Tets' Toys and Shenanigans: Touhou figma Aya Shameimaru

Curse my weakness for the likes of Japanese mythological creatures. I had seen picture of this figma and managed to avoid it, but then a friend confirmed my suspicions that this character was based off of the legend of the Japanese Tengu (Wikipedia have a good section to find out about these guys). That sent me on a hunt to find it before it became too damn rare (and by rare I mean pricey). Obviously I succeeded otherwise this gallery and review of Aya Shameimaru wouldn’t be happening.

When I first saw the pics of Aya, I had my feelings tell me that she was somewhat Tengu like. The shoes, the wings and most of all the fan gave me a pretty good impression of that, but I managed to ignore it fairly successfully. Until I had 100% confirmation that is. If I remember correctly this figure was a limited release through a couple of online shops for the Japanese market only. That is, no overseas post.

Ebay however knows no such boundaries! Aya is from the Touhou Project, which to be honest, I am not exactly sure what the hell it is. Nevertheless, Aya here is a tengu news reporter, from Touhou. She comes in a standard figma styled box and has a reasonable amount of accessories to go with her. She has the usual amount of figma articulation to her, but her dress is hard plastic, so it doesn’t allow much movement for her legs. That’s enough blab for now, I will chat more with pictures.

She comes with a pretty good selection of option hands, faces, wings and a crow. The hands in the pack holding things are: a Pen, a notebook and camera. She also comes with a tengu standard issue leaf fan as Tengu are supposed to control the winds, being Mountain dwelling spirits of course.

Now some of those more odd bits of plastic make sense. The Triangles are so you can stand her up without the figma stand and the curved bits are for the crow which clip onto the main stand. The shoe pieces are good, as their aren’t all that noticeable. Crazy tengu and their geta.

The black crow is a single piece, that is nicely sculpted. It has red eyes and no articulation. I suspect it would be angry due to where the stand pieces go…

Being a crow tengu, she is low ranked apparently, but this does mean she has some nice wings to attach if you see fit. They attach either buy using the plug from the stand, or a separate peg for when not using the stand.

I really love the way the outer feathers go opaque. you can see how the stand holds the wings.

Here you can see how the stand hold the wings in and how the crow is clipped on to the stand. What a busy stand.

This is the way the wings are held using the peg.

The character is rather well sculpted. Touhou started as a vertical scrolling shootemup game and has spawned a few sequels, each one has had slightly different designs for the characters. I like the look, it’s simple, with not too many colours and yet effective. Although she does look a touch maid like with the white petticoat.

I think with the fan and wings, some cool posing will come to this toy. It reminds me of the Monkey Magic episode where the demon has a massive fan that blows Monkey away.

The hair sculpt is nice and windswept as well. It’s hard to photograph, but on the back of her head is a nice application of paint to add some texture to the hair. I like it, it’s very subtle.

Being a reporter she has a camera. And some optional faces. One smiley open mouthed face and a slightly embarrassed laughing face.

Good detail on a simple camera.

I believe the term in Japanese would be ‘Fu, fu fu… I didn’t see anything, really!’

Her other accessories, a hand holding a pen and one with her notebook.

Nice simple details ,on the tad plain clothing. Good buttons, tie and belt. Again the clothes are flowing and look puffy. The wind motif again I presume. Pockets are sculpted in as well.

I like the black paint on the sleeves, just for some extra definition and I especially like the pen in her breast pocket!! No reporter should be without one!

The feet and therefore her tengu geta are in the same vein as school shoes, so they aren’t exactly standard gear. She seems to have standard figma pants as well, and as I said before, the dress is hard plastic limiting the amount of leg movement that can be pulled off.

Can’t remember why I took this photo now, but it shows how well she can stand with the shoe pieces there.

I like the framing of this photo quite a lot. If only I had a cool background to put there.

All together this is another nice figure. The sculpting is pretty good and manages to carry a wind/flowing motif throughout, as well as managing to keep her looking like a Tengu character. Perhaps not really worth hunting down as much as other figma, as it could be seen as a tad plain, but I really like it. If she wasn’t a Tengu character I could happily live without her, but I am glad that I got her. Now I have a reporter to interview my other toys!

Play Time!