Trinity Box #4: Nida Schuetlich

Product Information/Specifications

Introduction

When I first saw Nida Schuetlich on the net, I immediately wanted to get her.  I preordered her right away at YesAsia when preorders were opened.  She became my first Shuraki figurine to get ordered, but the second one to arrive at my door.  I was pretty sad when she was delayed for two months due to production problems.

Some of the pictures aren't clear & good.  If I have time, I'll redo the bad ones & repost them.

The Review

Trinity Box #4 Nida Schuetlich in box

Nida Schuetlich was created/illustrated by Shunya Yamashita.  This was why Nida was hot in demand at the time when she was announced.  Like all Trinity Boxes, they come with a drama CD & illustration booklet with the figurine.  Plus the Trinity Box package is the same as the other Shuraki figurines: the traditional black box packaging.

 
Nida Shuraki Media Extras

Like other past Shuraki figurines, Nida comes with a 24 page illustration book done by Shunya Yamashita.  The book not only contains illustrations, but character profiles & interviews with the Shuraki cast.  The book is mainly text heavy.

The CD contains a character song titled Anfang which is sang by Nida who is voiced by Chiba Saeko.  Personally, her voice is a bit on the cute side to do this character.  That is based on my impression of Nida.  Before the character song is the Drama tracks of the story of Shuraki.  Like the Trinity Box number indicates, this is volume four of the series.

Nida in plastic casing

There's some minor disassembling required for Nida when you pull her out of the box to remove the plastic protecting wrapping from her.  You basically need to attach her to her base & put her weapon of either the rifle or knife in her right hand.  There are some nice accessories for the gun as you can make it long or short. The knife comes in two separate forms.  There's the one with the blade & one without to put her knife hostler.  Aside from the media bonuses, Nida comes with the Shuraki traditional interchangable battle damaged outfit.

Nida from different sides

The pose that Nida sports is a static one where it looks like she's getting ready for battle.  Although I'm not into static poses, the way she carries that big gun sold me.  The hat she has is loose & comes off easily.  It doesn't use a peg system to keep it attached to her head.  I had it fall off many times & searching for it was a pain. 

The assembly of Nida to the base was a bit confusing at first.  Usually I follow the letters under the base where you can read it correctly when you tilt figures from the bottom when they are facing to you.  It's backwards for this one for some reason.  I nearly (or perhaps did) damage the peg holds under Nida's feet as the hole look about the same size for each foot.  Plus, you need some force as her right foot doesn't seem to want to connect to the peg smoothly.

Putting the gun into Nida's right hand was very tough.  Even though she comes with an instruction sheet on how to put the gun on as well as how to strip her, it wasn't an easy process.  I really had to jam her hand into the handle & play around with her thumb to get it to fit in.  Luckily the hand is very soft so I didn't need to worry too much about breaking it. 

Even when you get the hand to hold the gun, putting it back to her arm was very tough as well.  The peg alignment is kind of off as it was hard to put it in.  More worse is putting the arm back into Nida's body.  Either the positioning of the gun or the thickness of it prevented it from going in smoothly.  It caused her full body uniform to break apart & it had to realign the pegs of her clothing many times to make it stay in place & look right.  It really frustrated me a lot & wonder why this wasn't fixed during the release delay.

The paint job on Nida's full uniform isn't too bad.  There are quite a number of paint bleeds & uneven areas.  Most of it comes from the red.  As for the other parts, they are done very well.  Even with little to no bleeds compared to the red.  The hat is nicely painted as well.

The molding of the gun is nice.  It's made of plastic ABS I think as it has the same feeling & texture as Gundam model kits.  When I held it, it gave me the impression that I was holding a Gundam rifle instead.  The assembly of the gun to switch forms is easy.  But it requires some force as the parts are pretty tight.

As for the molding of the body, it's very smooth.  The clothing is very soft, so you don't need to worry about breaking it when removing it from Nida's body; especially with the pegs.

The boots are nicely molded as well.  Nice creases & the paint gives it that leather like appearance.

For the base, it's nicely done as well as you can see the broken floor marks Nida is standing on.  Even the feeling of the floor has some roughness.

The removal of Nida's full uniform is from the sides.  As illustrated in the instruction sheet, you need to open up the sides & pull it from the top after removing her head.  The process is easy to do.  Be careful as the arms are attached to the uniform as well.  Putting the uniform back was a problem as the peg alignment isn't too friendly.  Let's move on to her battle damaged uniform now.

 
Nida's battle damaged uniform

The assembling of the battle damaged uniform is a bit complicated to do as there are pegs on the front around the tie & on the right arm shelve.  The front was the hardest to keep on.  Keep in mind that the hands need to be removed from the original arms as no extra hands are provided.  Removal of the uniform isn't too hard as there are little restrictions placed on it.

The paint job on this busted uniform isn't too bad.  Nicely done that you can't probably tell if there are actual bleeds on it; especially the red.

For the molding, very nice.  The rips look good & yet clean.  But some people may think the rips are too nicely done in terms on how even it looks.

For the knife, it's nicely done down to the panel lines.  Nicely painted & molded into detail.

I should have talked about Nida's right hand earlier, but the pics don't have me going at that order.  As you can see, the hand isn't shaped nicely in appearance very much.  Plus the shaping of it makes it hard to put the gun in.  The knife is loose in there, but I'm not sure if it's because I was handling the hand roughly at the start when I was putting the gun in there.  Basically, you need to move Nida's thumb out to get the gun in there & it's a lot of work than it sounds.  For the knife, just slip it in carefully as it can actually slip right out easily.

Nida in her undies

Earlier on, I was talking about how Nida's body is molded nicely.  In her semi-naked form, the body proportions are visually portrayed beautifully in 3D form.  Although I'm no fan of figurines in undies, but that tight short pantie is kind of too much for me as you can see her butt crack almost.  Paint job wise, it's nicely done even though there's hardly anything to colour & the parts being small.

Since Nida is separated at the waist, you should see the joint crack around there.  If you place Nida's nicely, you can hardly see it.  It's like the figurine is one piece.  Very smooth.

The only problem I have a bit with Nida is how her left hand isn't really touching her body.  It's flying off of there.  The same applies to both of her uniforms.  Technically it's a good thing as part removal it easy & won't scratch the paint job from the uniform (as if it can be possible with normal part changing).  But appearance wise, it looks a bit weird.

Nida's face does have Shunya's work on it.  Everything from the eyes to the nose.  I really like how her face is done.  Even the red lip is nicely done.  By the way, the face is etched in except the lip colour.  Makes her look hot & sexy.  For the hairstyle, I personally don't like it too much with the sides swaying out at the bottom.

Overall Conclusion

Nida Schuetlich is a very nice figurine.  The pose is sexy & hot even though it is static.  The workmanship on her isn't too bad even though there are some red paint bleeds.  The molding is great as the body is nicely shaped.  I plan to keep Nida on the shelf with no plans for her to be put back in the box.  I may change her between uniforms at times if I feel like it.

On a scale of ten, Nida Schuetlich nails a nine in my books.  The excellent workmanship on the body & cute face with that pose.  Problem with the figurine is the placement of her gun being very difficult.  Very frustrating & possibly time consuming.  The hat falling off is a bit of a minor problem.

If you are thinking about getting Nida, it will not be too hard to find as it seems.  There are few place left that actually still carry her.  The price is a bit higher than the suggested Japanese retail price.  I personally recommend getting her if you can as it seems Shuraki figurines are hard to get even though some of them get re-released again later on.  But I heard that this Shuraki figurine is the least popular out of the five girls.  Don't know why.

Photos were taken using Canon EOS 40D with EF 28 - 135mm lens.  Photos were reduced in size for easy browsing.

Last updated on June 9, 2008