Hooray! Anime Saturday is back again! I’m having a lazy morning, sipping some coffee and opening up a brand new Kantai Collection “Super Premium” figure from SEGA. I last visited with this line back in May of last year when I looked at the three Destroyers: Fubuki, Mutsuki, and Yuudachi. These are technically still prize figures, but they’re also closer to fully scaled figures and I found them to be remarkable, especially considering how ridiculously cheap they were. Today, I’m checking out the big mama of them all, Secretary Ship Nagato! And what lies ahead are some choppy waters filled with both delight and disappointment.

While the Destroyers came in window boxes, Nagato comes in a fully enclosed and very colorful box with lots of pictures and very little in the way of English text. It’s a pretty damn big box too! The Destroyers were large for prize figures and Nagato is similarly scaled, measuring in at a little over 9-inches tall. Between that and her wide stance, the box had to be considerably larger. Inside, the figure comes nestled between two clear plastic trays with the stand detached. All you have to do is plug her into the base and she’s good to go. But wait… that’s it? Isn’t there something missing? Well, that’s the disappointing part, and I’ll save that for the end.

…because everything else here is nothing but wonderful. Nagato is absolutely gorgeous and it’s hard to believe that she qualifies as a prize figure by any stretch of the imagination. The Secretary Ships, Nagato and Mutsu are my favorite two character designs from the anime and it’s awesome to see one of them get this Super Premium format treatment. The costume includes her sleek rudder boots, crimson stockings, which are held up by straps that attach to her armament belt, and secured by adorable little anchor snaps! She has a very short white skirt, and her cut-off top exposes her midriff and shoulders, and her long, finger-less gloves. I also love the simple but effective pose here.  She’s looks so damn majestic standing there with her right hand on her rigging belt and her left arm thrust out, about to issue the order to attack the cursed Abyssinal Fleet.

The quality of plastic and paintwork on this figure are both exceptional. The colors are vibrant and the lines are so sharp, you really need to get in pretty close to see any imperfections. When you take a budget-priced prize figure and blow it up to this scale, I would expect to see plenty of opportunities for sloppy paint work, but there’s simply no evidence of that here. What’s more, the skin tones are soft and even and the plastic looks and feels great.

The portrait is spot on, with Nagato offering up a characteristically stern and defiant expression. I really dig the way her long hair crowns the head and blows majestically in the breeze and her big beautiful eyes are perfectly printed. Naturally, the head sculpt includes her radar and antenna array.

The simple black disc base is absolutely huge to accommodate her wide stance, but it looks kind of vacant. It also has a rectangular outline in the front. What could that be for? So, yeah… here comes the disappointing part. She’s obviously missing her 41cm Twin Gun Mount. This was one of the rare cases where the figure and armaments were sold separately. The Outfitting Kit included a second stand to display the gun mount independently, but you could also combine it with the figure and stand. I knew this going in, but the seller stated that both were included. When just the figure arrived and I challenged the seller, the response was ship it back for a refund. The truth was, I love the figure, and opted to take a hit and keep her.

Nagato set me back $40 shipped, which admittedly would have been an amazing price for both the figure and Gun Mount. But hell, even for just the figure, the price seems right. And besides, Nagato spent 95% of the anime without her weaponry, so she’s absolutely fine displayed this way. In that regard, it feels like a crime to come away from this beautiful figure with any sense of disappointment. She’s simply amazing in every way. But in the end, I couldn’t let it stand, so I’ve got her Gun Mount coming from another seller in Japan. Naturally, when it arrives I’ll get her all kitted out and we’ll take a second look!

What’s that? You can’t get enough of me droning on about Kantai Collection figures on Saturday mornings? Well, alright then, let’s check out another one! Today I’m turning my attention back to SEGA and the first Aircraft Carrier in my KanColle collection… Akagi!

Akagi comes in a window box, with just the one window on the front panel. This makes the box fairly durable, but without the top or side windows to let the light in, it’s hard to really scrutinize the figure from inside the package. You get the Kantai Collection logo on the top panel and character art on the side panels. I really like the gradient pink to blue coloring on the box. Other than “Aircraft Carrier” there’s virtually no English copy on the box at all, not even Akagi’s name. Before opening her up, it’s worth noting that this is a Premium Figure and not a Super Premium, so she is not in scale with the Destroyers from SEGA, which I looked at a little while back. Those were full on 9-inches, where Akagi here is closer to 6-inch, putting her more in line with Taito and Furyu’s KanColle releases.

And… here she is! Besides the usual plugging her feet into the base, Akagi involves some assembly before she’s ready to go. She comes with her Yumi (bow) in two pieces, seven arrows on a sprue, a packet of fishing line for her bow string, and a sheet of stickers for the arrow feathers. I’ve heard horror stories about setting up the bow and how fragile it is, but I didn’t have any issues. You just feed the larger piece into her left hand from the bottom and tab it into the grip. The shorter bow piece pegs into that one. You pass the string through the notch on one end, wrap it a few times and pass it through again, draw it as tight as you want it, and then do the same on the bottom. The excess that I snipped off is enough for another bow string should I ever need it. The stickers for the arrows are easy to put on. One arrow is meant to be held in her right hand and the others go into her quiver. If you aren’t familiar with Kantai Collection (I’m sorry!) the Aircraft Carriers fire their arrows into the sky, which then turn into squadrons of airplanes (bombers, fighters, or scouts) to engage the Abyssal forces.

Akagi stands at attention with her Yumi held at rest in her left hand and her right hand clutching an arrow to her chest. I strung the bow a little snug to show its curves. Like all the Fleet Girl Carriers, Akagi’s costume is strongly influenced by Kyudo garb, which ties in with the fact that the Carriers in KanColle function as archers with long-ranged attacks. Sculpted details feature some nice touches, including the strings that hold the armor pieces in place, the ruffling of her loose top, and even little wrinkles in the knees of her stockings. The coloring here isn’t terribly vibrant, but the combination of red skirt and quiver with the slightly off-white blouse and stockings is attractive enough. You also get some very neatly applied silver fixtures on her belts and straps.

Her quiver has the mast aerial attached to it and it’s sculpted with a strap that “holds” it in place around her shoulder, although in reality it is permanently attached to her. Unlike the Destroyers and Battleships, Akagi doesn’t have a lot of bulky ship parts on her. Besides the quiver aerial she just has a component on her right hip that she wears almost like a handbag. The quiver itself is a simple tube and all the arrows can easily fit inside. On her feet, she wears a pair of Zori (sandals), which have what look like miniature super-deformed carrier hulls under them, allowing her to skate across the surface of the ocean.

On her right arm she wears her Carrier deck in place of a shield. These are also used to recover her planes, assuming they survive their sortie to make a return trip. The printing on the deck looks particularly nice.

I do have one little quibble about this figure and that’s the look of the plastic in a few areas. The feel of the quality in hand is fine, but it does give her face and blouse a waxy complexion in certain light. Granted, this is a pet peeve of mine that I point out whenever I see it, even though it’s hardly noticeable when she’s standing on my display shelf under normal room lighting. There’s also some rather obvious seam lines throughout, but then I have to keep reminding myself that this is a relatively “low end” piece.

The base here is a simple black plastic disc, which is rather compact, so it doesn’t hog up a lot of real estate on the shelf. Of course, the Yumi extends out pretty far, so this is a figure that’s still going to need some space to display.

While the quality of the plastic here feels like a notch below Taito’s work in this scale, it’s really a minor quibble over a figure that goes above and beyond to impress. The figure itself is fine, but it’s the gear and extras that makes Akagi such a noteworthy piece. Besides the great sculpt and nearly flawless paint, the extra bits like the strung bow and the arrows for the quiver are just fantastic. Keep in mind, this is an import that usually sells in the $20-25 range and I got mine for $22 shipped. Besides being a great showpiece, Akagi was an important and memorable character in the anime series, not to mention Fubuki’s girl-crush, so adding her to my KanColle shelf was a huge win! And maybe someday I’ll pony up for her Figma too!