Queen’s Gate Spiral Chaos and Maron = Macaron

I have a dodgy weakness for the girls of Queen’s Blade.  Last year a PSP game was released with a figma of the main character Cute.  This year a sequel of sorts was released.  Queen’s Gate, which is an offshoot of Queen’s Blade that involves characters from various series gathered together in the Queen’s Blade lands. 

I got my hands on the special edition of the game which came with a figma figure of Maron = Macaron, a bag, and a card holder thing.  The last game came with an art book, which was a nice addition, but this one doesn’t.  Oh well.  Lets have a look shall we?

The box has a nice sprinkley stars.  It has the game style cover on one side and a windowed side for showing off the figma.

Maron is featured on the box with the holder of the key to the gate, Alice.

The bag that comes with it is reversible and can fold up into a nice small packet.

The inside is blue and will be covered elsewhere.

The game is held in a cardboard holder under the plastic casing for the figure.

Usual figma stuff is included, extra faces, figma stand, but this time, no extra hands.  Wha’ts up with that?  Well, Maron has claws that’s why.  She reminds me very much of Lei-Lei from Darkstalkers.

Maron also has a spare set of goggles as well as a ‘shift body’ for use as her ‘damaged body’ that all Queen’s Blade characters need…  That too will be covered elsewhere.

What I love about this character is her title.  She is a “Magical Patissier.”  So on our hands we have a magical Pastry chef.  BOOYAH!  The Tets likes pastries of all shapes and sizes…

Ok, now to take her out of the backing plastic thingamojig.

First thing that smacks you in the face is the mount of pink, reminds me of the Strawberry Shortcake toys.  The big red coat tails thing on her back can be taken off if you so desire.  I really like the chains that are attached to the bottom of it.  Wonder what they are there for?  I guess I will have to play the game to find out.  Hmm, better get my act together and finish the first one.

She has no hands, just her big Lei-Lei claws.  I do like the ‘danger’ thing on the back of her fore-arm though.  Yes, sharp claws are dangerous.  They can be pulled off, but she doesn’t have any hands with which to swap them with.  The one scene from the game I have seen has her with hands under the claws, like the claws are sleeves.  Its a nice colour on her sleeves and claws, which gives off a very ‘Icing sugar’ feel to me.

The overall look is very consistent on this figure and I like it very much.  Details are nice and even though her costume isn’t as busy as Cute’s was, she is still an interesting figure to look at.

The bow around her neck is soft and can be moved for posing.  The prints on her clothes like the little cross on the back of her collar are nice as well.  The buttons on her shoulder almost look biscuit like as well.

She comes with hat that looks like frog’s eyes.  I like that the plastic in the ‘eyes’ is opaque green.  Like emeralds in her hat.  She also has a pair of goggles as well.  These two have eyes and you get two pairs.  Once has a squinting look to them.  Again, she has the same pirate like print that is on the back of her collar, the cute teddy-bear looking skull and a spoon and fork crossed.  A bit nasty in the motif, but still in the pastry theme of the character.

I really dig the extras here.  There is a strawberry clip in her hair!

Rather annoyingly, she doesn’t have many faces.  So you have a face that looks embarrassed, one that looks bored and one that is crying/screaming.  This I found disappointing, as an angry face would have really set this figure off.  She has massive weapons, and yet I found it incredibly hard to get a cool looking fighting pose.  The best I could think of was posing with her cold indifferent face.  Perhaps she is a soulless killer…

She has a couple of plasters on her as well, burns from cooking perhaps?  It gives her a lot of personality.  Whereas Cute could be posed as a figure that can kick-ass with big blades, Maron looks a bit goofy.  Despite her donning of short shorts, there is still a lot of details there as well.  She has a small teddy faced pouch, great sculpting on the shorts themselves and the belt too, mid-thigh socks and some shin guards, as  well as (get this) a wheel on the heel of her boots!  Like those sneakers you can buy for skating on the back!  Crazy!

The chains on her coat are different for each side as well.

That white bit over her ankle can move, so it doesn’t inhibit the ankle’s movement at all.

I really like the sculpting on her body.  The stomach area looks really quite sexy.  Love that little fish that is attached to her pants zipper, nicely sculpted bust area as well.  And her butt looks pretty well done too.  I see Good Smile Company are trying different ways of doing butts.  Kos-Mos is a famous one and they have applied a bit of that here I think.  It looks more natural and organic than it used to.

As for the zipper, well, it goes all the way around.  Obviously she needs specialist clothing with claws like those…

Again, the sculpting here is impressive.  They could have easily just cut that bit out, but they didn’t!  Even the paint is pretty cleanly applied!

As you can imagine though, with the wheels on her feet, her natural balance is pretty bad.  You can make her stand by herself, but it takes a lot of fiddling to get it right.  She comes with a standard figma stand for posing and it actually plugs into her coat tails, as opposed to her back like most other figmas.  This is good, as the coat juts out quite a lot and would get in the way too much otherwise.  So using the stand you can get some cool poses.  Just not terribly aggressive ones.

To hold her hat in place, they have put a hole in the back of her head.  It does come with a plug hair piece if you want her hatless.

Now there is her Shift body, but I won’t go into that here, as there is er, questionable content.  Follow this link to the more mature part of my blog and I will continue on there about that section.

I did try some posing and this was the most aggressive I could get.

Yeh, so the best I could get was ‘Cold killer’ style look.  But even then it doesn’t quite satisfy me the way an angry face would have.

Maron also manages to look a tad bigger than your average figma.  Her head certainly seems that way, unless BRS’s is just small…

All up though, I have to say I am pretty happy with this figure.  Maron=Macaron has an awesome quirky name, excellent job and the pastry theme is carried throughout the whole figure.  You could even say that her claws are used for help in icing cakes!  Brilliant and I love it.  Probably doesn’t fit in well with my other Queen’s Blade characters as such, but Macaron will look nice on the figma shelf as a bright pink goofy figure that is just full of character!  My only issue I have is I would have liked an extra face for anger, and maybe some hands (but I can easily live without them).

For the rest of the review including the Shift body, follow this link.  Note, adults only need apply