Review: figma Madoka Kaname and Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica
I thought I’d try to spice things up this time and try a double review with the 2 figmas released so far from mega-hit Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Madoka Kaname and Homura Akemi are 2 of the main characters of the series and have a fair amount of interaction with each other, making it easy to come up with ideas for pictures. With the other 3 figmas already preordered: Sayaka Miki, Sakura Kyouko, and Tomoe Mami, this’ll be the start of a bit of a series. Some of these pictures and parts of this review will contain spoilers so be warned. I’ll try to mark where the major spoilers are.
Madoka is the main character of the show and we get to know her fairly well from the beginning as a bubbly, cheerful girl who gets caught up in the world of the Puella Magi and witches. Homura on the other hand is very mysterious with an unknown agenda and we don’t get to find out about her until late into the series so before we go any further…
****SPOILER ALERT******
What’s funny about Madoka’s Puella Magi costume that this figma represents is that we actually get to see very little of it until the end of the series (and also the series OP sequence), most notably in the episode that explains Homura’s story where in alternate dimensions Madoka is a full-fledged Puella Magi. As for Homura, she is mostly a gloomy, mysterious girl until we see her past, where she was a clumsy, adorable girl that dearly loved her friends, especially Madoka. But repeated bouts of time travel transformed her from bumbling golf-club wielding klutz to a bad-ass Rambo with enough firepower to take over a third-world country.
*****END SPOILER ALERT*****
We can already see that both Madoka and Homura come with some impressive accessories and it looks like that is a trend among the other girls as well, which is pretty awesome. In addition the builds of the figmas themselves utilize some of Max Factory’s recent advancements in figmas so we’re getting a pretty good deal here.
The thing that impressed me most about Madoka was her build. If you look at her midsection, figma’s usually have a waist joint but hers is mostly obscured by her ruffled front part that is actually a strip of soft plastic that doesn’t really hamper her movement. And then look at that frilly dress! 2 layers of frills you’d be hard pressed to find the likes of in even full-scaled figures. Finally, on her ankles, hips, and hair she has tiny ribbons that have been sculpted well. These things along with all her other crazy details make her one of the most elaborate figmas in our collection.
Homura on the other hand is a lot more plain, her design reflects her personality more but you’re still getting a good deal on her. Homura comes with a variety of guns, in addition to the Desert Eagle pistol and AT4 rocket launcher in the previous pictures she also includes a pipe bomb. The one glaring omission from her arsenal is her machine gun which admittedly she only uses once but damn, it looks good on her. Here she is posing with one borrowed from Yoshika from Strike Witches. Now the Winter Wonfes exclusive school girl Homura does fill out her arsenal a bit more with a proper machine gun (an MG4 I believe) and an RPG launcher (rocket propelled grenade) but to be honest, I won’t pay an exclusive’s price just for a few guns. (Is it sad I knew the names of most of these guns off the top of my head from playing so much Call of Duty?)
Homura also comes with an alternate head, glasses, and a gold club to recreate a scene from her flashback episode. She looks so cute, it’s easy to tell why some fans have dubbed her “Moemura”. The only part that’s reused is her bangs. The glasses fit onto specially made faces for her so unfortunately you can’t really use them on other figmas very well.
The hair on both figmas is impressive with the amount of articulation possible. Madoka’s short pigtails are on a ball joint and can swivel around so they can be pointing straight up if you want. The ribbons in her hair can rotate with the hair as well. Having them stick further from her head is a bit more limiting though, but I’m already getting so much so can’t complain there. Homura’s long hair is split into 2 parts, each with their own joint, similar to how Black Gold Saw and KOS-MOS did theirs. I kinda wish they had put a piece of soft plastic to help hide the joints like how Black Gold Saw did it, but it only really bugs me when I try to take back shots.
Madoka also comes with a little buddy named Kyubey of which we already have a few representations. The one that comes with the figma is the small one in the middle, on its left is a resin kit and on his right is a plushie by Cube (btw Gift still needs to make an awesome Kyubey). Don’t they all look creepy? Anyways, the figma version’s head is on a ball joint so you can tilt and swivel it. Unfortunately Kyubey’s large tail makes him a little unbalanced so in most of these photos he’s been secured with blu-tack.
Since all the Puella Magi are young girls, they translate into small figmas. Compared to Dead Master here, you can see that Homura is shorter and Madoka is tiny. In fact, Madoka ties with Mayoi as our shortest figma. What’s rather hilarious is with her wide face and short body, sometimes Madoka looks like a gremlin to me.
As you can see, there are a fair amount that comes with these 2 girls. Madoka comes with her Rose Bow both folded up in a staff form and open in a bow form along with 4 arrows (hard to see on white but they’re below her left foot). She also includes Kyubey and 2 Grief Seeds.
Homura includes a Desert Eagle pistol, AT4 launcher, glasses, pipe bomb, Moemura hair, golf club, alternate forearm without buckler, oh and her buckler is removable.
The sheer amount of stuff means that many of the accessories are limited to one hand ie. only one hand can hold the Grief Seeds and only 1 hand can hold the pipe bomb.
“Teeheehee” “Moemura, what are you doing? Nuuuoooooo!”
All in all, I’m pretty happy with our purchases. We managed to grab Madoka at AmiAmi for 2360 yen, where she is still available. We got Homura for 2370 yen at AmiAmi or you can get her at Hobby Search. For the amount of accessories, build quality, and uniqueness of their character designs, I’d say they’re pretty solid buys for both Puella Magi and Figma fans. As a bonus, Max Factory have managed to squeeze them into the smaller figma boxes, using layered plastic trays to hold the sheer amount of accessories for Homura.
As an aside, this was my first review using some new flashes Zai got me for Christmas. It’s taken me awhile to get used to them and I’m still trying to learn so any C&C is much appreciated! I’m not sure if anyone is interested in hearing me crap on about camera gear in a figure blog but if you guys want, I might be able to squeeze out a post on them. Might as well finish off with some more pictures
This is a stick up! Hand over all your Grief Seeds!
PEW PEW
Can you…. do me a favor?
Why? Because I can 
15 comments on “Review: figma Madoka Kaname and Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica”
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Wow… A double review. As they say, double the value double the fun, ze~ =)
Madoka’s torso construction follows what Kaiyodo had done with the bunny-suit Fraulein Haruhi, it allows a a more accurate design without compromising articulations.
Have to agree with Homura’s arsenal, so much weapons that could support a squad.
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It’s great that Homura has so many weapons and even more with the Wonfes exclusive. I’ve seen a couple of pictures where people have grabbed every single 1/12 sized gun they had and posed it with Homura and it just fit.
I didn’t know that the Madoka figma was so tiny, but it’s cute that way ^^
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Well, but somehow I miss a cute expression on Madoka, even the gloomy character Homura has one.
Homura’s outfit isn’t that exciting in comparison with Madoka, but she’s the funnier figma with her happy face and the army and terrorist equipment, I really like the rocket launcher it’s not something you would expect as accessory for a female figma
Its cool and funny that you printed out these bearded minions for the review, gives me an idea for my ordered scale Sayaka from GSC.
Overall the Madoka figma lineup seems very well done, Im looking forward to see how Sayaka figma will turn out. Haha in the anime she was my least favorite character, but I like her design in figma and figure form the most.
I like the first two combo pictures with Homura and Madoka a lot. I can’t provide much help for flash photography, only that a bouncer on the flash makes the light softer and shadows
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When posed next to Homura, Madoka doesn’t seem that small because she’s got so much going on with her. It was only when I was playing around with Dead Master for the Pink Rock Shooter pic that I noticed how small she was. I almost want to make Homura some kind of creepy terrorist with all her weapons, haha.
Haha, the Anthonys already kinda look like paper cutouts in the anime so it was easy to get away with. I’ll look forward to your Sayaka review!
Did you order both the scaled and figma forms of Sayaka?
Hmm, I should try that, thanks! I tried some DIY diffusers that aren’t working so well for figures, maybe I should actually try going out and spending money on these things.
Im tempted to get the Sayaka figure as well, but not really sure about it, at least the scale figure is a fix purchase.
np, these plastic hoods work surprisingly good and are cheap around 9€ in my country.
Im using an old flash, some weeks ago I also good a new one, but I guess I have to read the manual before Im using this new one more often, it not as easy as the old one unfortunately.
Wieselhead recently posted..My anime Winterseason 2012 watch list
Ahh, the scaled figure looked quite nice. We’re getting the figma but I think Zai will handle that review since she’s a much bigger fan of it. Cloth cape looks awesome though.
Wow, that is cheap! The camera shops near my work are all overpriced, I might take a look on eBay to see if I can get one that cheap as well. Thanks!
Aw man, flashes? SO jelly. I used flashes for a couple of reviews and they’re totally kickass, but then my mum got annoyed and my dad started to regret letting me experiment with his expensive toys. I REALLY like this shot — the high contrast and the shadows are perfect for that scene (not to mention the colours).
I’d love to read about your new equipment, btw. As for C&C: I noticed the shadow edges on some of these shots are pretty hard. Now I haven’t really used flash enough to know what the problem is exactly, but are you using softboxes to diffuse the flash?
(Also, cutouts of those little moustache cotton ball things — such a great idea. I can’t believe I haven’t seen anyone do it before!)
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Ohman, how did you annoy your parents with flashes? The right kind of flashes are cheap these days, I managed to get mine at $50-ish a pop. I’ll try to throw together a review of them sometime, I really should have taken setup shots.
Thanks! I had a little trouble with that shot and am glad my half-assed MacGuyvering paid off. As far as the hard edges, I am not really using anything to diffuse the flash, just a cardboard snoot and a grid I made out of drinking straws. I should probably throw some tissues at the end of my snoot or even better, buy a real diffuser. I tried a milk jug as a softbox/diffuser thing but even at maximum power, it couldn’t produce enough decent light.
nice, u made multi-shot arrows for Madoka possible
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Haha, I did cheat a little by sticking a big glob of blu-tack behind her hand. In fact, you can see a bit of it still, oops.
Ah flash photography one of my pet peeves in photography, mostly because people tend to do it horribly wrong. If you hadn’t mentioned it I wouldn’t have known any better that these shots were taken using flash. I don’t do flash photography so I can’t offer any advise on that. I would like to hear more about it and the equipment.
Man, these two figmas. I got Madoka ages ago and have to still take her out of her box, while Homoru I unpacked right away. I was initially disappointed by her lack of a LMG or an assult rifle but it was a lead up for the Wonfes version.
Great pictures, the last couple ones are really nice. The paper cut outs for the witches and familiars is genius I gotta try that out sometime.
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Ahh, a lot of people will use the on-camera flash, which is almost always a bad idea except maybe in sunlight. Haha, there are one or two of them that were taken with desk and iPhone lighting but yeah, the rest was flash. I’ll definitely try to do a review sometime.
Aww, Madoka herself is done really nice, just her accessories pale a bit compared to Homura.
Thanks!
I like those last two pictures. Very nice!
Having multiple Kyubeys is fun. If I was more affluent, I would have been willing to build one of those goofy “shrines” some people make to their waifu characters, except do it for Kyubey.
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Thanks! The last one was born out of a bit of insanity so its my favorite, I’d like to try it out on MFC sometime.
YES! Kyubey shrine! Unfortunately most Kyubey plushies look fugly to me, the Cube was the only decent one at the time. The resin kit Zai got from somewhere in the depths of Akihabara, we have no idea who made him or anything. I remembered you were looking to get a smartphone thingy, they do have some pretty sweet Kyubey iPhone 4/4S cases out there somewhere
[...] comes from the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica which I talked a little about in my review of figma Madoka and Homura. Mami saves Madoka and Sayaka in the beginning of the anime and acts as a sort of mentor for them. [...]