Today’s figure is Kirishima Touka from Tokyo Ghoul:re, the second (main) series in Tokyo Ghoul.

This was also the first figure that I needed a hammer to assemble – assembling the official was easy enough, but the bootleg had other ideas in mind. The bootleg only came in a (very smashed) blister, so let’s get straight to the figure-reviewing.

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Pricing

NEW section, starting from this blog. In this section I will list the MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), the price I paid for the official and bootleg including shipping (as the bootleg prices normally include shipping in the price) and state whether I PO’d the official figure or bought it in the aftermarket.

MSRP (without tax): ¥12,000
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥11,970 (£82.58)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £10.40

For the official figure, I pre-ordered.

Spin-around

Time to take a figure tour!

First thing that is immediately noticeable is the difference in the kagune (that’s the red winglike protrusions from her back. Wiki article about what kagune are in Tokyo Ghoul) – Kotobukiya’s is a much more solid colour and the bootleg’s is much more transparent. Light can shine through Kotobukiya’s, but in normal lighting conditions it looks solid. The bases are also markedly different, and Touka’s clothing has a different highlight colour.

Base

Here is the official base:

Please excuse the water droplet – thought the figure was finally dry after cleaning the dust off it… Guess not for this photo!
Not a particularly coherent design, but better than a plain base. Kotobukiya generally has nicer, more involved bases than this, but we got what we got.

And now for the bootleg base to knock it down a notch:

Mmm, quality. The plainest of discs, with a couple of metal pegs. And a small plastic one. At least this one doesn’t have any tape residue and bonus hair that previous bootlegs have had.

Close-up of a metal pin:

And these rough, misshapen buggers is why I had to hammer the bootleg onto her base. They don’t fit into the figure well at all, and the plastic underneath the peg is so thin and flimsy that the metal pegs just popped through the bottom of the base when I tried to push the figure onto the pegs. Managed to hammer the pegs in enough so that the base could sit juuust about flat, though one was still slightly proud. If I was wanting to keep the bootleg, I would’ve probably enlarged the holes instead of hammering the pegs in.

Figure close-ups

Face:

The hair has a few moulding defects in the middle of it, making it blobby. We’ve also go no shading on the bootleg, which makes the hair look flatter and less detailed. The points on the bootleg’s hair are slightly less defined, but not too badly blunted.
Next we have the eyes – and here the bootleg differs a lot – it looks like the bootleggers sketched something that roughly represents Touka’s eyes. The iris on the bootleg is only one colour, missing all the small details of the original. Bootleg Touka also has an interesting arrangement of eyelashes. The red ‘blood’ detailing is entirely missing on the bootleg.
Finally, we have the mouth – the original is unpainted, but the bootleg couldn’t resist giving her some lipstick. Not sure what Touka herself would think…

Side of head:

The bootleg’s hair isn’t any better around here, and the strand of stray hair has been adhered to her head.
Her cloak hood also has a very visible seam, that can’t be seen on the original. The paint shading over this seam is particularly bad, with the colours not aligning well. Moving to the edge of the top layer of her cloak, the bootleg has several parts where the paint has gotten scratched.
Overall, the shading on the bootleg cloak doesn’t make much sense – it doesn’t really fit the contours of her clothing and it doesn’t come from a sane light source. On the original, we have highlights on the creases of the fabric.

Right hand:

The bootleg’s hand didn’t get assembled correctly, and isn’t at the same angle as the official, but I’d consider this a neutral change. Interestingly, her hand has more definition on the bootleg. Her skin colour is also paler.
One not-so-nice change is the additional seam on the sleeve. Bit strange to not have this at the back, but there you go.

Left arm:

Here, my official has a couple of marks. Not sure if these were originally there or not. The bootleg’s arm is at a more upwards angle, with a slightly differing position with her hand again.
This side of the bootleg figure also features a couple more ugly seams – one on the hood, one on the top of her arm. With the bootleg they’ve attempted to shade the wrinkled part in black, with the rest of her coat a purple colour.

Lower part of the coat:

The sculpt on the coats are pretty much a match, however the paint… not so much. The shading is more similar to the original than the rest of the coat, but it is still full of paint errors. Towards the right of the photo, we can see a purple blob in the middle of the black shading. The edge of her coat is also rough and not finished well on the bootleg.
Looking to her legs, we scan see that her trousers are much shinier on the bootleg than the official.

Belt:

Here we can see the bootleg has not been attached very well, and glue is blobbing out. Looking at the moulding here, I’m wondering if the bootleg was made from an official figure taken apart as the construction is quite different – the belt seems to be part of the lower half of the figure, but on the bootleg it seems to be a separate piece.
The upper part of the cape is a uniform thickness and finish on the official but the bootleg suffers from a rough edge that varies in thickness. Some of it copies the original, and some of it looks like it has taken on the thickness of paper.

Back:

In terms of sculpt, we’re pretty much the same back here. The same paint flaws show themselves here. With the lighting on the bottom half of her coat, we can see that the bootleg lacks the matte finish of the original. The wings attach in the same way on both, however the bootleg came pre-assembled and the official you needed to push the large “wing” in.

Foot:

Here we can see that the bootleg’s trousers are much darker in colour, and the shoe is a very different shade of brown. Interestingly, we have two different shades of brown on the bootleg, instead of the singular colour of the original. In isolation, the different colourations work OK, but I think the official’s colour matches in more with the colour tones of the rest of the figure. The bootleg one suffers from some stray white paint. No surprises there. We’ve also got some scrapes/stray paint on the “connecting” bit – I don’t think this bit looks good on either figure, but it’s not really visible when on display.

Now for the star of the show… The large kagune:

Here is where the figures differ the most – the bootleggers have gone for a much more translucent look than Kotobukiya. Personally, I’m kind of conflicted which kagune look I like more – Koto’s probably more true to what a kagune is supposed to look like, but I do really like the translucent look of the bootleg. The paint blend within the bootleg kagune has actually been done decently well and looks good. Kotobukiya’s also looks nice, and has some good details in the paint.
One downside of the bootleg is you may notice that some of the parts that stick out are at different angles – this is at least partially due to the plastic being too soft so it’ll easily bend, especially if the kagune is left leaning up against something. Initially I was going to toss the blister for the bootleg when she arrived, but ended up storing her in it so that her kagune wouldn’t get too bent up prior to review.

Small kagune:

With the smaller wing, I think the transition from solid paint to translucent paint on the official works better than on the larger wing, where the tail-off feels sharper due to size.
On the back of the bootleg kagune, we see some stray paint dots – one at the top near her hood and another just down from the large red central blob. We’ve also got some roughness of the mould – the bit at the bottom that forms a loop has some stray plastic on it still.

If both the kagune came out of both figures, I’d probably swap them around and see what it would look like. I wouldn’t be too cut up about having to butcher the bootleg, but with the smaller wing being attached on the official, I don’t fancy having to break my original to test it out.

Conclusion

This bootleg would be an easy one to spot, if you’re aware it exists. With the very different kagune, purple colouration to her outfit and the shoddy base, there isn’t much confusing her for the original. Most of the bootleg is pretty poor and not very good, with the one stand-out feature of her kagune. Maybe an idea for a second release version of her?
This was the cheapest of the scale bootlegs that I’ve bought for this series thus far, and I think it shows.