Beat 1/8 Shana “Noir Ver.” PVC: Shakugan no Shana

Like Ikki Tousen, Evangelion, and The Melancholy before it, there have been a plethora of PVCs produced for Shakugan no Shana. And, like Ikki Tousen, Evangelion, and The Melancholy, a lot of them are garbage. Well, that’s probably too harsh, but it illustrates the difficulty in drudging through the sea of plastic to find that one shinning gem. At the end of the day, what actually constitutes a gem is mostly a personal decision, influenced by a number of things, but we here at Polyvinyl Crush want to do our part to help you in your quest by sharing our gems with you, like Beat ’s 1/8th scale Shana “Noir Ver.” PVC from Shakugan no Shana.

Aka no Hobby~
.

Beat “Noir” Shana: Background

Released in May of 2007 Beat ’s 1/8th scale Shana “Noir Ver.” PVC had an original retail price of about $50 USD. This figure has been discontinued and unfortunately I don’t think Beat is prone to doing second production runs. That said, a few tend to pop up on eBay every now and then.

Beat had three different versions of this mold. One, this “Noir Version”, and two others called “Ceremony Version” and “Wedding Version“. All are nice and have different strengths, but I decided to get “Noir Ver” Shana because I wanted at least one Shana PVC with black hair. Also gotta love the red shoes. Big Grin
.

Nietono no Shana

There is a lot to love about this figure. It’s a highly detailed sculpt with a great design and the perfect amount of paint highlighting. Solid construction too. Shana is leaning forward in the pose and I’ve yet to see her warp even the slightest. Not to mention that the outfit she is wearing is über cute. Oh, and did I mention I love the red shoes? Razzberry

By comparison to all the good I think Beat failed in the face and for two reasons: 1) it seems off model when compared to either the anime or the manga (too round), and 2) it browned really quickly. The later isn’t really the fault of Beat, but I haven’t exactly been sunbathing her either, so I’m left to wonder about the materials used. The former reason seems to be a problem I have with Beat’s work in general – I find myself loving all their stuff from the shoulders down.

Enough of the bad stuff and more of the good stuff! It’s rare to get a figure with this much extra ‘frill’. Usually you’ll see one with folds in a shirt and that’ll pretty much be it that figures ‘frill’. Beat went the extra mile here by not only giving us such a detailed sculpt BUT they also gave us an original design. I could be very wrong here, but I don’t think that outfit is from either the anime or the manga. So ultra kudos to Beat for that.
.

The Girl Born at Dawn

More low lighting shots for you to enjoy. Highly detailed figures like Shana are actually more difficult to shoot this way then less detailed. Take Hakufu for example. All her smooth surfaces meant I could plop her down at almost any angle and get a good shot.

That wasn’t the case with Shana. All the additional frills and detail meant even turning her 1/8″ could change the effect dramatically. So I had to work a little hard, but I think they (mostly) paid off.
.

Final Thoughts

I could be in the minority here on the whole face thing and freely admit that I am extremely picky when it comes to face sculpts. There is also the difficulty in taking something from a 2D medium and translating it into a 3D medium. There is also the difficulty in taking series with many incarnations, like Shakugan no Shana, and making the multiple character designs work. On top of all that, the face itself is the single hardest thing to sculpt and then reproduce a thousand times. I understand all that. But at the end of the day I still feel that the face is the most important to any figure. More so than any other element of the figure, the face is what helps us identify with who that character actually is and, thus, needs to be damn near perfect.

Just so we’re clear, she’s definitely a gem. All the other good about this figure outweigh the issues I have with the face. I just wanted to illustrate how much had to go into making me look past Shana’s face, or at least think “it’s not so bad”.

Out for now,
Rico-sama
.