In recent times it seems WeArtDoing figures are gaining popularity, so I’ve decided to review my most recent arrival – silver fin shark fairy. The blue and white colour scheme appealed to me more than the black theme.

Preorder price: CN¥1,180 (£129.34)
Price including shipping: CN¥1,560 (£172.24)

I did opt to ship EMS from China to the UK, but the box is huge:

With the shipping packaging, it was 44x39x36cm and 4.3kg. So even with other lines, shipping wasn’t going to be cheap.

As per their other figures, the box art is based around the “primary” variant, then a sticker on the back tells you which one is inside. The front tagline reads “In the hush below, a folded dream floats where plastic and waves turn to echoes, then rises at daybreak to let the ocean’s heart beat once more.” Yeah, I have no idea either, sounds pretty though. The art is cute and nicely themed so she isn’t floating in a void.

This figure was an instant preorder for me – I’m a big fan of dragons and dragon hybrids. Also she has a succubus tattoo. And apparently I am not alone – she got enough pre-orders for Insight to switch to PVC production – which for a winged figure was a relief as wings can be quite breakable with their sharp points and thin nature.

Box

Front:

Fancy and plain at the same time. The gold foiling is nice, but kind of hard to read/look at under certain lighting conditions. And we have a transliteration of 少女 to “syojo” – usually this is transliterated to “shoujo”. Design gets the job done, but doesn’t feel particularly inspired by the figure itself.

This figure I didn’t pre-order. Initially I planned to skip it as ODD had some other releases coming up that were more my jam. But then the Chinese Crackdown hit, ODD split up and this became the last release of “old ODD”, and their upcoming designs were scrapped. The ODD brand continues – but as part of Apex (formerly Fish Head Man). Not to be confused with Apex Innovation.

As the release drew nearer, I decided I wanted to get it even if it was just to review it. However listings on Taobao were dry – previous ODD releases there was a decent amount of leftover stock. I’m in the ODD WeChat group, and one person was offering up a preorder – they ordered her twice by mistake. I did consider adding my hat into the ring but ultimately decided not to, especially as someone else chimed in with “why not list it in Xianyu?”. And that got me browsing… and finding a couple of people offering their preorders up on Xianyu. Initially I tried a cheaper preorder but the seller never responded to the shopping agent. The second one was for MSRP (CN¥1,280), and they came back quickly. Yay!

One nerve-wracking wait later… it was at the proxy! I went for the usual closed-box inspection, so then I spent the next 2 weeks fretting I screwed myself over and that there was potential there was nothing in the box especially as it was lighter than I expected. Thankfully my random fears were unfounded, and arrived just fine. Outside of the small brain, this piece is smaller than my other ODD pieces. She was listed at 20cm, but sometimes small facts like that don’t enter into my brain somehow.

Shipping-wise, the box was 36x29x20cm and 1370g. Overall she cost CN¥1,425 (£153) with shipping and service fees. One advantage of the small size and weight was international shipping was really cheap.

Box

For the main image we have this on two sides of the box:

No, that’s not me failing at photography – the image is pixelated and blurry on the box. Looks like they took one of the promo images and resized it. Well, at least it lets us know what’s in the box roughly.

The art for this figure is by the popular Chinese artist wlop. They have had several statues of their work made, especially for the characters of their series Ghostblade. I did read some of the Ghostblade series, but didn’t really gel with it.

There are two versions of this figure – one with tattoos and a special edition with none. The tattoos are half the reason I ordered it so didn’t want the special edition. For Chinese buyers, the tattooless edition was only available to people who had previously purchased Light Year Studio statues, but international distributors just had her up as a normal preorder. Both editions were the same price at CN¥3,280. I ordered through an international distributor and the total cost including surface shipping was US$540. So not a cheap lass, but she is 1/4 scale.

Original Art

This is the original art piece the figure is based on:

Link: https://x.com/wlopwangling/status/1833707395463496028

This figure came in two flavours – Memory Entanglement and Forgotten Festival. The second one had an Egyptian theme, but I preferred the straight-up tape-themed one, so that’s one I went for. I pre-ordered via the WeArtDoing Taobao store, and this figure cost CN¥1,180 plus CN¥13 local delivery. Shipping from China to UK was CN¥235. Which brings us to a total cost of CN¥1,428.

Box

The front of the box features the artwork for the figure. “Sleeping Beauty” is one of WeArtDoing’s figure lines, but this one seems to be wide awake. We also have what feels like “decorative text” phrases. The artwork is nice, but does feel somewhat bland with the font choices and amount of negative space. It’s not a bad box, but not one that stands out to me.

Have you ever bought a figure or item just to document it? Well, now I can firmly add myself to that list. I have bought stuff out of curiosity, but this one firmly falls into this camp. If you are just here to see the figure, feel free to skip down to where the pretty pictures start :).

I did a review of the original figure – which can be found here

The ordering

I skipped out on the pre-order. I was curious about seeing it but didn’t feel the need to own it – whilst she had 90s cool, I had the original which has a more appealing colour scheme to me. I could just wait for photos to appear on the internet from someone else who bought it right? Was especially curious how the silver parts would turn out.
So I waited. And I waited. Nothing. She’s not MFC-eligible, so that was one source that was out. Nothing appeared on hpoi or anywhere else I searched.

Finally I cracked, and tried ordering her from the ClayM store – only the order languished unfulfilled so I cancelled it. AmiAmi had stock – playing with the basket they only appeared to have one in stock – so it felt like now or never. No waiting for her to hit clearance like I originally expected her to go – her original version did get clearanaced at AmiAmi. So I ended up ordering her, she went to “orders closed” as expected, but then a day or two later they had another in stock. Not sure if they didn’t know their stock level or found another one when they went to pack my order – but she’s now out of stock again. As of writing, Hobby Search as “a few left” of the deluxe edition.

As she’s a big box I sent her surface. Took 78 days to arrive to my door – surface has been slowww from Japan to the UK for the past 6-12 months. But she finally got here, for me to share with the world.

Notes about the figure

Manufacturing/Production

This figure is a prime example of how the whole Chinese “pipeline” works and why the MFC data with manufacturers and producers gets all tangled up.
Both Sanis figures were produced (which includes manufacture) by 寶德(香港)貿易有限公司’s (Baode (Hong Kong) Trading) subsidiary 惠州市盛世文化有限公司 (Huizhou Shengshi Culture). However, for the first release this was distributed under Lechery in the Japanese region – some Japanese “manufacturers” actually just commission stuff to be produced under their name. Years ago, this would be an opaque process and it’d be regarded as some nameless factory did the production, however in the 2020s we’ve seen a lot of “behind-the-scenes” manufacturers become their own brands and market their own figures. For this recolour, Lechery wasn’t involved and Shengshi released it under their own branding of ClayM in all regions. A lot of what is presented as a manufacturer, especially for Chinese figures, is actually just a brand. Often the underlying company has a longer Chinese name and then the brands are often in English and have much more attractive names to a casual audience. For ClayM, you will have also seen their releases under the Kaitendoh branding – Time Rabbit Yuki was also a ClayM product and you’ll see their logo on the box.
If you want to know how the Chinese work out who is related to who, they can look up the company on their company registry (which they have now locked down from foreigners, RIP) and see what trademarks are registered to the parent company. Ones that are separate company entities can share directors, revealing there’s a relation between certain companies.

Scale

With the mixed distribution, the scale of this figure is either 1/5 or 1/6 depending on who you believe. So whilst you’ll see the original marketed as 1/5 or 1/6 depending where you buy, there isn’t two different-sized versions of this figure – ClayM advertised her as 1/6 and Lechery advertised her as 1/5. Which is right? Who knows. If it helps you decide a scale, her head is about 43mm tall from chin to top of head (not including horns). By my calculations, if you believe her to be human-sized she’s 1/5 (average human head is 18-20cm, so 21.5cm full size is close), if you think she’s more Amazonian then she’s 1/6. As far as I know, the original artist hasn’t been fully revealed, so can’t ask to see if she has anything of a canonical height.

Review!

Box

Front:

Interestingly, despite going back and editing the box they haven’t updated with new photography – we see the original colour variant on the front and the sides. As the sides are identical to the original, I didn’t photograph them. For the front the ClayM logo is now printed onto the box and the “Sanis” logo has been refined. It does look classier, but is less legible. The heart pattern that existed as a background on the lower half of the box is also gone.

In celebration of ODD being whitelisted, I’ve decided to review one of my ODD figures that I’m yet to write a review/article for.

So today we have Elf Saint Sora Loyes, Arrested and Charged. The Future Fantasy series storyline is that beings with beneficial abilities/properties are captured and their DNA taken. From the DNA, clones are made which are placed in machines which the super rich can buy and take advantage of them. So that gives them an excuse of why there are so many copies of the same figure :}. And also places them firmly in the NSFW+ section for MFC.

The buying

This was one of my early preorders on Superbuy. I didn’t have a specific list of Taobao sellers, so I picked one who seemed to be legit. Fortunately for me they were, and 9 months later after some fraught checking for the final payment I was able to settle up and receive my goods:

Thought it was cute they used the loyalty card to censor the image.

I was reading on hpoi how she weighted “20 catties”. After some research I found out that a “catty” was 500g, so that makes her 10kg… and sure enough it was 10kg shipped weight! ODD figures don’t shirk on the weight – and most of it is the figure’s container. The vending machine is very heavy.

Being ODD’s first figure, this order was a gamble. But I was willing to risk it for such a relatively unique figure. Between it being ODD’s first and the fact distribution was limited to China, not many people followed me down the rabbit hole for this one.

DreamX are producing a line of these Evangelion undressing figures. As I’m not collecting Asuka or Mari I’ve skipped on those, and just gone for the Rei. There are some more coming, but not decided if I will order them or not.

She does come with both a long-haired and short-haired head but I have only taken photos of the long-haired one.

So here she is: