’s decent even by today’s standards and does a good job of conveying the motion.
All in all, Rize was a fantastic first figure and is still one of my most loved figures due to a combination of sentimental value and fantastic sculpt. Beware though that due to the heavy dress, this figure is pretty heavily flawed and unless propped or modified, will break. I think I bought her off Amazon.com at the time for around $70, which is a very good price for something as elaborate as this. Nowadays, if you’re interested the best places would be all the secondhand shops like Mandarake, Amazon Japan Auctions, and MFC/Figure.fm sales. If you’ve noticed, I didn’t take pictures of the box due to it being pretty damaged in transit and the extras were omitted since I left the CD in America, hence I got to be lazy and call it a Flash Review, haHA! If you want a proper review, visit Heisei Democracy or wxcloudkumo
20 comments on “Flash Review: Rizfis Luttiva Mente by Good Smile Company”
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Haha “Flash” review eh? :p
Ah but yea this one…The infamous leaner. Probably one of the most well known newer ones to have that old problem. You’d think someone at GSC would have maybe noticed how horrible unbalanced and woefully in adequate her was at some point?
Still nice to know you didn’t get scared off of the hobby by picking such a terrible leaner for your first figure! Reminds me of how Aka didn’t get scared off even though he bought a PoS Taki as his first…
Ashlotte recently posted..Review- 1-8 Ranka Lee NA ver
“how horribLY unbalanced and woefully inadequate her BASE was at some point?”
fixd
No edit buttons makes Ash sad… :p
Ashlotte recently posted..Review- 1-8 Ranka Lee NA ver
Hehe, I made some nasty typos when commenting on your Ranka review and couldn’t work out how to edit either. Why can’t wordpress add these things by default! T_T
Ehehehe…
Yeah, I’m looking at it now and going wow, that was pretty dumb GSC, you guys should have known better. At the time I thought it was a magical feat of engineering and didn’t know any better until she snapped. At least it infused in me a deep fear of potential leaners and making sure that figures seem to be held correctly in their bases.
Haha, well, it was pretty much 1.5 years after I got Rize that I got my next figure although I’ll admit a lot of that was due to financial limitations rather than quality concerns. I was tempted to pick up the GSC Saber Lily though, how I wish I had jumped on that now. As for Aka, wow, he must be a dedicated collector!
I don’t think she counts as a leaner, though — I’ve had mine for a few years by now and her posture has remained the same. The weight distribution is questionable, yes, but you won’t find any fault with the old girl’s legs — if anything, blame the sculptor for not thinking things through!
“I was deathly afraid of her falling in an earthquake and breaking so I’d either set her on the floor or put a pillow under the shelf when I went to work”
Ahahahaha, I can’t believe you did that everyday!
Hey, I like to baby my stuff. When I first got my Macbook, I would hide it under the bed when I went to work xP.
I don’t really mind, but that was more a nice full review than a flash review ^^
I’ve already seen your picture of her at mfc and I thought “hey that’s a pretty figure”
After seing more pictures Im even more impressed, she looks better than some figures which are made nowadays.The face with the hair gives her a lot of expression and the dress looks awesome with all the details, the fancy underwear isn’t bad either ^o^ I also like the backpart with the nicely sculpted shoulders.
Too bad that she suffered some damage,an older figure of mine also had problems with snapped pegs and fell over several times, but I still like her
Im always surprised how you are able to use your lcd display as background without having reflections.
It looks so nice in the pictures =)
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Hahaha, I had always meant it to be a Flash Review but when I got behind the camera and later at the keyboard, I had too much fun with it.
She does really stand out! If a figure like her came out today I would still consider buying her. As it is, I’ve been keeping an eye out for Nida.
Yeah, a shame about the damage, but with some good ol superglue, you can fix things really well. I can’t even tell she’s had a snapped weapon or pegs and hopefully with that figma stand propping her up, she’ll start to lean forward back to her original position.
Thanks! Zai usually shoots in daylight in front of her computer monitor, I usually like to use our LCD TV. With Hanzo I used daylight but with Rize here I shot at night and used lamps with snoots to help focus the light on the figure and not the TV screen, worked really well! Next time I will need to remember to shoot with a lower aperture to get more of that background in focus.
I remember being like you all over protective of my first few figures. Thankfully they really are more sturdy than they look on average.
As for Riza I remember seeing a few reviews oh her some years back and sadly enough did hear often of her various problems. This line is fun in my opinion with the three different ways you can display the figures. For Riza I thin I prefer her normal fully clothes version the best.
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Haha, thankfully! I remember knocking my Fauna on the ground and being horrified until I inspected her and not even a scratch. But seeing all those otaku rooms after that Japan earthquake, that hurt my figure-loving heart.
Mmm, I think with the other Shurakis I would be constantly switching their outfits but for Rize, I agree, the fully clothed version is far and away the best.
The monsters responsible for the battle damage on her dress must be huge fan of her legs, because I find the sight of her pristine stockings beneath her tattered dress strange and hilarious.
Rize was also one of my first figures. It was an impulse buy and the cast-off and base gave me brief, but the detail is no slouch when compared to current high-end figures — and for what’s included in the box, it was a great deal! It’s a shame the series never got a second wave, because I was interested in that loli with the huge sword.
I’m amazed you were able to take her box across the ocean — that things is fucking huge! My heart sank when I saw the shipping fee, and sank again when I saw the customs bill when it arrived. You are a man of true dedication =)
Chag recently posted..Review- 1-8 Ranka Lee NA ver
Haha, I saw you had mentioned that in your MFC photo. But hey, how can you not be a fan of those legs?
Or at least a flash review/photo shoot, whatever. I do remember reading about the hype for the series 2 that never came which is a shame, Shuraki was a great idea. I wasn’t a fan of the loli but I was looking forward to that shrine maiden.
You should totally do a review on her too
Well, I had a giant hole in my luggage where presents to friends and family used to be so I managed to wrestle in her box on the way back home. It probably was a good thing the box was so big, I crammed a bunch of other fragile nerd stuff in it too and it held a surprising amount! Unfortunately the box pretty much got demolished in the process xP. But wow, shipping that monster from Japan must have been expensive! And ouch, customs bill. Does AAA Anime distribute to Canada as well? If Australia had an official figure distributor, I might be buying more locally, Rize’s price was really good considering her RRP was 6800 yen. Taking into account market rates back then, local price was basically RRP with free shipping if I had bought it at the con. Wow, this is making me a little sad I left…
You’re right, I think I’ll do a quick show-and tell of Rize as filler sometime down the road. She is a pretty little thing and I’d be a waste to not take any more photos. If I were to move out in the future, I probably won’t be able to take Rize with me, not only because the box is huge, but also because I superglued her to the base and thus won’t be able to stuff her back into the box. I should take the photos before it’s too late!
I don’t know about AAA’s presences in Canada. There aren’t a lot of figure stores in Toronto. There are a couple in the boonies that are too far away to be bothered with, and the only store in the center of the city is run by a bunch of dicks. If I recall correctly, the prices are pretty much around the same price as the online retailer + shipping, and since Amiami ships my stuff to my doorstep, I buy virtually all my things online. Oh yeah, I had forgotten about the 13% sale tax! Bah…I’m amazed that these stores are still in business.
I bought Rize on sale at Play-Asia many moons ago. She was on sale for around 30-40% off. I thought I was in for a deal, but it turned out that Rize ended up being the most expensive figure I had ever bought…probably all the way until GSC’s Saber Lily!. In retrospect, Rize was a valuable life lesson ^^;
Chag recently posted..Review- 1-8 Ranka Lee NA ver
Yes! She turned out to be surprisingly photogenic for me, partly because of her vibrant colors, which you seem to do well! If you need to transport her, why not break it apart and then superglue it again when you move in? You’ll probably only be removing paint from under her shoes anyways.
Wow, Toronto seems even more devoid of anime merch than Melbourne. And wtf, 13% sales tax!? How do you guys make a living there?
Omg, was it her shipping and customs that pushed it to most expensive? I had tried to order Hanzo from CD Japan and boy am I glad I backed out when they sent me the bill, she would have been my most expensive figure ever due to the massive shipping bill (luckily this was after release too).
I epoxy glued Rize onto the base, so it’s going to be a little tricky freeing her, but it’s worth a try!
The sales tax is pretty brutal, but you get used to it sooner or late (not that you have a choice, lol). The shipping/customs combo was pretty brutal, because they made the sale % (which was the only reason why I bought the figure) completely trivial. I should have cancelled it when I saw the big shipping fee, but I still feared the consequences of order cancellation back then… how naive I was!
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Wow, its amazing how this figure has 3 forms you can display her in. Which most figures don’t have these days (only two forms) Only ones I can think of is , senjougahara and nadeko
It’s a pity that the halberd and the figure itself got damaged^^” You would think they would add more support for the skirt, due to the weight of it. Other than that, this figure seems amazing, especially for a price of $70, compared to figures these days with this type of quality.
Very lovely photos and a detailed review.
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Thanks!
While multiple forms are nice to have, sometimes you overwhelmingly prefer one form over the other and it becomes kind of a waste. For example, Rize is always fully clothed for us and Hitagi always has her falling stationary pose. They’re just too awesome!
Mmm, I think it wasn’t a well thought out figure, I can forgive the skirt a little, it sounds like it was a revolutionary thing back then but the stand/base was just horrible. There was another Shuraki with metal pegs, they really should have done that with Rize.
It makes you wonder sometimes with some of these figures going for 9000+ yen when Rize and the other Shurakis are so cheap. I guess theres intellectual property costs as well but still!
I miss the Shuraki series. I really like Meifeng and Mishiro Akatsuki, though they were the only ones I preordered; I didn’t get Rize until a couple years later. They were inexpensive, they came with a lot of stuff in the box, and they were castoff-able at a time when that was still sorta novel. I’m sure I’m looking at the hobby with rose-colored glasses, but I kinda miss those days, back when GSC and Max Factory made oddball figures of characters from anime and eroge that nobody had ever heard of. Or when they made completely original stuff, like this. Nowadays, it’s not too difficult to guess which characters are going to get figures, even before their TV series are aired.
I initially skipped Rize, probably because I wasn’t a big fan of polearms back then, but I appreciate her a lot more now. Especially since she’s wearing some pretty lingerie, though I still have her wearing her dress. Not that huge girdle, though; I’d heard enough stories about her suffering chronic faceplants.
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Mmm, its sad to see that if a figure like any of the Shurakis came out today, you’d expect to pay a lot more. While GSC doesn’t make random figures anymore, Max Factory/Native still seems to. Although I suppose Black Rock Shooter started as a random figure and then got turned into the juggernaut it is today. It’s nice to see an awesome character design that you’ve never seen before make it into figure form.
Ohwow, so does that mean you have one of the rare, unbroken Rizes? At the moment, I have a figma stand supporting the dress and even tilting her up slightly to counteract her slight lean backwards. But I’ve read stories about her soft PVC base actually bending after time if you don’t have it perfectly flat, we’ll have to see.