Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City Collection 世界樹の迷宮III 星海の来訪者 コレクションフィギュア

Hmmmm, what to say about these figures, what indeed. They're not terrible, they're not poorly made, they're actually very well made for trading figures, intricately detailed, varied in pose, but they do have one problem that a lot of Japanese toys have: their stand. Most Japanese toys aren't free-standing, and whether they're poseable or not, they usually include some sort of stand or even more - a system of some sort to pose them. But in quite a few instances, companies take liberties with these stands, or get creative, and the solutions they come up with get downright awful at times. Early Nendoroid stands were hideous, with just a 3/4 ring that fit around the figure's waist to hold them up. When you design something to be SD (with a big head, yeah, like that), you kinda want something that's going to hold your top-heavy figure up. My Death Note Nendos all have marks on their heads from where they fell so many times onto my shelf before I finally took it upon myself to replace or tune up their stands. Recently, a few companies have started putting magnets in various places (back of the head, feet) on their figures. I am a HUGE fan of this method, and luckily some Nendos have adopted this design ethic. Before the magnet method, I was a great fan of the "peg in the foot" method. That said, to my knowledge I've never bought a CM's Corporation trading figure product before, but they easily have the worst stand system of anything I've ever seen. First, the stands included consist of the ubiquitous upside-down petri dish-shaped plastic disc to stand the figure on, which would've been easy enough to just put a peg on and be done with it. But, as I said, all of the figures have vastly different poses, so I'm thinking they were trying to save money by producing non-unique stands. Each figure also comes with a plastic model-like "rack" of little pipes and pegs and things that look like incomplete bubble wands to help stand the figure. This wouldn't be such an issue if any of the figures had holes in them or obvious places to put the support parts in/on/through. Also, all of the plastic parts are cheap, rigid, brittle plastic that will splinter or break fairly easily. In the case of one figure, the monk, I had to lean her on a peg awkwardly. It's just strange that such nicely done figures would have such a moronic, poorly produced support included with them. Much worse than the Disgaea 4 figures I got a few months back, with magnets in their feet and full color, metallic bases to stick them to that work like a dream. ^^ Also odd, but cute, is the inclusion of a farmer figure, lol.