Review: Huntress Bishoujo Statue by Kotobukiya

It's been a struggle to come up with stuff to write about lately. If it wasn't for the holidays, I probably wouldn't have anything new by now. With that, let's take a look a Kotobukiya's Huntress bishoujo statue.

I am a fan of Kotobukiya's bishoujo line up because of 3 things:

1. I know the characters from games or comics.
2. I like Shunya Yamashita's sytle.
3. They are reasonably priced. 

And so it was an easy decision for me to get Huntress - a DC character which belongs to the Batman lore. That's all I really knew about Huntress, but googling around changed that.

Like most comic book characters, the character have seen reboots and changes along the way but that's up to the wikis to explain. This particular costume that we have on the statue was based on Jim Lee's costume design of Huntress. If you want to see how Jim Lee drew Huntress, just Google "Jim Lee Huntress".

The overall pose and look is appealing as you can see in these 360 degree shots. The only thing I don't like much is how they've squeezed the chest between the arms...that was unnecessary. And also the unfortunate over extended arms which you will see later.

Aside from those issues, details are pretty abundant. You can find a lot of small pouches holstered around her waist and on her legs.

Straps are also found at the back of her body that hold up the holster system that she has on. I do not know the purpose of the buckle with what looks like a gem in the middle but it does add details to the otherwise straight forward strap system. I suppose a woman needs her jewelry?

A quality issue I found was that one strap didn't connect to the belt...although this was something that I only noticed while I was taking the close up photos.

I like how Huntress is stepping on the gargoyle and the idea of the staff which seems like she's is about to spin it around and hit something. She's wearing some pretty heavy duty boots, which look bad-ass with all the straps and buckles.

The staff has a gun metal finish and it splits in the middle so that we can position it through the hands.

An unfortunate thing though is how broken her arms look as a result of holding the staff. That must hurt.

Also, on Jim Lee's art, you will find that Huntress' arms are heavily detailed with extra straps and padding and that's not the case with our statue here. I suppose Shunya Yamashita might have done this sleeker look to make the statue more feminine? Keeping the padding and straps would have been great and wouldn't make it less feminine since they already did the squeezed chest right?

I do wish that they used a crossbow instead of a staff, because I knew Huntress as a crossbow wielding character first. Kinda like Diablo III's Demon Hunter. Or maybe Kotobukiya could have incorporated both weapons on the statue by maybe resting a crossbow on the gargoyle.

The gargoyle on the base is quite detailed, but I don't know the significance of it's missing wing though or if it means anything at all.

I was surprised though to find some white powdery mess on the base right below the gargoyle's armpits. I don't know what's up with that.

Other than the gargoyle, the base is plain shiny black which attracts dust and fiber particles as you may have noticed from the photos. I think it caries a little bit of static.

The large part of the statue that gives it its dynamism is her cloak. The wavy windswept cloak looks great but it's easy to spot some paint issues on the white trimming.

The cloak is held in place by these boomerang looking things based on character designs. And you can see a little blemish on the right boomerang and some more paint issues on white cloak trimming. Curiously, the next costume design of Huntress switches the orientation of these boomerangs by pointing these inward.

Moving on to the head, I like how Kotobukiya managed the seams on the hair where seams are typically found. They tried to obscure it by not creating a straight seam line and that worked really well to make it less obvious. I even had to brighten up the shot to make it more visible.

Lastly, let's take a look at her face. Taking a photo of the face is a little tricky because her head is tilted downward. Further inspection of the face shows that it is well sculpted and painted and looks good at almost any angle. The face on Huntress is a significant improvement from the earlier Marvel bishoujo statues but it doesn't look like Shunya's artwork. But that's OK for me, as long as the face isn't ugly.

One common comment that I see for Kotobukiya's bishoujo line is the prevalence of "pink eye" or the use of varying degrees pink in lining the eyelids for their statues. As you can see here, maybe a slight pinking but it works for me.

Overall, this is a great statue...except for the bad points which I've shared with you. The highlight of the statue is surely the face, which looks great even at different angles. I wish they'd come up with a variant for her face...and angry or brooding expression suits the character better.