I finally got my 1/10 scale Belldandy with Holy Bell statue by Max Factory during the holidays and it was worth the wait. Needless to say, this is one of the more eagerly anticipated statue for 2013 for people like me and we waited many years to finally get this scale figure. Here are my thoughts...
A long long time ago, this drawing from the Ah My Goddess! series was adopted and made into a garage kit - a statue that needs to be assembled and painted by the buyer - and it was a very much liked kit. But some people like me just did not have time, skill, and patience to assemble and painstakingly paint the statue from the ground up. And also, I started collecting late and only knew about this statue by reading some old articles. So it was no surprise that a new pre-painted Belldandy with Holy Bell PVC scale figure was welcomed by many folks like me.
So to start things, feel free to view some 360° shots of this wonderful work of art.
And a couple of overhead shots.
Here's a closer shot of the base. As we can see, the detailing on the bass is quite nice. It even comes with a 25th anniversary plate with a serial number.
The statue comes in 3 pieces: the base, Belldandy, and Holy Bell. Planting Belldandy on the bass was an easy process. The base has 2 metal pegs with different sizes to make sure that we can put it on one way, and the metal pegs match 2 different sized holes at bottom of the Belldandy piece.
What's actually more interesting is how Holy Bell connects to the back of Belldandy. The this sliver of wispy drape from Holy Bell ends at the back of Belldandy and connects by way of two metal pegs.
The end of Holy Bell's cream colored wisp gradients to orange and may be a little tricky to spot in the photos above, but we have a better shot below to show what I'm talking about. The cream wisp is coming from the top left in this photo. We can see the seam where the two pieces meet as well.
The spacing between Belldandy and Holy Bell is quite tight. Essentially, Holy Bell is held up by the this sliver of plastic material so it was no surprise that the sliver would flex to the weight of Holy Bell. There is a hair line gap between the two and I think Holy Bell would eventually rest on Belldandy's head if you put the figure out on display. A piece of plastic from the packaging might be put to good use to prevent paint transfer.
Once set up, we've got a 1/10th scale figure that's a little over a foot tall.
Let's now move on to the details of the Belldandy figure. Belldandy's eyes are closed and is depicted with a serene and calm expression, which is true to the character.
Here are some details found on Belldandy. Starting from the top, moving left to right, she has some huge earrings on with a fairly intricate design. Then some pseudo bead work that's strung along a thin metal wire dangling around her torso. Also wrapping her torso is a vest like clothing with some paint work. Next, we can see what Belldandy is sitting on, and some gold pegs that serve as ends of her orange drape. Then we can see the curly ends of Belldandy's hair...those really thin ones are actually metal wires like the ones used for the bead work. Last from this set shows us how the drape ends at the base of the Belldandy piece.
In the left here, is the base of the Belldandy piece. That section is the heaviest part of the Belldandy piece, which is probably intended for stability. To the right we have a shot to show her hands.
Here's a shot from another angle. Notice the "manicure".
In this shot we have a closer view that shows how she's sitting on that cloud. I'm really amazed with all the folds and gradients done on the drape.
Moving on to Holy Bell and her absolutely amazing angel wings. Kudos to Max Factory for what they have done with the wings.
As we can see, Holy Bell is as angelic as can be. I'm just gonna let the photos speak for themselves.
It is amazing how thin the feathers are as we can see in the left image. The folks at Myjhobby actually asked me to check my scale figure immediately because they've heard some figures came out of the box with damaged wings. I can understand how easy these things could break so I'm thankful that the wings on my copy are perfect. On the right we can see how the feathers are arranged.
Here's how Holy Bell looks like from the back...and some cleverly positioned wisp.
Here is the wisp that swirls down to the back of Belldandy. We can see the structural design here and it is actually probable that Max Factory embedded some metal wires to make it stronger.
Here are a couple of closer shots from the top. I really enjoy how detailed Holy Bell's hair is and how it's swirly. The right photo shows us the drape that she's holding on to from the top.
In this portrait below, we can also see that drape, her angelic face, and her floaty hair. A nice thing to highlight is the use of wire for that one thin sliver of hair from her bangs. As I was assembling the statue, I twanged that wire a few times and I was glad it did not fall out.
Keeping in mind that 1/10 scale is smaller, we can just imagine how much more challenging it was to add in all the details for the statue. So it was no surprise that the statue I got had some minor workmanship issues that I only noticed while looking at the pictures. I'm talking about some small gloops of paint in some areas and I wish they did a slightly better paint job on Belldandy's vest. But those are so minor and can't be noticed unless you look for them. It's up to you to judge whether that's acceptable for a statue like this.
Having said that, this scale figure is absolutely a keeper. And if you passed up this figure, or maybe you're someone new to the scale figure world...well, I hope you get a chance to own this statue somehow.
With that, I wish you all a happy new year and may this year be a good one for all of us.
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