DSC_9201
The Very Cool Bayonetta clone delivers on some parts.
I believe she was $200 USD shipped from Giantoy, and comes with the main figure, her four guns, a pair of glasses, and 6 total posing/gripping hands.
The head sculpt, like it nor it, is as promised in the prototype photographs. It's alright, as I would expect from an unlicensed product such as this. The glasses, on the other hand, were a major pain to keep on her face, so I got the photos done and put them back in the box. The hair is a combination of sculpted and rooted, and I know that is going to make some people cringe. The outfit is actually pretty good, and wasn't just flimsy piece of cloth cut to shape. There appears to have been a competent pattern maker involved here, as the tailoring and stitch work are quite good, and work to flatter the underlying body. Material appears to be some sort of pleather rather than a simple cotton cloth, and there's a simple rose pattern on her left rib cage area.
Is the body choice accurate to the character? Nope, but what else is new. At least the outfit doesn't look like it was simply thrown on to whatever body they could find for the cheapest. One does need to be wary of the various chains on her body, as they are literally hanging on by a thread and could pull off. The matching boots also look quite nice. The hairs on her elbows are rooted and are honestly some thing of a pain to pose with, but at least it's not sculpted. It's a shame this wasn't the Bayonetta 2 outfit where she has long sleeves instead.
Her guns have some really atrocious paint work - we're talking paint quality that makes it look like I did the work myself. Clipping the guns onto her heels is generally an exercise in futility. You either experience paint scraping because of the connectors themselves, or if you're lucky like me, the connectors break because the plastic is so brittle, and the QC is terrible. This choice of poor plastic also extends to her hands as well.
Speak of her hands, her gun holding hands only have one actual job - to hold her guns. They fail at this miserably. First off, they're not moulded in the way the character holds the gun, which is to have the pinky sticking out.. This is necessary due to the way the grip of the pistols are shaped. Very Cool doubly fails at this because I'm guessing they wanted to make a few extra bucks, and decided to mould the pinky stuck to the rest of the fingers, where as the prototype on the box at least had it separated to facilitate the function of holding the gun. Lastly, and I'm guessing this is the reason why this figure took so long, is that Very Cool effectively either stole the TBleague tooling and started up their own factory, or they paid TBLeague to create a batch of S23 specifically for their use. While the curves and musculature of that body are there, the material used to make the body looks really bad. It has this very unnatural sheen to it, and feels like to me what would happen if you used half the colouring you would get in a typical TBLeague body.
The good news is that at least you can get around this body issue with a body swap, though it will cost you.
So ultimately, the fact that the figure cannot actually hold its weapons properly is what killed the entire experience of handling this figure. Yeah, the shiny body isn't great, but I could forgive that if Bayonetta could do all sorts of badass gun poses, like she does in the game. But since she can't, this one kind of fails in my eyes, even if her other parts are decent.
DSC_9201
The Very Cool Bayonetta clone delivers on some parts.
I believe she was $200 USD shipped from Giantoy, and comes with the main figure, her four guns, a pair of glasses, and 6 total posing/gripping hands.
The head sculpt, like it nor it, is as promised in the prototype photographs. It's alright, as I would expect from an unlicensed product such as this. The glasses, on the other hand, were a major pain to keep on her face, so I got the photos done and put them back in the box. The hair is a combination of sculpted and rooted, and I know that is going to make some people cringe. The outfit is actually pretty good, and wasn't just flimsy piece of cloth cut to shape. There appears to have been a competent pattern maker involved here, as the tailoring and stitch work are quite good, and work to flatter the underlying body. Material appears to be some sort of pleather rather than a simple cotton cloth, and there's a simple rose pattern on her left rib cage area.
Is the body choice accurate to the character? Nope, but what else is new. At least the outfit doesn't look like it was simply thrown on to whatever body they could find for the cheapest. One does need to be wary of the various chains on her body, as they are literally hanging on by a thread and could pull off. The matching boots also look quite nice. The hairs on her elbows are rooted and are honestly some thing of a pain to pose with, but at least it's not sculpted. It's a shame this wasn't the Bayonetta 2 outfit where she has long sleeves instead.
Her guns have some really atrocious paint work - we're talking paint quality that makes it look like I did the work myself. Clipping the guns onto her heels is generally an exercise in futility. You either experience paint scraping because of the connectors themselves, or if you're lucky like me, the connectors break because the plastic is so brittle, and the QC is terrible. This choice of poor plastic also extends to her hands as well.
Speak of her hands, her gun holding hands only have one actual job - to hold her guns. They fail at this miserably. First off, they're not moulded in the way the character holds the gun, which is to have the pinky sticking out.. This is necessary due to the way the grip of the pistols are shaped. Very Cool doubly fails at this because I'm guessing they wanted to make a few extra bucks, and decided to mould the pinky stuck to the rest of the fingers, where as the prototype on the box at least had it separated to facilitate the function of holding the gun. Lastly, and I'm guessing this is the reason why this figure took so long, is that Very Cool effectively either stole the TBleague tooling and started up their own factory, or they paid TBLeague to create a batch of S23 specifically for their use. While the curves and musculature of that body are there, the material used to make the body looks really bad. It has this very unnatural sheen to it, and feels like to me what would happen if you used half the colouring you would get in a typical TBLeague body.
The good news is that at least you can get around this body issue with a body swap, though it will cost you.
So ultimately, the fact that the figure cannot actually hold its weapons properly is what killed the entire experience of handling this figure. Yeah, the shiny body isn't great, but I could forgive that if Bayonetta could do all sorts of badass gun poses, like she does in the game. But since she can't, this one kind of fails in my eyes, even if her other parts are decent.