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.
Back:
Again, the ClayM logo is now the default. For some reason the original art now has a purple background crudely edited behind it – not sure why. You can see remnants of the original background in the holes in her wings and as part of the tail flame. Here we can see the producer listed as Shengshi, and the studio listed as ClayM. The scale has been left as 1/5 on the box and a sticker over the barcode. What’s under here?
The original barcode. I wonder if they just plain forgot to edit the bottom section with the new details (barcode, scale).
Top:
The only indication we’ve ordered the correct version – a sticker stating it’s the “Black skin, different colour” version. Whilst I knew her outfit and details were a different colour, I didn’t realise she’d be tan as well lol.
Opening the box:
Same as the other version, a polystyrene inner with ClayM-branded strapping. Not the highest quality polystyrene so don’t be surprised if you end up with some on your floor if you buy either variant.
The parts:
It’s a 2-layer blister, the parts arranged for efficiency of packaging rather than ease of assembly. So you’ll want to lay both out prior to assembly. There aren’t any instructions but assembly isn’t too difficult. I’d recommend assembling the base first, followed by sitting her body on the leaf. From there, you can turn her backwards – assemble the lower wings first, then the rest in any order you like.
Only one change from the original – the tail hole has a slightly different shape, which will be revealed why later.
Base
Bottom:
Not much to see here. Same as the other variant.
Top:
The black paint is more matte than the original, but we do have a purple shiny finish on the upper areas that shows when the light reflects off of it. In low lighting conditions it’ll appear near-black, but we have the advantage of photography lighting to show the shiny purple effect :).
Base assembled:
The leaf also has the same purple shine to it – I really like the effect.
Closeup:
There are dimples to help her rest correctly on the leaf. There are two magnets where her butt sits that holds her firmly to this leaf base, so you don’t need to worry about her falling off of it.
Spin-around
Definitely something of a 90s aesthetic to this colour scheme. Her face has a bit of gloss to it, and the eyes are definitely attracted to her thigh-highs with the colour contrast and shine.
The other thing that stands out to me is her skin colour doesn’t match the base – her base didn’t get the tan treatment. Guess she ran outta bronzer. I’m sure for most people it’s going to be her giant bazongas that are stealing the show – they’re definitely up front and centre and plenty of skin to look at.
Cast-off
For casting off, it’s the same procedure as before and honestly something they should’ve documented so you don’t risk breaking her. Her right arm wiggles out – may take a bit of waggling – it is magnetised into the side of her body, then you can pull it downwards (do this off of her base). The chest cover then can be pulled downwards with a bit more wiggling to reveal her chest:
Her left arm is firmly attached, so don’t try to remove that one.
Chest cover itself:
It has some purple shading on the part between her arms, but you won’t see much of this. The purple line running around the edges is a bit sloppily painted but not too bad.
The figure!
Before we get her head on:
What was immediately apparent to me was the more visible chest lines – she has these on the original but they’re very subtle. Here they’ve used a silver paint so they have much more contrast to her tan skin. It was putting her body on the base for the first time that I realised she was tan rather than the very pale skin of the original. Personally I like the skin tone, but wish the veining was a bit more subtle – in between the original and what we have here.
The pink-silver transition on her legs has been done well. Not sure if these are tights or boots lol. Not a big fan of the “texture” of the pink personally – would prefer shiny or more matte rather than this semi-gloss. The silver is shiny enough to check out my lighting at her knees 😆
Back:
Here we can see the back pattern which will get covered up by her hair. Oh, and also her wide dump truck – she has plenty to stabilise herself out back. The pattern on the edges of her clothing have been sculpted so there is extra definition between the clothing and body. The paint isn’t 100% so she does have a bit of mutant flesh. The skin tone difference is quite noticeable against the base.
Closeup of the back pattern:
With this version, still lamenting she doesn’t come with a short hair/updo head that can show this detailing. The paint is quite sloppy in places so maybe it is best covered… Can see a bad paint slop to the lower right and there are a couple of streaks of silver on her skin. There’s also mutant skin here as the edges haven’t been painted silver in all places. Looks like they were aiming not to paint the edges but imo it’s better when manufacturers can so the raised parts can be attributed to the clothing rather than being mutant flesh.
Once her head is on this is about all we see of the back patterning:
It’s something, but not a lot.
Face:
She has sculpted eyebrows – personally not a fan of these. Also I think she was drunk when she applied her lipstick – it’s a bit of a mess. Irl, certain angles it looks fine, others you can tell it is a bit of a mess. The silver line at the top of her lids looks better irl than this closeup photo. She’s lost the angled eyebrows of the original and gone with a more conventional shape. What is visible irl is the silver overpaint from her horn crest. I do like the colour scheme on it though.
For her collar they didn’t fully lean into the silver/pink colour scheme and kept the base colour close to the original and just made the tip part pink. Though if they did go with silver there would be less contrast between her hair and her collar.
Side of her head:
I do love her horn design. For this variant they’ve given her horns different colour schemes – her front horns go from silver to pink whilst her back horns go from purple to pink. I think it’s a nice touch to add two gradients for this one. Am also a fan of the plated horn design of the back horns.
Back of the hair:
Their hair is a bit rough on this one – if you’re not too close it doesn’t show too much, but there are definitely some marks that aren’t supposed to be there. I think some of the speckling may be intentional but it doesn’t make for a good finish imo. The gradients are also less exciting than the original – I wish they added some tones to her hair – either some blue ones to contrast with the scheme or pink highlights to fit with the theme.
Neck closeup:
Due to the collar being a separate part, the heart design does look a bit wonk from certain angles. One of the red dots on her collar didn’t get its proper allocation of paint, and we can see how rough some of the hair tips are. This isn’t a figure that looks good close up.
Chest cover closeup:
It wasn’t until I edited these photos that I noticed the chest cover had some paint scraped off – looking to the left you can see a crusty bit where the sliver paint either didn’t adhere or got scraped off at some point. Here we can see the contrasts between the silvers – the silver parts do have slightly different tones and textures. Whether you like this will depend on your preference – but I think it does help add contrast to the figure which silver can normally lack. Also note how you can’t see the shading on the chest cover mentioned earlier – this isn’t something you’re going to see unless you’re specifically angling the figure to see it or taking it off so feels a bit strange they added that but not shading in other spots. And you’re not going to be picking up and rotating this figure – more on that later. The red detailing at her wrists is fine, no major paint errors or anything.
Chest from above:
Here you can see how the veins are very drawn on with this one – they almost look like pencil squiggles and I could see someone mistaking these lines for paint transfer. If I didn’t own the original Sanis I know I’d be wondering if they’re intentional or not. She has nipples of the pointy variety and some subtle darkening around them for her areolas. So nothing crazy in the nipple department, which is fine by me.
Tail:
This is the one part that’s differently sculpted versus the original – her tail loops around the front instead of the back. For the tail tip, the sculpt is the same but we have two red dots painted on it. There is some blobbed paint on one of the lower nobbles on the tail. To me, there’s just something a bit unsatisfying about the paint job – the shading and colours don’t quite gel together for me.
Wings:
This is the only part where assembly order matters – the lower wings want to go in first before the upper wings. Tail can go in before or after – whichever you find easiest.
And oh boy, the wings. Both editions have this problem – the wings aren’t magnetic and the fit is extremely loose. If you have putty, I’d recommend using it. If not, buy some – can get some white tack or similar. For this review I haven’t tacked the wings, but I will likely do so before I move them again. And this is a big reason why you probably don’t want to be picking up and moving this figure much – the wings will very easily drop out.
As for the wings themselves – they’re quite pretty – lovely silver and pink gradients. It’s just the fit into the back that’s poor – and unfortunately that shows too. Would’ve been nicer if the holes were sculpted just right for the wings to fit in. The “flapping” really is not a feature.
Sanis and Sanis
Didn’t do a full spin-around for this but here she is next to the original and both cast off:
Here you can see how the tails are different, and pretty much everything else the same. I wish they did more with the variant’s hair – just seems a washed-out version of the original and it would’ve been nice to have something more distinct for this one. For the collar, can see how the original version had better cohesion with the collar colours – feel like they could’ve done more to make the collar different on the variant. Overall, I think the paint was less rushed on my original than the variant – there is less paint spillage on it. However, looking at the tail I do wonder if my original has a paint error and there is some black paint missing on the tip in the middle – one of the middle blobs was painted but the other not.
The base butts are different skin tones from each other, but not massively so.
Overall, the original is my favourite of the two – but the alternate colour variant has grown on me. With her being tan, it does add more difference than just having an outfit change. I think the colour scheme has less mass appeal than the original but it does work as its own thing. With the tail change, it would’ve been nice if the the wings were fixed too, but no dice. Though that means you could do a certain amount of part swaps – wings, tail, base. Head swap would look strange with the different skin colours. Personally I don’t feel the need to do a part swap – I don’t feel like the original would be improved with the alternate colour’s parts.
Conclusion
Would I recommend this figure? If you’re asking, no. The quality isn’t there, and the colour scheme is something you’ll know if you want it or not. If I was recommending between the two, I’d recommend the original over the variant. When I saw this variant originally, I was confused who wanted it – the original wasn’t super-popular – on MFC it has 67 claiming as owned and 38 on hpoi. This variant has only 2 people on hpoi claiming as owned and one of them is me. Looking at the “wished” statistics on hpoi, approximately 1,000 were contemplating the original and less than 200 for the variant. So I feel like these colours didn’t really appeal to the masses.
But it’s an interesting figure, and I’m glad to have finally seen the final product.
