Ar Tonelico 2 Luca Figure by Max Factory
nekosasu | October 18, 2009 | 9:25 pm
While I’m stalling on the already long ended Spring/Summer season[1], and while social life is (fortunately) picking up as of lately, I’m kind of glad to have something interesting to report on: A new wave of figures, because I don’t mind dilapidating my tuition money the big way.
…So. The first figure, obviously still fueled by my ongoing Ar Tonelico frenzy, is Luca from AT2! Coincidentally, it arrived in the same week as the first announcement of Ar Tonelico 3, which makes me even more enthusiastic about this beautiful figure!
It was pretty hard to find it, actually. The figure was sculpted by Masanori Kuroda and released in April 2008 by Max Factory; one and a half years later, most stores obviously were out of stock. Luckily, there were still a handful of sellers on eBay that had it, and I fetched a good priced one.[2]
Without further ado, here’s the batch of pictures, enjoy! (Good thing we’re on the new server now, so you won’t have to wait 10 minutes for all the images to load… :P) Remember that you can click on the thumbnails for bigger images.
Note: I still suck at finding the perfect settings on my camera (aperture, exposure, etc), so quality and lighting varies a lot. I tried to fix contrasts here and there in post-processing, but didn’t touch colors. (I have some bad experience tampering with colors…) Anyway, please bear with me (´~`;;)
You know what this means…
It’s Hymmnos time again! (Download the hymmnos font if you haven’t already!)
Wee ki ra geeow
van getrra van ousye deleir van clemenzen has innna
Ma granme ra grandus has
Was ki ra na gauzewiga
forgandal Was num ra knawa rre yor spiritum vianchiel
Was gagis ra wearequewie synk has spiritum
I shall vow that
even if I become tainted, even if a disaster befalls me, even if I go crazy within her heart[3]
I will protect her with very slight courage.
I will never despair,
because…! I know your soul is pure
I wish to overlap with her soul forever.
Sweet stuff. <3 Luca. (Though the last sentence doesn’t really make sense to me… overlap? XD! Help!)
Now, let’s move on.
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I can’t decide. The one above has some kind of soothing effect, but lacks detail. The one below looks detailed, but lacks eye candy like bloom/blur. Which image looks better to you?
Though, for the sake of the review, I mostly kept shooting with a smaller aperture value for more detail.
Dirty window is dirty. It wasn’t me! Was already like that when I moved in. True story, bro!
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Now some parts in more detail.
So there is a small hole in her left hip, where the hook on the metallic stilt is supposed to go in. It took me little while to find the proper angle of insertion.
The smaller, plastic stilt that goes into the small hole in Luca’s left foot. The base is quite solid and does not rock. It’s the first fig I got that’s only supported by stilts.
The ribbons and laces are nice, although look a little off on the tights.
Very tiny imperfections here and there, but that’s only on the picture, they are not visible at all to the eye.
Never noticed the red hairpin before.
Luca’s hair decoration, in the shape of a harp, or a crescent moon. That in contrast with Cloche’s sun-like ornament. (Reminds me of the pendants they exchanged, too.)
There, the crescent. Though, Luca’s the Maiden of Fuero, so shouldn’t the sun be more appropriate to symbolize her? Ah, well.
Woops! Can’t avoid the obligatory pantsu shot! =ω=.
And finally, some, err, random pics and angles. If lighting seems bad, well I tried flashing from the right, which often didn’t really yield the desired results…
This one looks particularly eerie…
I like this one the best, I think.
And finally, in my room. In the end, I wonder why I didn’t do the shooting inside, instead of on the windowsill…
I don’t sense any jealousy in this image…yet. But the composition has already changed ever since… :)
I’m really happy I got this one. One more step closer to having an Ar Tonelico shrine… Only Cloche is missing. Not for long, though… X)
But in the meantime, stay tuned for another hawt fig I got last week. And it was one of those impulsive “love at first sight” purchases… well, stay tuned!
She looks good. Nice get
Interesting costume design. All the loose ends don’t look the most practical for beating up monsters, which most RPGs are about. Correct me if I’m wrong. The quality of the plastic seems very consistent and the paint seems good.
Some random typos on your post. xD
If you mean the Hymmnos, they aren’t typos. But a philistine such as yourself wouldn’t know that. :P
Besides, she doesn’t fight. She only sings in the back and supports the Vanguards with her songs as they are beating up the monsters. ^^
Philistine huh? :P
it arrived in the same week than the first announcement of Ar Tonelico 3
Good thing were’s on the new server now
And no, I am not one of those grammar freaks. I pointed it out vaguely but you simply had to say that I tend to have little to no use for art, be of limited intelligence, be obsessed with such things as NASCAR, golf, Hunting and Fishing, and tend to drive gas guzzling vehicles like SUVs and Extended cab Pickup Trucks, thus I had to take this step.
:P
>not a grammar nazi :P :P :P
Which is why you felt like pointing out two slight mistakes, one of which was not so obvious either. And since neither of them obscured the actual meaning of my words, I question your motives.. well, actually, I know them, and they’re outright silly :P But you knew that already.
Thanks for pointing out those mistakes nevertheless. Even though you ARE silly. Now get thee to a nunnery, and revise thy pragmatics, mister. :P
Oh nice. 15, 17, 22! Very sweet angles. XD That lace in the front is kinda wild, but it’s very in-action, so that’s cool . Cheerios. :)
Nice review/photos of Luca. I would choose the higher detail over the blur; my preference.
Hymmnos font? I wonder if there are people that can read it with no aid. o_O
More than a few Ar tonelico fans well-versed in Hymmnos are able to read them (and I am as well, though I still have some hard time remembering a couple of them).
@RyanA I kind of like detail9001, but… :3
@Reltair: Thanks. Well yeah, I’d go for detail too, although the bloom has some kind of artistic feel to it in my opinion. But too much brightness/overexposure is awful too. There should be a nice balance between detail and eye candy, I guess.
[...] note: those pictures were taken during the same day as Luca’s, so I might have made the same mistakes and experimental [...]