1/7 Monster Figure Collection "Apprentice Illusion Magician" Shibuya Scramble Figure by eStream

Woah what a mouthful of a title. Anyways, here's another review. The last of the ones I had pictures already finished for. Now, I gotta get around to taking more pictures, but that's a later issue. But in the meanwhile, let's get to this figure.

Anyways, this is part of the Monster Figure Collection for YGO, and oh boy is she stunning. Once again, this one belongs to a friend, and I'm so grateful to be able to review her. She's so pretty. Honestly, if I had the space for her, I wish I had one of my own. But I suppose at this rate, I'll probably say that about every figure I review. Oh well, I guess it will just have to be that way. Back to the topic at hand though, Shibuya Scramble figures tend to be very impressive, at least based on the pictures I've seen. They tend to have very large bases and feel like an illustration come to life. From seeing this one in person, I was definitely impressed. I hadn't even heard of this brand before seeing this figure.

As for the other line this figure is a part of, the Monster Figure Collection mainly focuses on monsters from the OCG. Since I'm not super familiar with the OCG or the TCG as I don't play (I am honestly just here for pretty cards and tokens of Kaiba), I can't really comment much there. But a lot of the figures are pretty cute, even if they are moreso related to modern YGO and less to the DM era that I'm more familiar with--Not that I'm complaining about that. After all, outside of this line, DM tends to get plenty of monster figures. It's more of a "Outside of thinking the designs are cute, I can't say much." Well, past the fact that most of them look really good for a line that is like 75% waifu card figures with a handful of dragons.

What I do know is that despite all that, Apprentice Illusion Magician seems to generally be along the lines of "Dark Magician Girl" variants, at least in design. Apparently her design is based off of Mana's appearance which, to be honest, having seen the way Mana looks colored, I felt confused initially. The coloring feels a lot more like Malik's rather than Mana's, as she tends to have dark brown hair. But I suppose looking at uncolored manga panels, it definitely fits a lot more. Oh well, it be like that. Either way, she's super cute.

So, let's start talking about pricing. Apparently this figure ended up costing somewhere around 24800 yen, which is close to 200 USD. It also cost around 100 USD to ship, but considering there was proxy involved, that's factoring in domestic shipping within Japan and proxy fees. I believe she also was only able to be shipped via EMS or ECMS, and not Air Mail, so there's that as well, driving up the costs. After all, her box is pretty large. Basically if you're looking to get her, expect to pay a decent amount.

And here's a shot of her! Really pretty figure. Base is absolutely huge though. I had a lot of fun taking this shot and finding stuff to go with her. I don't have a lot of purple stuff, but I did have that lamp I bought a while back. And I thought it being purple and gold, as well as that generally being Mana's color scheme for this figure, that they'd look perfect together. Unfortunately, I do not have her card, otherwise I would have put it with her. What a shame.

Her box is a traditional figure box. As in, it's made of cardboard, has printed sides, information on the back, and a window in the front. Honestly, I prefer figure boxes like this rather than those clear abominations. They're a step up from prize figure boxes as well as the box itself tends to be sturdy, and offering a window always helps with being able to tell if the figure inside is real. Except in this shot because I have no idea what's being reflected off the window of the box. Wish I knew lol.

I only took one side image, because both sides are identical to one another. Might as well save as much space on the server as I can if it's just going to be the same thing twice. Though admittedly, I did indeed take 2 different images.

The blister in this case is double layered, and I forgot to take more pictures of that. Which would have been actually helpful. In the front we have the figure of Mana herself, and in the back is her base and effects. They're stacked together, with the base supporting the figure from behind in the blister. Each part has a lid of its own, so it's pretty secure. And there's a lot of plastic wrap in attempt to keep paint transfers from happening. Putting her back in the blister was a pain, so be careful when boxing her up for storage as it can kind of be a headache. At several points, I thought I was wrong with how I placed her, only to realize later that I was right the first time and had tried a different angle, only to be wrong. Oh well.

A rather large 360 view gallery for her this time. After all, a big figure deserves uh... more pictures. Including ones that just didn't get centered. Not sure why I still included those despite the fact that they are just uhhh not very great images. Oh well. It be like that, I suppose. If you wanted professional figure reviews, you came to the wrong blog.

Anyways, as you can tell, she's definitely very large. And space is definitely going to have to be something to keep in mind with her. She's definitely a shelf hog, and if you use risers with her, she's going to get very tall very fast. After all, she's a little over 12 1/2 inches tall, 9 1/3 inches wide, and 7 1/3 inches in length? I'm getting these measurements from MFC, as I do all my other measurements, but I'm unsure how to write that without it sounding a bit awkward, so here's the exact measurements:

W=240mm (9.36in) L=188mm (7.33in) H=323mm (12.6in, 1:1=2.26m)

Details time. And oh boy, there sure are a lot of them. From minor touches like the popping turquoise of her jewlery, to the warm gold of all the embellisments of her outfit, there's so much to take in. And it all looks fantastic. I suppose my only complaint is the fact that you can see the seam of the staff due to how it's inserted? But also, you don't really notice it unless you're super close up. So, it's kind of a non issue.

So, I feel like there's not much to say about her outfit from the front that hasn't been covered by the above paragraph, so I'll move on to the most part, to the back. Which brings me to talking about the hair, and by extension, the hat. And that's where I have a bit of... I don't want to call them issues, but it's definitely something to talk about. There's no way to put it, this hair is fragile. Like yes, it's made of PVC as most anime figures with long hair tend to be, so it's not so brittle that it's going to immediately snap or anything. But it definitely feels fragile while putting her together. I couldn't help but feel super wary that I was going to somehow snap something the entire time I was putting her together. Nervewracking for sure. So do be careful.

Another thing to note is the hat, like I said. So it doesn't click into place. It just rests on her head. Even I couldn't help but feel like it could slip off if I moved her suddenly. So maybe bluetack might be an option to look into. I could totally see the hat slipping off if there was something like an earthquake.

Let's move onto the base, since I already covered the staff. That, and there's not much you can stay about a staff, to be honest. It's there, and it's just as detailed as everything else.

The base is probably the most daunting part. It's made up of 2 pieces. The first piece is the absolute bottom. It contains the effect and her magic circle. The next is the effects coming from where she stands, which then rise up and surround her. The assembly is very simple. You put the effect on the peg, and then you slide her in. But definitely be careful with the hair, because at first it felt like the way that she was inserted, that if one wasn't paying attention that you could end up snapping her hair.

For the most part, she feels pretty secure. I'm unsure if she'll have leaning issues in the future though. After all, she just has pegs she slots into, and not any sort of metal support rod. Which I get it, a metal support rod would require a different kind of base, and they probably didn't want to have that compromise the vision they had for her. But I guess the age old question of "WILL IT LEAN?" is always the first thing one thinks of when seeing bases and poses like this.

After everything said, I think this is a really spectacular figure. Probably the most spectacular one I've seen in person since the GSC Ultimate Madoka from way back in 2013 or so. I'm not sure about her current availability, but I get the feeling she's probably still expensive due to how big she is.

Would I recommend her though? That's a hard call. I don't want to say a definite yes, because I think it's a very case by case situation. Do you like OCG or stuff that's very Duel Monsters era? Do you have plenty of space and spare cash to toss at a figure of this size? If so, get her. If you don't have space or the cash, there's plenty of other DMG and tangentally related monster figures for much cheaper, smaller size, etc.

The Positives

• Everything looks great.
• Incredibly fantastic looking base
• The paint job is spectacular
• Extreme attention to detail.

The Negatives

• Big. She will take up a lot of shelf space, and she's quite weighty as well.
• Expensive as hell. You get what you pay for, but I don't blame anyone from being put off on the price here.
• Very fragile hair.
• There's nothing to really anchor her hat, so it will fall off. Consider bluetack, maybe.

Either way, I'm really happy to see this figure in person because she looks great. I wish I could have my own, but in all honesty I have no earthly idea on where I'd put her. So being able to review her makes me happy enough. Once again, thanks to my bestie for giving me the opportunity to be able to write this.