Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurine Vol. 1 Set

Product Information/Specifications

Introduction

When I visited J-Hobby, I noticed that they had the Konami Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1.  This was about four months after they were first released.  Luckily, the owner let me open the boxes to see if I can get one set instead of two.  One inner box gives two sets & I didn't know what to do with the other set if I got that.

The Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1 have made way for Konami to make more of these figurines in other series such as Rumble Roses.  Plus, it created more Negima figurines with more characters & styles.  Currently, the Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1 have been sold out for a long time.  From my shopping experience, I think these have been reissued once.  There is a special showcase version that was sold in a convention & they are packaged in blister cards.  I think the difference between the normal version to the showcase one is the brighter colours used in the showcase version.

The Review

Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1 Box

The box of the Figumate is quite big for a small trading figure.  When you open the box, you would probably go "That's it????"  when you look inside.  There's a lot of empty space since it only contains one trading figurine & one small accessory.  For the price it's at, it would have been better for Konami to go with the gashapon approach.  Anyways, future Figumates were packaged different afterwards. 

On the side of the box, it tells you (by visual picture) that you can use the figurines in this volume with volume two to interchange the parts.  The picture can be viewed here.  Note that the right pic of Asuna is not in volume two.  That's just for display purposes.  From the looks of it, I believe Konami is trying to grab the market that BabySue's Pinky has since you can change the parts around.  But, this kind of method has been use long before Pinkys were made.  People were doing this approach of switching heads with gashapon figures, provided that the pegs fit.  Pinky just uses this method by using trendy styles & making the parts very universal with other past, present, & future Pinkys.  Konami did the same with their future Figumate trading figurines, regardless of what series they are from.

 
Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1 Full Set

There are five trading figurines in the set.  Figurines in the set are Konoka Konoe, Kagurazaka Asuna,  Makie Sasaki, Nodoka Miyazaki, & Fei Ku.  Each comes with an accessory that pretty much fit their characters, like Asuna's paper fan, as shown in the pic above.  There is very little assembly required since you only need to put the head to the body.

For this current lineup, the figurines are very plain.  Except for Fei Ku, all of them are wearing the same uniforms & shoes.  No use in mixing & matching here unless you want to have Fei Ku's shoes on some other girl's body.  As mentioned, these are similar to Pinkys.  You can remove the arms, heads, & shoes (except for Fei Ku).  For some of them, you can remove their hair extensions like their pig tails.  The accessories are useless since you can't put them in their hands.  The hands are all flat open palms.  The future Figumates have clamp-like hands to hold things, something like the hands of Lego people & Kubricks.  I've storage away the accessories from this volume to prevent them from going missing when I was displaying them.

As for the durability of the Figumate figurines, it's terrible.  They can barely stand on their own.  I have to adjusted the feet & heads in order for them to stand.  It would be been nice to have a base for them as it was frustrating at times to make them stand upright.  Luckily, the parts are loose for easy adjustability.  But that was a problem as well.  Some of them would have their arms come off when I try to adjust their heads.  Also, when Makie Sasaki falls down, she breaks into pieces so easily.  Her legs & dress would come off since she is too loose.  This is from tripping over only.  Let's look at the paint job now.

The paint job isn't the best as there are bleeds & unfinished areas with uneven amounts of paint.  The bells on Asuna's head has paint bleeds of the bell going to the pigtails.  The buttons on the school uniforms are just small daps from a paintbrush.  The molding isn't too much of a problem, but there are some in some areas.  But those are pretty much expected from ¥300 trading figures.

Some of the faces of Negi Springfield's students

Although the eyes are designed the same way, they somehow look different.  The eyelashes, colour tones, & probably the expressions from their mouths.  It's very adorable.  The painters here did a good job in bring life to these figurines by somehow making them look different when they actually aren't.  The facial expressions matches each girl's characteristics very well.  Oh so kawaii!

Overall Conclusion

The Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1 isn't a very well made set.  There are a lot of problems with the parts not holding together & the issue of them not standing upright properly.  Plus, you can't really interchange them around since they all have the same clothing.  Konami learned something about this volume & made a lot of improvements to the future Figumates.  In the past, I got a lot of the Figumates in this series but stopped.  I have sold these due to lack of interest.

The Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines Vol. 1 gets a 6.5/10 from me.  Although they are cute, they are just too plain with the same clothing they are wearing.  Plus, the accessories that they have do nothing but lying around them on the shelves.  Also, making them stand upright is a pain.

Unless you want the heads for future Figumate trading figurines, I would recommend not getting this.  There are too many problems with this volume.  In later Figumate Mahou Sensei Negima Trading Figurines volumes, there are re-appearances of the characters here; such as Asuna coming back in volume three.  But the head is a bit different in terms of the facial expression.  Plus, the later volumes have different clothing for each girl so you can interchange them within that set.

If you plan to get them, chances are slim now since it has been out for a long time.  Prices for volume 1 is quite low as it seems to lack the interest of fans & is poorly made.  The characters in this volume made reappearances in later volumes.

 
AHAHAHAHA!!!!

Photos were taken using Sony DSC-F828 digital still camera & HP scanjet 4470c.

Last updated on March 12, 2008