Hatsune Miku Fashion Series "Subculture Ver." by TAITO

Hello, hello. I figured I'd finally get around to writing this considering it's been something I wanted to do for a while now, and the only way to get the ball rolling on this undertaking is to just actually start doing stuff. That's right, my goal is to start reviewing all of my figures. My goal is to get a fair share of them done this year. Hopefully. I probably won't. But if I can get at least a few done, that'd be nice as well.

With that being said, I've really only done 2 reviews (at least for figures) in my life, and I'm in no way a professional. My pictures are kind of sloppy, and I don't really have a solid metric at the current moment. I'd take from MFC's but to be honest, I don't want to continuously lean on their site for everything I do. So for now you just get the same old content. It's me rambling unapologetically about something I like, and the thing I picked to talk about is figures.

This figure specifically is one of the many Piapro characters prize figures--Or Vocaloid, as most people in the west tend to know them by. To be honest, I had always seen the name Piapro around, but I just figured it was an art posting site that had a lot of Vocaloid content and just barely realized that it's the name for the collective that we once knew as the Cryptonloids. I used to pay a lot more attention to the music scene than I do now, so it was kind of a shock reading that while I had been paying no attention to the technical side of stuff that they changed it. I guess that's what happens when you focus more on the character merch. Whatever, a Miku is still a Miku. No matter how you package her. And speaking of Miku...

Here she is! Her outfit is super cute, but before I get into the finer details, let's establish a few other things first.

This Miku is part of the Fashion Series of Miku prize figures put out by Taito. I'm unsure if they're crane prizes or lottery prizes, as I didn't really see any information. Considering she has a blister and I saw no sort of tag to latch onto, I'm guessing she's some sort of lottery prize or something similar to that. Anyways, this line has quite a few figures with varying themes for their outfits, and usually an alternate color for each outfit. For this one, I got the default, but the alternate one is Pink & Black and equally just as cute. The thing that kept me reaching for this one however was that I disliked the purple balloon on the alternate color. So white and black it was.

Either way, a friend picked this figure up for me for around 3000 Yen or 22 USD off of Mercari Japan, and it arrived with many others via our forwarding proxy OneMap, which was formerly known as FromJapan. I don't remember the shipping offhand, but I doubt that she'd ship for more than 30 USD once shipping & fees are factored in. I think last I saw on Mercari US, you can get her for around 45ish USD which balances out the price of having to pay for a proxy.

Oh well, enough of all that, let's get onto talking about the figure.

Starting off with the box, we have uhhh... A very glaring typo. Yeah honestly, I barely noticed it myself but it says Hastune Miku instead of Hatsune. And no, this is not a bootleg. It was purchased directly from a seller who sold within Japan and had no indication that it was an "overseas object" which is usually code for "it's a bootleg." So yeah, she just says Hastune. Multiple people on MFC back this up, so I guess that's a way to tell if yours is legit? I dont know, as I haven't compared her to any bootlegs. Anyways, the box itself is just really thin cardboard with a few shots of her, as well as a close up of the original illustration.

Inside the box is a very standard blister. She has a few sheets of plastic around her to keep from paint transfer, as well as her balloon being stored separately rather than attatched to her hand. Once again, not much special here. But I'm always grateful when the prize figure is nice enough to have a blister rather than just a cardboard layer inside.

So here's a 360 view of her as a whole (in a poor filter, but I took these so long ago that I forgot I did that.) As you can see from these shots, she's a decent size. Her base is a little wide, but I'm unsure if I'd put her fully into shelf hog territory. At the very least, it also has a cute pattern on it. All in all, she's not too big but not so small that she's tiny. Overall, she stands a total of around 7 inches. She has a single peg for her foot on her base, which is pretty firm. I don't think she'll be leaning anytime soon, but I suppose we'll know in a few years, if people start claiming she's become another victim to gravity. Considering it's been a year and some months since her release and nobody's mentioned the word, I doubt she will be.

Anyways, moving onto the closeup shots.

Her face is super cute. I honestly quite like the eyes. I've seen some people complain about the face, which I mean, I guess I can understand the complaint about the (lack of) teeth being a bit odd, but for the most part I think it's fine. I wish the eyes had a little bit more makeup, particularly related to the under-eye bag that most Jirai Kei makeup tends to have. Feels weird to call her Subculture Miku, and lean into that subculture, but not go too into it. So I guess that's my nitpick regarding that. But it's whatever. She's still generally pretty cute, even if she isn't super pien. The heart pupils are especially cute, even if my attempt to zoom in on her with my phone camera doesn't make her look super great.

Her hair is also pretty nice. I love the fade from her normal teal hair to this pastel pink, accented further by the fact that it's also translucent. It's a nice touch, along with the balloon and it's brighter, more pearlescent paint. The little heart shaped cowlick at the top is also a great touch and fits with the overall vibe of the figure.

A shot of her from behind. Just as her front is incredibly detailed, so is her back. Really neat to see that they went the extra mile to paint the studs on her belt all the way around, considering how tiny they are. The way her braids wrap around her buns is also still fairly detailed on the back of her head as well. For a prize, she's really neat.

Finally, the details from the front. The first one shows off her shoes and her base. The base itself has an incredibly cute design. Honestly, I really like it. Most times, bases tend to be incredibly bland with prize figures, just being a black or white disk, or alternatively, a black or white hexagon. But for this, they printed some lace and a bow. The stockings and shoes are also super cute.

Moving up, the frills on the overall outfit are pretty nice. They're not super intricate, nor are they particularly well shaded, but they do their job. Considering this is a prize, I don't tend to see a lot of shading on frills like this. Instead they ust tend to rely on the natural shading of displaying the figure. Oh well, no big deal. When you pay 20 dollars for a figure, it's kind of what you grow to expect.

Last but not least, the details of the choker and the various hardware that adorns her outfit being metallic is also very cute. I feel like there's not much to say about this, other than the fact that it was painted pretty well and doesn't seem to have a ton of errors.

Overall, I think this is a pretty good figure. She isn't super amazing, but she's a good sampling of what modern Miku prize figures (and prizes in general) tend to be like. The quality has definitely improved for several companies, and it's a great inexpensive way to get into collecting, especially with a super cute piece.

The Positives

• Inexpensive, assuming you don't end up paying a ton for shipping.
• Fairly good packaging, won't get ruined in transit due to the blister protecting her
• Has a cute design on the base, keeping it from being a plain puck with nothing special going on.
• Comes in two different colorways, both of them hovering around the same price.
• Paint job fairly nice

The Negatives

• Like most prize figures, she doesn't have any real shading on her
• Not too many imperfections, but the chance for imperfections always tends to be higher on prize figures. That isn't unique to this figure though, so take that as is.
• Support from the base is only on one foot. May possibly cause leaning in the future, but it's unsure if it will or not

With that said, I hope this helps anyone decide on whether or not they want to buy her. She's one of many on MFC that doesn't have any reviews to my knowledge. This isn't the most well written review out there, and admittedly, the pictures could be better. But for now, hopefully it'll be one of many to come out. And with that said, maybe the quality of my reviews will improve with time. Or at the very least, the pictures.