Today is another noodle stopper – Leafa from Sword Art Online.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): n/a
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,160 (£15.09)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £3.00

Let’s get this blog started with the spin-around:

Erm, time for some white tack and to start this again… The first fail of the bootleg – it won’t actually act like a noodle stopper as the weighting on her is so uneven she’ll just fall off what she’s perched on.
White tack sourced and applied…

Figure spin-around

Yeah, the finish on the bootleg is looking rough – poor paint, gaps and that brightly yellow hair. Oh, and the unsightly white tack I’ve had to use to keep her on the stand.

Figure close-ups

Face:

The eye decals are almost competent on the bootleg – the various bits seem to be all present, albeit in the wrong colour and slightly squashed, plus the lines above her eyes are too thick. The too-thick lines also follow through to her eyebrows and mouth – the eyebrows look OK, but the mouth is somewhat scary at this distance, with the mottled paint.
The bootleg’s hair is a blobby, seamy mess, so nothing unusual for a bootleg here. The hair also entirely lacks shading, whereas the official has darker tones towards the ends of her hair.
I don’t think her hairbands look great on either, but the bootleg’s right hairband seems to have completely missed the mark.

Hairband:

Both are flawed here – my official has some stray paint and the green loops are slightly off from where they should be, though I’d definitely rate the bootleg as worse here – less care has been taken to draw the green line in and the paint has got gaps in from the uneven surface. The bootleg’s moulding is also blobby, misshapen and rough.

Left side of head:

Here we can see more paint shading on the official which is lacking on the bootleg. The moulding is also poor here on the bootleg – most noticeable from where her pigtail goes underneath her fringe – the lack of paint shading and depth makes this look odd. The bootleg’s ponytail also comes with a bonus seam.

Top of head:

Some rough bits to be seen on both here – both have a distinctive seam as part of the fringe part. The bootleg has some very uneven paint here – lots of blobs and mess in the paint itself… and no shading.
The bootleg’s ponytail looks like it is separating too – it didn’t fall off during the review, but I won’t be surprised if it comes off at some point.

Side of her head:

Paint on the bootleg is decidedly rough here – lots of unevenness and blotches. Her hair parts haven’t been assembled correctly, leaving a larger gap above her ear than there should be.
We can also see some laziness with the green paint – the hairband doesn’t even go all the way around.

Back of hair:

Neon, unshaded and bits of bonus plastic – yep, we’ve got most of the usual flaws in the bootleg’s hair. Her ponytail also hasn’t been attached correctly, meaning it sits to the left of her instead of over to the right. Whilst this does mean you can see more of her bum, it’s not doing us much favours due to the flaws (more on that later).
The flower band in the bootleg’s hair is also a plain white, instead of the official’s green-white, showing a cheaping out on the paint.

Let’s get a close-up of that backside:

I think on the official’s sculpt they sculpted it well – you get to see the shape but nothing on show. We’ve also got some creasing in the material to make it more lifelike.
Now the bootleg, oh the bootleg. For starters, the parts aren’t assembled correctly leaving unsightly gaps by her left leg and back. The shape of her bum is slightly lost, making it less well-defined. The green paint has been roughly done and we have what looks like a fingerprint in the white paint, making it look messy.

Arm:

Here we have the typical armband that is used on a lot of figures to hide where an arm joins the body. On the official, it is mostly doing its job, though there is a little gapping. The bootleg on the other hand has a massive gap all the way around her arm so the join isn’t hidden at all. The paint is also too thin leaving the flesh-coloured plastic showing through. We also have an unsightly seam mark running down her neck and upper arm.
Moving to her top, the bootleg’s is very poorly assembled and the neck strap isn’t even pushed into the hole correctly, leaving it broken and revealing the unsightly assembly hole. The painting is also very poor – the strap lacks the buckle detail and the paint is very messy on the cup. We’re also missing the line detail on the cup.

Top:

There was an attempt.
The official’s is far from perfect on mine – one of the lines runs wayyy off, the silver buckle paint is a bit lacking, but we do have the nice little flower ring detail.
And then we look at the bootleg and realise how much worse it could be. The strap is overly thick and rough, and the buckle details aren’t painted at all. The moulding has gone very badly wrong here – the ends of the straps have gone very blobby and odd. Due to this, neither side of the strap has been assembled properly, with her right side nowhere close.
Moving to the cups on her top, the edging paint is very messy – no neat edges here. The inner lines haven’t been painted at all, and the flower ring has missing flecks of paint. Just underneath her top on the bootleg, we can see a decent amount of overage on the white paint too.
Erm, is the bootleg’s stare-face also creeping people out in this photo?

Stomach:

Both of the actual stomachs on these figures looks fine to me, though the bootleg does have bonus shiny. To the bootleg’s side, we can see a visible seam line that doesn’t show on the official and we have some gapping between the parts.
The quality of painting of the green band on her bottoms is about the same on both, but the bows are much nicer on the original – the green paint matches and the bows have much better definition. On the bootleg we can see the peg hole where the bow should attach, and the bottom of the ribbon has gone to a strange rounded shape.

Left leg:

Yeah, the bootleg bow doesn’t look any nicer from this angle. And we get to see her leg looking like it might fall off.
The quality of the plastic on the bootleg’s leg is also particularly bad here – we can see lots of small scratchlike imperfections in the plastic.

Right leg:

Again, the bootleg’s bow is very messy and the wrong colour – there’s a surprising amount of excess plastic left on the bow. Around the bootleg’s bow we can seemingly see some bits of stray glue.
Moving to her hand, the bootleg’s has sunk down a bit so it is no longer resting on her knee – though this change in pose isn’t particularly noticeable unless you have them side-by-side. The bootleg’s hand though lacks definition and has become blobby and looking slightly mutant.

Foot:

Focus didn’t go so good here… Stupid bootleg hair getting in the way when it shouldn’t do.
Surprisingly, this part came out OK on the bootleg – was expecting it to be as deformed as the hands, but the feet actually came out OK.

The flat side:

Yeah, minimum effort here for the bootleg. Here we can see how poorly assembled this figure was, with massive gapping on both legs. We have a very obvious seam, and the shiny, rough plastic. Plus some excess plastic that wasn’t shaved off.
The official doesn’t have any of the above flaws, and actually has some paint detail on the skin, despite this part not usually being visible.

Conclusion

The bootleg you very much get what you paid for – it’s a low-quality copy of the original with many flaws. Even at a distance, some of the defects are visible – the extra paint on the top, the poor assembly of the parts (especially the top’s strap) and the poorly painted mouth giving her a slight creepy vibe. Even if you can live with the visual flaws, this bootleg has a propensity to roll over due to the incorrect assembly of parts – I believe it’s mostly to do with how her hair was glued on at the wrong angle. So as well as being kinda ugly, she’s not functional either, so definitely couldn’t recommend.
I think the poor quality is fairly evident, but I can see a novice collector dismissing most of the flaws as “cheap prize figure”. It’s a bit unfortunate my official does have a major paint flaw, but looking at the MFC gallery not all of the official ones are like this (might even just be mine).

Sword Art Online (SAO) might not have the best reputation, but it is popular enough that its prize figures get bootlegged, so now I have four of the SAO noodle stoppers to look at. First up on the block is Asuna.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): n/a
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,060 (£13.06)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £5.53

The official I preordered on AmiAmi.

Box

This one I got the box for, just to see what the boxes are like. I no longer have the original box, so there isn’t a direct comparison here.
Front:

Interestingly they’ve kept the FuRyu logo, but removed the JAMMA logo. The JAMMA logo should be sat underneath the FuRyu logo.

Sides:

This box is thinner than the original and lacks the claw machine grab holes. The sides are also the same side duplicated – on the official one side has the copyright mentioning Kadokawa and SAO.
We can also see the print quality isn’t great and Asuna is a bit bluey and fuzzy.

Back:

This is a mildly inferior copy of the original. Also note the dotted circle where there should be an authenticity sticker.

Top:

The top image has been squished to fit the non-square top, leaving the text looking slightly stretched and jagged.

Bottom:

Not much to see here, but this does show one of the fold lines you do tend to get when a box has been flattened – if you’re buying something “new” that has similar fold lines, be suspicious of its authenticity.

Figure spin-around

Huh, I thought Asuna had orangey hair? Bootleg Asuna says no! Surprised by how off the hair colour is on the bootleg.

Figure close-ups

Face:

Bootleg: stare, stare
The hair and eye colours are massively off on the bootleg – not being very character-accurate here. The official’s hair is the orangey-brown it should be and the bootleg I think had chocolate melted over its head. Just… so bad. The bootleg’s hair is also blobby in shape and the sculpt is ill-defined.
The official’s eyebrows match her hair, the bootleg’s is some other shade of orange that matches the bootleg’s eyes instead of her hair. Quite odd.
Getting to the eyes, the bootleg’s aren’t just lacking a lot of detail but are incorrectly coloured and shaped. I don’t think they were thinking when they chose the eye decals.
The bootleg’s mouth is probably the most inoffensive part and looks OK, though its colour doesn’t match.
Lastly, the bootleg has pasty, shiny skin making her look potentially slightly ill. Glad the official isn’t like this.

Chest:

Poor bootleg Asuna is losing her top! The paint for her straps doesn’t even go all the way to the
top of her neck.
Here the shiny, pasty skin of the bootleg is on full show and not making her look great. The official is a much better skin tone. The loss of detail in the bootleg cast really doesn’t help her skin’s appearance.
The paint on the official’s top is on a par with most prize figures, the bootleg’s is almost neater, but completely missed the line on her left boob. The bow on the bootleg appears to be red plastic rather than painted, which gives it a cheap feel.

Bra strap:

The official’s strap looks like it is lightly pressing into her skin and the bootleg’s, well, looks like it’s trying to chop her in two. The seam line going down from the top’s strap on the bootleg also adds to her unrealistic look. With the bow and the strap, the official’s match up perfectly in colour, but the bootleg’s does not look like a match.
Looking further to the left, her hair bobble is painted neatly on the official, but the hair colour is most definitely intruding on the bootleg version.

Side of her hair:

Yuck, don’t think I’m going to get over the bootleg’s awful brown hair.
With the official, we can see the way her hair was laid in sections dangling over her shoulder. This part passed the bootleggers by, and hers is piled up incorrectly, leaving it floating unnaturally in the air.
Moving to her arm strap, the official’s does look too tight for my liking, but the bootleg’s is thick, uneven and looks incorrectly assembled towards the back.

Wrist ruffle:

Here we can see how the bootleg’s hand is misaligned – maybe they thought she was supposed to be waving? The shiny skin makes her hand almost look like a gelatinous blob to me.
Going to the band around her wrist, the bootleg’s has lost all detail and is a painted mess. Much prefer the original one.

Hair:

The mould mostly matches on the bootleg, but is somewhat sadder. The hair on the bootleg hasn’t been attached properly from the upper hair to the scrunchie leaving it looking even odder.
Due to the poor construction and deformed moulding the bootleg’s hand now sits atop her hair instead of on the ground level where it should be. Slightly better than hanging freely I suppose.

Hand:

Whilst we’re on the subject of her left hand, here is a close-up of it. Not sure if the dirt on the official hand is my fault or not. Her left hand does look odd from certain angles on the official, and the bootleg has the same curse. Plus the added one where they had to have some floaty, and her palm isn’t even level with the surface. Her wrist manages to look even more bizarre.

Skirt bow:

Again, we have the colour mismatch between the official and the bootleg. The bootleg’s bow looks kind of sad and melty instead of lying flat due to gravity.
The leg bands on both look OK to me, just different.

Left side of skirt:

Here we get to see the true horror of the bootleg paint. And the fact I don’t dust my figures as nearly as often as I should.
These lines are slightly ambitious for a prize figure, so they have come out a little sloppy on the official. The bootleg manages to take this to the next level though, and the skirt line is barely there and the cross painting is definitely sloppy and thin.
Going to the plastic of the skirt, the official has been painted in white giving a more matte finish, and the official has been left plasticky which doesn’t look good in my opinion.

Feet:

Ah, this time the bootleg can have the dirty mark. And seeing as I opened the bootleg for the review I can categorically say this is Chinese dirt.
The foot moulding doesn’t suffer as badly as some other parts, but we can see her toes have become shorter. The bootleg’s feet are also closer together, giving her a different pose.

Bottom:

Here we can see they’re both flat on the bottom. Useful for the shelf-sitting :). Here we can also see how different the leg and hair positions are, which is a theme running throughout the bootleg figure.

And maybe to try and make up for the sadness that is the bootleg, it came with some equally sad-looking accessories:

First we have the thinnest rubber keychain I’ve ever seen, allegedly of Totoro – this thing feels very thin and not very nice to touch. The metal chain and ring are also very thin and could be easily broken.
Next we have a hairband that doesn’t feel very well made and has a little plastic heart that says “shen xi”. Not sure what the translation of this is. I don’t have hair long enough to use this, but even if I did I’m not sure it would last long – the fabric felt loose and would probably come apart if it was used.

Conclusion

The bootleg? No… just… no. I couldn’t recommend it to anyone. The hair and the awful eyes make it not look like Asuna, and I’m not sure if someone who didn’t know who Asuna was would particularly want this pasty, sweaty-looking mess. The box could likely fool some people, but I think once they pulled this brown-haired, light-orange-eyed stranger wearing Asuna’s bathing costume out of the box they’d be mighty confused.

Today’s blog will feature the drink-hugging Momo by FuRyu. This is one of a set of FuRyu knockoffs I bought – the other ones in this set will be noodle stoppers. As she’s pretty skimpily dressed and there’s some closeups of her bikini bottoms I’ve marked this blog NSFW.
As these FuRyu blogs will be shorter due to the size and complexity of these figures and me no longer owning the boxes for a box comparison, these blogs will be released at a quicker rate.

I chose this particular figure as it’s a favourite of mine of these small figures, and is a little different from the other noodle stoppers.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): n/a
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,060 (£14.03)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £3.00

The original I preordered on AmiAmi.

Figure unbagging

This bootleg simply came in a clear bag, but an immediate issue presented itself:

Ah, hrm… not going to be hugging many bottles like this!
Unfortunately it was not a case of plugging the arm back in:

Here we can see where the arm peg has simply snapped in half. Before I commenced this review, I glued the arm back together with some cheap superglue. The bond wasn’t great, but sufficient enough to allow me to photograph it.

Figure spin-around

A fairly similar effort, but we can see that the hair is a mess, the panties are a different colour and her bra doesn’t show through her clothes in the same way.

Figure close-ups

Face:

For the official, we have a cute, smiling expression and the bootleg… has a face only a mother can love. The eyebrows, embarrassed cheeks and mouth have been done in pale colours on the official and fit in with the rest of her face whilst the bootleg has lines done in a much stronger red and thicker than their official counterparts. It’s almost as if the bootleg has fresh wounds rather than facial details.
Moving to the eyes, the bootleg has lost significant amounts of detail – we’re missing two shades of purple and the white shines are underneath the black iris markings leaving her eyes looking odd to me.
The official’s hair is a pleasing peachy-pink and contains some shading. Bootleg’s hair is blobby and poorly moulded as you’d expect of a bootleg and painted more of a “pure” pink.
Moving down to the bow, the official’s looks nice, even if it is’t super-detailed, whilst the bootleg’s has a dent in it.

A closer look at the bootleg’s hair:

The hair on the bootleg is actually partly loose – it will wiggle around, but it didn’t actually come off (and that’s with me trying to some extent). If it gets pushed up, it looks really ugly. Official has no such problems and remains in place.

Hair decoration:

The official’s hair flowers are painted well for a prize figure, and we have some paint shading in her hair, which is also a treat for a prize.
Now the bootleg, oh dear. The flowers are barely painted, making it hard to tell what they’re supposed to be. We’ve got plenty of excess plastic, including some wisps of the stuff at the lower back. The hair seam is also very messy, completing the bootleg look.

Hair tips:

Both are actually shaded here, so points for both.

Top view:

The seam in the hair on the official has been blended to some extent, decently well for a prize. Bootleg doesn’t have such attempts made, and we have spiderweb of lines making the top of her head look odd.

Body:

The official’s shirt is a peach/off-white colour, and we can subtlety see she has a pink bikini top underneath. The bootleg’s top has been painted with a rough, stark white paint and her bikini top is a lot more visible than the official’s. Guess she got the cheap shirt from Primark.
The finish on the official’s shirt is much nicer in my opinion – the shiny finish gives it a silky feel, whilst the bootleg’s just look like she’s been dipped in paint.
The stomach definition is fairly similar on both, but the bootlegs is slightly less defined.

Bikini bottoms:

The official has a hot pink bikini, but the bootleg’s is more of a berry colour. The painting is also not very good on the bootleg, and there is a noticeable amount of paint on her abdomen.
Looking at the bootleg’s legs, something has gone quite wrong with the plastic casting, and it looks like she has sores on her upper right leg. I find it slightly unpleasant to look at. Along with the skin aberrations, she has a dirty knee and dirt spots on her left leg. My official does have some dust on it, but that’s British dust rather than factory dirt.

Shirt side:

On the official, we have a subtle seam line for the shirt that’s been sculpted, but on the bootleg it is much more noticeable. The slapped-on paint on the bootleg shirt is in full view here too.

Shirt back:

The bikini strap on the official has a bit of a sculpt to it, whilst the bootleg doesn’t. With the bootleg it feels a bit “painted on”, but does look OK in the photo in my opinion. The sculpts have come out pretty much a match, but you can see the rough paint at the bottom of the bootleg’s shirt. The bootleg has also come with some free dirt on her left shoulder.

Backside and tail:

The tail on the official is a much more pleasing shape, and happily springs into the position shown. The shading on the official tail is a fair bit more subtle. Both tails have excess plastic on them, which would’ve been nice to not be there. The main issue with the bootleg tail is the position it naturally resides in – it curls up against her body and just looks messy. It is also a less solid plastic giving it a cheap feel.
Looking at her bikini bottoms, the bootleg is horribly painted with a massive chunk of overage. Her leg is also not attached well to her body leaving a large gap.

Feet:

Here we can see the playful nature of the official tail and the “feh” of the bootleg.
Moving onto the feet that this shot was taken for, they’re actually pretty similar. The official’s left foot has a copyright stamp on it that the bootleg doesn’t. Official does actually have a bit of shading, but the bootleg doesn’t look noticeably worse for not having that. The toes weren’t perfectly replicated on the bootleg, but definitely a lot better than other bootlegs I’ve seen.

Underside:

Here we can see the difference in finish on the skin between the two – the official is matte whilst the bootleg very much has “cheap figure shine”. Again, the official has some shading in the skin that the bootleg doesn’t (located at the back of her knees). The bootleg also features a noticeable seam on her outer right leg.
In terms of the sculpt, the bootleg fares well, and is pretty close to the official. The toes do look a little longer on the bootleg, but I think that’s mostly a result of the finish.

Action feature:

The official has rubbery arms so that they can be bent as shown above to squeeze a bottle into her grip. The bootleg has solid plastic arms which sort of defeats the “use” of this product, and mine would just snap anyway seeing as she came broken. So definitely a win for the official product here.

Conclusion

The official is definitely better than the bootleg, though the bootleg does look OK for £3.
Telling these apart is quite easy – if the face doesn’t immediately scare you away, the colour of her clothing and the shiny finish are also clues to the figure being bootleg.
The main disappointing feature of the bootleg is the fact she can’t hug a bottle – the plastic arms won’t allow her to hug as many items and the plastic would likely snap if you tried to give her a bottle. In terms of looks, the face is definitely not good, but it was the tail that really stood out to me as being poor quality – whilst it might be possible to improve the pose of the bootleg’s tail, it will likely deform again over time.
Going to be sticking with my official figure for this one.

This one I found an interesting choice on the case of the bootleggers – this figure is still being actively bootlegged, despite its aftermarket price usually being quite low. So what can we get for bootleg prices?

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥3,800
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥4,290 (£30)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $13.70 (£11.13)

Box

Front:

The Kotobukiya logo is conspicuously absent on the bottom left, along with the authenticity sticker. They have also removed the warning texts as well – not sure why bootleggers do this sometimes.
Interestingly the text that says “Party dress version” above Ayanami’s name is white on the official but black on the bootleg. Not sure why that happened as the box doesn’t appear to be a total recreation. The blue colour is slightly off, but not in a way that screams “bootleg”.

Right:

On this side, we can see they have removed the Kotobukiya logo, the “Neon Genesis Evangelion” text and the warning text from the bottom edge. Not sure why they object to people being warned to be careful with the product.
In the top left there is less contrast in the blues on the bootleg, but nothing that massively stands out.

Left:

Here they seem to have gotten lazy with the editing and just removed everything in the bottom left, plus the warnings.

Back:

Here they’ve removed certain parts of text and rearranged what was left to vaguely fill the space. Anything that references Kotobukiya has been removed, but we do seem to have the corrected text slapped on there, instead of whatever’s underneath my box’s correction sticker.
This box also has had its barcode replaced with one for a sticker sheet. Well, I suppose it’s a sticker sheet by Kotobukiya! One of the bootleg boxes which shows it can pay to check the barcode.

Top:

Not much different here – no Kotobukiya logo and they’ve removed the Japanese for “Party Dress Ver”

Bottom:

Slight difference in the shade of blue. Not much to report here.

Now to open the box:

Ah hm, here we have the bootleggers cheaping out – with the official we’re greeted with a card inner whilst the bootleggers have decided to print the box double-sided so the design is directly onto the box itself.
Here’s the official’s inner:

This blue part slides out and isn’t attached to the box.

Blister:

The official blister is a bit different from your average blister and folds open, as well as having a separate support piece to place Rei upon when packed. The bootleggers have gone for a very basic clamshell design.

Blister side:

Note the trapeze shape at the bottom of the official, whilst the bootleg is a “normal” design.

Here is the official blister opened up:

A small thing, but a pretty cool feature.

Base

My official was purchased secondhand and opened and there’s a couple of scuffs on the base, though the scuffs don’t really show once Rei is on it. Let’s see if the bootleg can make a worthy replacement:

I’m not feeling it… The official’s base is a much nicer velvety material, and the bootleg looks scuffed on the edges from the outset.

Underneath:

The official’s base is made from a rigid blue plastic and has the copyright printed on the bottom. The bootleg is thin clear plastic with nothing printed on the bottom.

Let’s see just how thin the bootleg is:

Yeah, this thing can be bent with little force. It really is cheap and naff.

Let’s shed some light on the matter:

Official is entirely opaque, as one would expect. The bootleg however… doesn’t do much to obscure the photography light. The fluff stuck onto it is very sparse and the base plastic is ridiculously thin.

Overall, this base is a poor replacement for the official. It looks naff, feels naff and is well… naff. I’ll be sticking with my official one, thanks. I expect if I did use the bootleg base it would eventually bow in the middle thanks to the plastic used.

Figure spin-around

OK box, bad base, let’s see how the figure itself holds out.

Can definitely see some colour variation going on – most notably on her tights. The bootleg overall seems to have a more “potato-y” look where everything is slightly less distinct. We also have shiny face syndrome where the bootleg hasn’t been given a matte finish.

A couple of extra angles for the spin-around:

Yep, definitely some imperfections and shininess to look at closely on this bootleg.

Figure close-ups

Face:

Hmmm… that bootleg face. First thing that stands out is the skin – the official is matte finished whilst we have a shiny finish for the bootleg. And then we have the facial features – the bootleg’s eyes are too bright of a red – I’d personally say Rei’s eyes are more like the official’s. With the bootleg’s lack of finish and the lack of a paint line between her lips her face also looks rather blobby.
The bootleg’s hair is lighter and dirtier but the ends aren’t as blobby as other bootlegs I’ve looked at, but still not a crisp mould.
Moving to her sleeves, the top of the bootleg’s right sleeve is rough and uneven. Personally, I’m not a fan of the shade of blue of the bootleg’s shirt either.
Looking at the dress near her neck, the pattern has been painted neatly on the official and we have three shades of blue. The bootleg’s isn’t too bad, but doesn’t match the mould lines nor have the lighter blue infills.

Turning her around slightly:

Here we can see that the bootleg’s arm seams haven’t been smoothed out well.

Right earring:

The earring itself on the bootleg has turned into a blue, blobby mess. On the official we can clearly see it is supposed to be an earring poking through her hair.
Looking at the hair itself, the joins have been much more smoothed out on the official, and the bootleg’s seam lines aren’t the same as the official’s.
Moving down to where her upper body meets her dress the bootleg wasn’t and can’t be assembled correctly – the joint has large gaps and the parts don’t share the same shape to join up properly.

Left earring:

This one is even more of a blob on the bootleg – looks like the bottom half of the earring didn’t get cast and they did they best they could with what was there. The official’s adds a cute touch to a fairly simple figure.
Hand mould isn’t great on the official, but slightly more blobtastic on the bootleg.

Top of the hair:

Official we can see some paint shading in the hair. The main seam is fairly visible, and the bootleg is not too dissimilar for this seam. We do get a lot of dirt on the bootleg however. Not quite shading…?

Back:

Man, the bootleg really doesn’t hold up from this angle.
First of all, we have the terrible shirt-dress seam – figure can never be good if the parts don’t fit together. The shirt is lacking shading and is just generally an “off” colour.
Moving to the dress itself, the shading has been done far too sharply on the bootleg and too widely. We’ve also got a very unevenly applied finish so she’s sort of matte in some places, but has a very shiny spot on her bum which looks really weird when the light falls on her.
The one thing that held up was the crease sculpting – if the paint wasn’t so poorly applied, the creases in her outfit would look good.

Gap on her dress from the other side:

The separate parts are more of a match here on the bootleg, but we’re definitely gapping. For the seam that runs down her dress it looks like the official has “dressed” this up to make it look like a fabric seam, but the bootleggers have missed out on that trick and left an unfinished plastic seam instead. We can also get a good look at the seriously uneven finish on the bootleg from this angle too.

Legs and lower dress:

The paint on both legs of her tights matches on the official but on the bootleg they’ve become weirdly different blues. The casting has gone decidedly rough around the edges of the bootleg’s skirt. And yet another area where we can appreciate the even finish on the official.

Feet:

Yeah, those blues on the bootleg don’t look good. Here we can see the janky assembly of the bootleg means her feet float above the floor, especially her right leg that should be lying on the ground.
The bootleg foot also features some missing finish.

Dress pattern:

An attempt was made with the bootleg – the overall design is reminiscent of the official’s but doesn’t follow the moulding and wonks off to her left side.

Bottom of the dress:

This part of the figure should be flat so she lays evenly on the base. The official has achieved this, but the bootleg is horribly warped like a wet piece of wood.

The parts don’t even match up correctly on the bootleg:

This doesn’t really show when she’s on display, but does demonstrate the quality of manufacturing for this bootleg.

Conclusion

The box for this bootleg could definitely confuse a novice collector – the box itself is of a nice quality, though they have edited out the Kotobukiya logos. The printing inside the bootleg’s box gives it a more premium feel than some of the bootleg boxes I’ve seen.
The figure itself isn’t the worst bootleg I’ve featured but definitely falls down in the details. I think a “bootleg collector” would be happy with this figure, but with the gaps and odd paint I don’t think someone who collects official figures only would be happy with this. And probably not fooled with its poor quality.
In terms of reusing the base, I wouldn’t bother. It’s so low-quality you might as well not use a base for the official figure if you don’t have the original base. Or make a mini-rug out of some carpet or fluffy material.

In terms of telling it apart from the official, the box has a few giveaways – the missing logos and warnings, incorrect barcode and non separate cardboard inner. For the blister, it doesn’t have the “opening” design of the official.
For the figure itself, the poor finish, blobby earrings and poor assembly are major clues to its lack of authenticity.

This bootleg was slightly on the harder end to get hold of – there weren’t very many people selling it, and even less of those were including his box which I was intrigued in due to the pictures I’d seen of it in the past where it looked very similar to the real thing.
The other difficult thing about buying this bootleg is that it could’ve cost more than I got the official for, so I ended up waiting for a sale to buy it.

There is a lot of box action, so if you want to skip it scroll down to “Figure in blister”.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥6,800
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): £21
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $24 (£19.33)

The official version I bought secondhand from an MFC user.

Box

Front of the box:

Wow, these are similar. The most similar official vs bootleg box seen to date. The GEM logo is slightly less in the corner, no authenticity sticker and the colours are a shade or two off – not something that’s noticeable without the official box next to it.

Sides:

Again, the print colours are slightly off but it doesn’t instantly scream “bad print quality”. Looking up close, the bootleg does have some pixeling going on.
In the lower side photo, you’ll see the bootleg box is popping apart but I’ve had a bad track record with this box type, so falling apart doesn’t necessarily mean much.

Back:

Here the printing differences are more obvious in my opinion as this side mostly consists of images of the figure. Here we can see the print has gone a bit blueish and the artefacting is on full display.

Top:

Here the red ring is noticeably less at the top on the bootleg box due to the print being misaligned. So if this print is misaligned, this is a good sign that you’re looking at a bootleg (I’ve only got one box sample, so not sure if all the boxes will be misprinted like this).
This ring has also not been replicated properly – instead of the outer ring fading smoothly out, there is a sudden transition from the colour on the “arms” to the outer ring.
Lastly, the bootleg has one piece of square tape, whilst the official has three.

Bottom:

Not much difference to be seen here – this is a copy of the text, so not much challenge to replicating.

Flap:

Ehh… again, very minor difference.

Now, if you can look into/open the box, you can see some actual differences:

Of all things, the bootleggers cheaped out on the adhesive. MegaHouse has gone with thick lines of adhesive with more deliberate shapes. The bootleg box has squiggles of glue which won’t hold the plastic so well. If the plastic’s coming off, then you may want to check if it was glued on properly in the first place… Again, the glue giving up definitely can happen on official figure boxes, but it can be a sign to be more wary of what you’re buying.

Insert front:

The official has a shiny finish, and the bootleg is only vaguely shiny – see the camera reflected on the bottom flap. The print on this definitely looks a lesser quality to me – it’s gone murky and miscoloured and the gradients have gone to shit. Maybe not super-noticeable if you only have that one to look at, but a definite contrast to the official.

Insert back:

MegaHouse went for the higher-quality cardboard, whilst the bootleggers went for a cheaper, more yellowy variety.

Figure in blister

They look very similar in the blister – definitely hard to tell them apart like this. Would be more similar if mine was new and had the static plastic sheets inside. The bootleg’s blister is wilting a bit though from being a cheaper plastic.

Base

OK, let’s have a look at the base before Kaworu bursts out of his plastic prison. I’m sure he’s enjoying it in there.
So here they are:

First thing that’s immediately obvious is the upright parts of the base differ in amount of transparency – you can see through the official’s base stand to some extent, but not through the bootleg’s. Looking at the edges of the top face by the pegs we can see where the moulding has gone slightly wrong on the bootleg and it isn’t quite the shape it should be.

Base from above:

Aha! I’ve seen a “major” difference! Have you seen it yet?!
I’ll reveal that one in a minute… Firstly, here we can see the transparency issues extend to the bottom part of the base, and the difference in the uprights is even apparent from this angle.
Looking at the text, the bottom line’s font weighting seems to be incorrect. They pretty much nailed the main logo… but then failed at the subtext.

Now to get up close and personal with the text to see the difference:

Yup, they’ve missed the full stop off the end of the tagline. How dare they!?
This close-up also showcases the skinnier text of the bootleg.

Bottom:

With the light going through the base, you can see the plastic difference. In the upper picture we can see that both bases have the copyright – one of the rareish times where the bootleggers haven’t scrubbed the copyright.
The lower images shows how the light reflects differently off of the two bases. Left lets light through or shines, the bootleg is a much more diffuse effect.

Ah! It looks like bootleg Kaworu has popped out of his box – let’s try him on the stand:

Hm, yes, those flaws that I saw near the pegs were a sign of things to come – he doesn’t sit quite right on the pegs and is a little wobbly. He doesn’t feel like he’d fall off when displayed, but if he was knocked he’d be far more likely to go flying and possibly take the pegs out with him.

Ah, official Kaworu has now made it to the party – time to look at them both together.

Figure spin-around

From a distance they’re pretty similar – most noticeable things to me are the difference in hair and suit colour, and his head is angled differently.

Figure close-ups

Let’s see what they’ve done to Kaworu’s beautiful face:

Apparently bootleg Kaworu has been rolling around in the dirt – we have a particularly noticeable dirt mark on his nose and some dirt scattered on his right cheek.
Going back up to the hair, we can see the paint is very different between the two – the bootleg’s is thickly laid on and is a much simpler shading job than the varying shading of the official. The tips of hair across face are mostly shorter on the bootleg and less refined.
His eyes have been mostly been replicated well, but I can see a bit of a scratch on my bootleg copy in the white shine in his left eye. Lastly, the mouth has been given a lighter shade, which softens his face, but still maintains a Kaworu look.

Hair seam:

Here my bootleg wasn’t very well assembled, leaving a pretty visible gap between the parts of his hair.

Hair from the other side:

Very blobby here on the bootleg. The seam comes a bit closer here, but we have flecks of paint in various places. Official is smoothed and finished well.

Hm, that hair colouring is looking a little off on the bootleg… let’s take a closer look:

Ew, yuck. Looks like bootleg Kaworu has spraypainted his hair silver. This colour pick wasn’t a good one on the bootleg. The detailed shading is also missing – on the official, the tips of the hair are light grey whilst the shaded undersides are painted a dark grey.

Chest:

First thing that’s apparent is the slightly different posing of the hand on the bootleg – his hand is pulled back slightly than the official.
Looking at the ‘pips’ on his collar, they aren’t as neatly painted as the official.
The “button” in the middle of his chest has a distinct outer ring on the official, but this detail is missing from the bootleg. The triangles underneath this aren’t quite within the lines of the bootleg, giving it a messy appearance up close. With this close shot we also get to see some roughness in the silver paint on the bootleg, but it’s not particularly noticeable in person. The lopsidedness of the silver parts is more noticeable though, but kinda gets away with it by making it look a bit like he’s maybe leaning a bit.

Hand closeup:

The small red details on his suit have been replicated well on the official, but the bootleg looks like they were kind of making it up whilst they were going along. We seemingly have an extra black dot on the upper one, and the lines haven’t fully been drawn in.
The official also has some shading here that isn’t present on the bootleg – if you look at the end of his cuff, it is darker than further down.

Side of the suit:

Here we have a few paint imperfections on the bootleg – a black fleck near the upper silver part, the purple bleeding into the blue, a mess of paint underneath the lowest silver part.
Looking at his hip, we have some shininess creeping in on the bootleg that isn’t present on the official.

Right arm:

Here the bootleggers painted the discs on his upper arm silver – they’re supposed to be silver, but this is missing on my official at least. Strange to have a bootleg that got it right when the official didn’t. If only the bootleggers could nail the painting… We’re missing a black line on one disc, and the other isn’t very distinctive.
Lower down, we have some missing paint on the bootleg- the indent misses the shading the official has.
For some reason the elbow part is a really weird misshaped mess on the bootleg – looks like has been squished and given a strangle oval-y shape.
Lastly, the blue paint also lacks shading here on the bootleg, whilst we have ample on the official.

Right hand:

The discs on the official match up with the other ones, and the bootlegs are the similar half-attempts to the other ones. Again, we have paint shading on the official but not the bootleg.

Left arm:

Here the discs look a little silvery on the official… but the bootleg ones are an absolute mess. The painting here is severely messy on the bootleg, especially considering the rest of it is relatively decent. No such complaints with the official for me.

Shoulders:

Here we can see the linework is largely better on the official than the bootleg. The official isn’t entirely neat, but less sloppy than the bootleg. We can also see a major problem occurred during moulding – his left shoulder parts don’t meet up properly, wit the upper part curling under. Mmm, quality. The top ridge of the “backpack” has also become a victim of poor moulding and is significantly rounder on the bootleg than the official. It doesn’t look horrible, but lacks the distinct definition that it should have.

Back:

Here you can see how the backpack doesn’t stand out as well as it should on the bootleg, thanks to the bad mould. The 6 on his backpack has also missed the central spot, leaving it looking a little odd.
Moving down the back, we have a glossier black part than on the official and a very glossy butt that has lost its shape. The official has some sculpted ass cheeks so you can see exactly how tight an EVA suit is, but the bootleg is missing anything in the way of asscrack. We’ve also go some “plastic worm tracks” in the bootleg’s butt, which makes it look odd when the light is shining on it.
The black triangle on the right of the bootleg has also very much come short of the line it is supposed to be touching.

Hip:

Here we get to see some good ol’ defect on the bootleg. When taking off the protective sheets, it looks like some of the coating came off with it – not sure if that’s because its been in the box too long or if it was put in the box before it was dry. At the bottom of this section we’ve got some uneven paint on the bootleg.
The top of the hip bone has gone a little wrong on the bootleg and doesn’t look right to me. He’s supposed to be a bit bony here.

Upper legs:

Mmm yes, not really a match in the blue colour department. The bootleg is a fair bit lighter than his suit should be – I’d consider the official a close match. Also with the blue paint, the different finish is fairly apparent here, with his legs usually catching some of the light.
Moving on, the black lines here suffer from moulding and painting problems, changing their shape and appearance.

Lower legs:

For the most part, this area looks OK on both. The bootleg seems to have a bit of a bent left ankle though. Hope he’s not falling off!

Backs of his legs:

Interestingly the square parts aren’t coloured in on the official but are on the bootleg. They’re supposed to be coloured, looking at the handy dandy Kotobukiya Kaworu figure I have next to me, so a mild bit of disappointment for the official here.

Side of leg:

Not too much different here – mostly the suit paint as previously mentioned, and a fairly minor paint flaw in the linework on the bootleg.

However, this part of the bootleg’s right leg didn’t come out so good:

Lots of roughing up of this surface – the plastic sheeting was very much stuck to this part of his leg, leaving this mess behind. Erk.

Soles:

The official is nicely sculpted, with the sole pattern recreated in detail. With the bootleg we’ve lost the sharp angled edges and the sole looks like it has been worn down. We’ve also got a massive air bubble problem here – we’re making figures not soda, dammit. There’s also been some scraping on this bootleg foot, which isn’t the best.

Conclusion

Telling these apart in the box, and you have your work cut out for you – the differences are relatively minor, and most won’t really show up too well with a low-end camera/poor lighting. If you’re buying this guy, then you may just want to skip any that don’t have the authenticity sticker. If you’re in need of comparing parts of the box to ascertain that it is official, then I’d recommend the G.E.M logo and the top of the box. If the box is opened, then looking at the glue patterns inside might be the way to go.
Out of the box, the hair is the most obvious difference in my opinion – a lot of attention was put into the hair of the official, and not so much in the bootleg. His hand not touching his chest where it is supposed to may also be a giveaway. A side photo of the stand would also likely show if it is a bootleg or not, with the lack of transparency. If you’re looking at it in person or have close-up shots, the backpack edges and “6” print are likely to stand out. The air bubbles on the foot of mine make it apparent it isn’t official, but this might not be something present on all bootlegs.
Honestly, this is the best-looking bootleg I’ve done to date. Yes, he has his flaws, but on a shelf he would still look good if you can give the suit colour a pass. When the official does show up for sale though, it’s usually pretty cheap so I’d still recommend getting that over this, ignoring ethics. I do wonder if this pretty darned close bootleg is part of the reason of his price dropping so far in the aftermarket – I don’t think he’s worth his original MSRP, but I think that the ¥2-3k he seems to go for in the aftermarket is pretty darned cheap.

Alter… one of the most highly regarded figure companies. Let’s see how an Alter bootleg fares to its original. Will this be the Alter of bootlegs? Let’s find out!

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥12,800
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥13,945 (£97.65)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $20.47 (£15.90)

The official figure I preorderd the second release.

“Box”

This bootleg technically came with a box:

Hm, not really outclassing the original’s clear box here.

This is how the figure was packed in the box:

Not too bad, and did keep the figure protected in transit.

Here’s the parts laid out:

Not the worst packaging, but nothing to stop the parts of the figure from rubbing up against itself.

Now to start unbagging these bits and compare them to their official counterparts.

Base

Top view:

The first things that stands out to me is the difference in colour of the text and the base size – surprisingly, the bootleg is larger than official. Looking at the edge of the base, we can see that the bootleg has a “triangular” edge, whilst the official curves down sharply. The “To Love ru Darkness” text on the bootleg is uneven and lacks the pink wing end markings of the official.
With the peg holes, the desk ones look slightly different – we’ll see why later. However, the biggest difference is the foot pegs – with the official the foot support is part of the base but the bootleg’s was attached to the figure, leaving two pegs to attach the foot support instead (more on this later).
The bootleg base is less transparent than the official, and there is no copyright text to see through it.

Underneath:

Not really anything extra to see here with the bases being transparent. We can see the plastics are quite different with the way the light goes through them, especially at the edges. On the bootleg, we can see where the “A” in “Kurosaki” has got a large printing mistake – a flaw that wouldn’t make it to an Alter figure base.

Foot pegs:

Yep, pretty significant difference here.

Size comparison:

The main writing isn’t too different in size, but the spacing is significantly different for the subtext. The size difference is pretty significant – bootlegs don’t tend to make parts larger, and frequently the opposite, so surprised the base is larger than just the chamfered edge.

Overall, the bootleg base looks decent, barring the printing flaw that at least exists on mine. The official does look nicer, but there isn’t anything particularly wrong with the bootleg one. The bootleg base couldn’t be used as a replacement for the original, as the pegging is significantly different for all of the pegs.

Desk

The lone accessory for this figure – the desk which she sits upon. How does our bootleg compare before we sit her upon it?
Top:

The official desk has a grain texture on top, to enhance the realistic look of the wood whilst the bootleg is just a flat brown. Both desks have a hole to pin Kurosaki’s hair bobble into, though the bootleg one serves no purpose, which we will see later. The official’s hole has been countersunk, to allow the hair bobble to sit as flush to the desk as possible.

If we look at the lower edge of the desk in the top photo, we’ll see that it looks distorted. Here’s a close up of this area:

This “dent” is to help the figure sit firmly on the desk. The bootleg lacks this extra feature.

Front:

Hm, do my eyes deceive me, or is that bootleg desk taller? Yes and no. The desk itself is the same size, but the bootleg desk has pegs whilst the official has peg holes, and this change is replicated on the bases hence why the parts are not compatible with each other.
The bootleg desk also leans somewhat – it is a bit rickety, and the legs will wiggle about a fair bit unlike the official. It has managed to stay together for this blog, though it did make assembly a little more difficult.
With the desk painting, the bootleg misses the finer details – the white pockets(?), the grey rubber feet and any shading on the metal. The wooden part of the desk has a noticeable seam running around it too.
The bootleg desk also looks like it might have been through the wars a bit – a couple of “dents” are visible on the upper metal part, which could almost be passed off as extra detail.

Sides:

The metal on the bootleg desk looks very cheapy compared to its official counterpart – Alter have done a nice job of replicating the metal look, whilst the bootleg paintjob is very simple. On the hook parts, we can see the limitation of bootleg’s casting, and little air bubbles give a rough appearance.

Back:

Both of the desk shelves look like they’ve had a bit of a rough life – the Alter one is bent slightly upwards, whilst the bootleg’s is bent downwards on one side, plus a “scrape” from a moulding issue.

Underneath:

Here we can really see the peg difference. With the holes taking up most of the space in the feet, I suspect this is why the bootleggers changed it – the casts would need a decent level of quality to replicate this which probably wasn’t happening. With the official having peg holes instead of pegs, you could use this as a separate figure accessory, but I don’t think you’d want to display the figure itself without the base.
The bottom of the official’s desk shelf has been shaded. And the bootleg’s, erm, has not been.

Overall, the bootleg desk isn’t bad, but it’s a significant step down from the official, lacking certain paint details that gives the desk its premium feel (as much as a school desk can have that…).

Figure spin-around

Let’s see how well these parts fit together:

Not too bad, at a glance. The more notable differences to me is the dangling bit of cape and the finish on her clothing. We also have the sad ahoge and wandering hair on the bootleg.
If you look closely at the bootleg’s left knee in the first photo (you will likely need to look at the enlarged pic), you can see where her hair has scraped against it during transit – being in a bag with no extra plastic wrap, the hair has rubbed one or two spots.

Figure close-ups

Face:

Eeesssh. The eye prints on the bootleg are awful. Her left eye on the bootleg is completely in the wrong spot, as well as the layers not being aligned with each other. We’ve also lost all of the finer details, so she doesn’t even appear to have an iris.
The face itself is shinier on the bootleg – as evidenced by the shine above her nose. The bootleg also have some stray paint next to her mouth, and she has “slapped face syndrome” where the bootleggers have been a bit heavy with the rouge, leaving her face too red.
The bootleg’s hair has lost some details, which has been emphasised with the overly light colour used in the recessed parts of her hair. Not sure why they did this – a darker colour would’ve looked better, to emulate shadow. It looks like the bootleg’s hair has been given a pale-coloured wash, which extends the shading problem to other parts of the hair. Yeah, definitely liking the official’s hair more.

Braid:

Even my camera doesn’t like this angle of the bootleg…
The larger, upper bead/clip in her hair has a messily painted cross on the bootleg, and it isn’t made out of the translucent material the official has. The braid is also a different colour on the bootleg, making it look odd and not part of her hair. The bottom hair bead is painted a lot larger on the bootleg, and again, isn’t translucent. The hair on the side of the bootleg feels rather sad – the mould edge and lack of depth in the moulding makes it look kind of dead and lifeless, which the paint job does nothing much to remedy.
This angle also shows the misshapen ahoge well. Not quite the same.

Back of hair:

Here, the shading isn’t so bad on the bootleg. We also have the overly light wash present here too, making her hair look like a light source.
What truly mars the bootleg here is the stray red dot right in the middle of her hair. Can’t avoid that at this angle.

Hood:

Here we can see where the Alter paint job stands out – a good amount of shading here, to give depth and realism to the hood, whilst the bootleg has… nothing. Just plenty of one shade of blue. Towards the top of the photos, we can see how the official’s hair is nice and neat, but the bootleg’s is scruffy and unclean.

Star buckle:

Here we get a threat of a peek of her chest, yet not have anything truly on show. The sculpt of the star on the bootleg has gone a bit wonky, leaving the points unevenly-shaped. The paint hasn’t been applied neatly, leaving spillage onto and off of the star.
Here is one of the places the lack of glossiness on the bootleg’s clothing is quite noticeable – one of the reasons I bought this figure was for the glossy clothing, so this is a pretty big negative to the bootleg for me.
The bootleg also looks to have Raynaud’s, which isn’t the best look for a figure. It looks like that her hand wasn’t painted – I wouldn’t be surprised if this area was assembled before painting, making it all but impossible to apply the paint. Assembly before painting seems to be a common theme with bootleg figures.

Stomach:

Here, the shadows are much more distinct on the official, helped by some subtle paint. The extra paint and matte finish on the official give her skin a much more lifelike appearance. From certain angles, the glossiness of the bootleg skin is visible – if you look close to her belly button there is a ring of shine, showing the different finish.

Pants:

The lack of gloss is again pretty noticeable here. The belt buckle is more neatly painted on the official, and the overall finish is much neater and nicer looking. We also have a difference in the arm pose here – on the official she is teasing you, the bootleg… not so much. With the bootleg, both the arm and hand are not in the same position, leading to the quite different pose. Her fingers are also overly white on this hand too with the bootleg – I think the bootleg needs to get her circulation checked.

On closer inspection, I noticed that the bootleg’s short/pants/thing was loose…

They’ve made her into a cast-off… kind of. She has these panties roughly painted, but the skirt has been glued at what someone probably intentionally made a peg. As a result, she’s some form of forced cast-off, but not to reveal anything exciting.
If you wanted to do this cast-off, there’s a few major issues – the panties aren’t painted well and look a bit naff, she needs her clothing to sit on the desk properly, and I doubt it would go back on unless you glued it. So not really a worthwhile advantage of the bootleg, to be honest.
If there’s demand, I’ll rip off her lower clothing and take a pic. Requests can be submitted as comments below.

Left arm:

The paintwork is actually fairly decent on the bootleg here, and does try to emulate the original figure quite well. However, the lack of shiny finish and the posing kind of kill it. The moulding is also not as deep and detailed as the official, which further flattens its appearance.
With the posing, the angles of the arm and the hand on the official make her look seductive, but the change in angles on the bootleg make it look more like she’s just posing for a photo. It’s a small difference, but feels very different to me.
Looking just above her arm on the bootleg, the top fails to taper at the edges, giving it a very thick and not very clothlike appearance.

Close-up of the left hand:

For the shading on her glove the bootleg has gone for a more standard appearance with the light focus on the middle, whilst the Alter one is lighter towards the left giving a better appearance of angled light. With the paint, the edges of her gloves are much neater on the official, and she has her fingernails painted.
Oh, and yes, the blood loss.

Right leg:

For the skin tone, I feel it is nicer on the official than the bootleg. The bootleg leg from this angle isn’t too bad, though if you look closely at the band around her leg, it does’t quite fit together as nicely as it should.

Right boot:

The buckles on the bootleg are painted surprisingly nicely here. The paint shading follows the official pretty closely here, but there is a bit of shadow missing where the boot bends just above her toes. The moulding is a bit less distinct in places, but not massively so. If it had the same finish, it would be a decently close match to the official, though the silver paint is a different tone.

Left boot:

Again, not a bad copy of the official, though the silver paint isn’t quite right here – we’re missing some to the “back” side of the buckle. And the sole of the bootleg’s shoe is a bit thicker.
Here we can also see the differing foot stands – the official is clear and matches the base and the bootleg’s is black. I think I much prefer Alter’s decision, seeing as the base isn’t black. When fiddling with the bootleg figure whilst writing this review (to see if she was cast-off or forced), it turns out she isn’t really glued to the foot support as I initially assumed from it coming pre-attached to the figure. It does have pegs similar to the official, so you could technically attach the foot support to the bootleg’s base if you wanted to.

Lower back:

The lack of different shades on the bootleg’s skin again makes her skin look flatter than the original. The moulding of her shorts went a little wrong here on the bootleg, and is a bit bunched up to her right. On the bootleg’s leg, the silver paint has been a bit overgenerously applied to the belt buckle.
Lastly, we have the hair braid – the red is a decent bit less vivid on the bootleg than the official.

Left side of her pants cape:

If you like the shiny, this part of her clothing will likely lead to the most disappointment. The official has a shiny, clean appearance, whilst the bootleg is rough and mostly dull. We also have a visible seamline, ruining the smooth appearance. Due to the plastic composition used on the bootleg and poor recast, it also doesn’t curl into a very pleasing position.

Back of her pants cape:

Yep, the bootleg cape looks just as dead and lifeless on this side too. If this was a prize figure, I think this is fine, but comparing it to the official… it just doesn’t hold up.
With the bootleg, we can see how the cape is used to hold her onto the table – with the official the hair is pegged to the desk, so it covers this slightly odd-looking part up to some extent.

Hair tips:

The bootleg’s paint has ended up a much darker shade of purpley red than the official. We can also see some rough moulding parts on it too. The curlier hairs are also less curly than the official – pretty common with bootlegs.

Hair bobble:

This part separates them relatively significantly – with the official being transparent, and the bootleg being opaque. The bootleg also hasn’t had its halves matched together properly, leaving it lumpy around the middle.
Also the bootleg lacks this feature:

Without the peg, the hair is annoying to pose and won’t stay where you want it easily – this peg holds the hair in the correct place, which helps hide the slightly unusual sculpting on her clothing, which is there to help her stay on the table firmly. I did try to check for evidence of the bootleg ever having a peg, but it doesn’t seem to have had one. Or at least it wasn’t there when it was painted.

Conclusion

First off: bootleg isn’t worth it for the cast off feature in my opinion. Official might not have this, but I don’t really want to display her with poorly painted pink-stripe panties. Honestly, blue stripes would look better in terms of colour choice.

As far as telling these apart, there are distinct differences on each of the parts, making it easy for anyone who knows what this figure should look like. The table misses key paint details – no texture on the top and a lack of properly painted feet, as well as shading. The base of the bootleg just doesn’t look premium, and has the nonmatching foot stand.
The figure itself lacks the glossy shine, very much making it look like a prize figure version of itself, also assisted by a lack of transparent parts. The eyes are easily the worst thing about the bootleg – it makes it look like she doesn’t have proper eyes when looked at up close, which I think would make this figure unappealing to a number of collectors.
For the bootleg overall, I think you’re getting what you’re paying for – I don’t think she’s awful, but definitely not up to par with the official. I could definitely see someone buying this and not knowing it was a knock-off, especially if she was sold at a price point closer to that of a prize figure than an Alter scale.
As for this being the Alter of bootlegs… hm, maybe? I think it comes closer than most of the bootlegs covered thus far, but I have one upcoming figure that I think is a closer match to its official counterpart, and this one is definitely not without its flaws, especially with that hair bobble missing its peg.

This figure is the first one chosen by user vote! This figure was voted for by GerardHaZ and dtindcarea.
Partly surprised this wasn’t one of the bootlegs I chose for myself, as it was one I was curious as to how the bootleg compared to the real thing many moons ago. However, the real thing can be had pretty cheaply, with the postage likely costing more than the figure itself due to the box’s large size.

Whilst writing this blog, I ended up doing some more research on bootlegs for this figure – there appears to be at least three different bootlegs. One version is shown in the MFC gallery, featuring a box claiming the figure was made by Max Factory. There’s a second version which appears to be a run-of-the-mill bootleg, which looks more prize figure than scale, but comes with a box that’s pretty much a match for the official:

Note the unfinished green lines on her top, shiny hair and face plus seam marks as far as the eye can see.

And then there is the version I got. Which… well, you’ll see!

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥8,381
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥8,670 (£48.42)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £24.58

I bought the official version from AmiAmi preowned.

Box

Let’s get the boxes lined up for display…

Ah, hm, OK, time to do some unpacking! Though credit to the seller on this one – it’s probably the least bashed-up bootleg box I’ve got to date!

Size comparison:

The box for this figure is quite chunky, so here’s one photo of them both in the same shot, showing that the bootleg box is actually slightly shorter than the official.

Front:

The box design of the bootleg has been to be made to be close to the official, but without key graphics in some kind of attempt to avoid copyright infringement. The Goodsmile Racing logo is missing from both the top right corner of the box and the window. We’re also missing the copyright line in the bottom left. The blocks of colour at the top of the box are noticeably thinner than the official, and didn’t quite survive the resizing process intact.
The rest of the front is a copy of the original, only poorly printed – the colours have come out much darker and there’s a bunch of artefacting going on, especially noticeable in her hair.
And we can already see these figures aren’t going to be a match…

Sides:

A fairly similar story as to the front, but here we can see the poorly done edit job that has been done to remove the logos – looks like they’ve just grabbed the paintbrush tool and scrawled over the logo in white, leaving an oddly fuzzy edge to what’s supposed to be an ovalish sort of shape.

Back:

Here the bad print job on the bootleg is pretty apparent. The darker areas have lost significant amount of details, and gives the photos an overall odd quality. Again, the Goodsmile Racing logo has been removed, from the lower part of the box. And they were too lazy to draw the gridline back in.
Several chunks of the lower box text have been taken out, where it refers to GSC and being intended for sale in Japan only. To not leave huge white gaps, they’ve rearranged what was left to mostly fill out the space. As this is an edited copy of the original box, the barcode matches with the official one.
My official has an AmiAmi preowned sticker on it – they have their own control codes to keep track of their stock, so if you see a sticker very similar to the one to the bottom right of the official box, it’s just AmiAmi’s way of keeping track of stock. The “[中古]” at the start of the label text is “preowned”, and you can see the figure grade of A and the box grade of B.
OK, not here to talk about AmiAmi’s labelling process, so onto the next side of the box.

Top:

Another missing logo, another mediocre edit job. Not much to really notice up here, other than that hot pink bar at the top.
Oh, and this:

It actually has a round piece of tape – but just the one, whilst the official has three. And it’s the cheapest, thinnest bit of tape you ever did see. If you’ve ever picked off or cut through GSC’s round circle dots, you’d know that this was not it.

Bottom:

Yep, no Goodsmile Racing logo here either. Boxes look pretty similar other than that, albeit with a colour difference.

Let’s have a little look in the box:

Here we have one of the smaller things that the bootleggers will cheap out on – the amount of glue used to adhere the plastic window to the box. The official one is glued down on the outer edge as well as around the window itself, the bootleg only around the window. This has led to the plastic not lying flat, and will catch on the blister as it is pulled out.
The flap design is also slightly different on the bootleg – the triangular parts at the bottom of the box come much closer to the lower flap than they do on the original.

This box also featured a liner for both the official and bootleg:

For scales, sometimes the bootleggers will actually copy the official inlay. For this one, we also get an edit – they have actually drawn in the gridlines (though some are not level with the ones they’re supposed to join up with), but didn’t bother to complete the swooshes, making it look incomplete. This is mostly hidden by the figure in the box though, so by the time you get it out the bootleggers probably don’t care if you notice this.
The bootleg liner is also much lighter and less vivid in colour. The shapes are a match though, so if it wasn’t for the missing logo they would be relatively hard to tell apart.

One more “sneak peak” of the figure, before we take her out of the blister:

The blisters feel very different to the touch. The bootleg blister has little rigidity to it and will scrunch up easily. Even with the extra padding the seller added, the bootleg blister has become partially deformed. The flimsiness of the bootleg blister does actually make it harder to pull out of the box.
The official figure is likely a fair bit older than the bootleg (and has been out of the box more times), yet the official blister stays in shape nicely.

Accessories

None, really. But there are a couple of things I want to add here.
First is the official comes with a little warnings sheet, which the bootleg doesn’t come with:

And the official comes apart like so:

Which allows you to display her without her skirt:

Which means you can treat it as an accessory if you wish to. The bootleg I tried very hard to take apart, but it wasn’t going. I tried just tugging relatively gently before I did the photoshoot, but after the photoshoot I tried heating up her torso a bunch and tugging on it very hard, and it’s definitely glued (didn’t want to do this before the photoshoot just in case I ended up with a very broken figure). The skirt is the same mould as the official, so it sits loosely on her, but there’s no way of taking it off easily.

Base

Top of the bases:

Overall, very similar. The bootleg is more creamy in colour, and misses the patterning in the blocks of colour (most noticeable in the rings to the right of the base).
The green teardrop to the right of the foot pegs is a solid colour on the bootleg, whilst the official one shows the colours underneath. There is also a teardrop towards the top right that is purple on the official and blue on the bootleg (on top of the pink blob).
There are colour differences throughout, but that is probably the main, most easily visible ones.

Bootleg base pegs:

Even before I’ve assembled the figure, there’s seemingly paint transfer on the bootleg pegs. No idea where the green paint has come from – could possibly be stray paint in the factory. I don’t think the figure would have rubbed up against the base, especially for the lower peg.
Also the longer bootleg peg didn’t survive disassembly – I needed to take the figure off the base for another base photo, and the upper part of the peg has started to snap – one more disassembly and it will likely break right through. The official has been taken off its base a few times (usually for cleaning) and the pegs are still holding strong.

Underneath:

Here we can see the distinct difference in plastic colour. Here we have a slightly different mould mark on the underside of where the foot pegs fit in.

Copyright:

For all the removing of the logos on the box, they’ve left the copyright on the base.

Size comparison:

Seem to be identical in size. Can also see where the bootleg is a bit rough on the edge and more stray paint (yellow spot towards the left of the photo).

If they weren’t side-by-side, it would be easy to not recognise the bootleg base as bootleg. However, I wouldn’t recommend mixing them up as the plastic on the foot peg is weaker, and may snap inside your figure.

Figure spin-around

Let’s look at this beauty!

The first thing that sticks out to me is the off colouring of the bootleg’s hair – the middle is starkly an off-green colour for Miku. And her outfit is mostly silver instead of pearly light grey.
With her head pointing down and the lean, it feels like bootleg Miku is captured in the moment of falling over. Though she managed to stay upright for this photoshoot!

Figure close-ups

Face:

That hair… The bootleg’s hair colour is completely off, and shows off an extra seam line. We also have lots of extra bits of plastic that haven’t been cut off.
The bootleg’s crown has been painted in white, which is odd given most of the bootleg’s outfit is silver. For the official, it’s the same pearly white/grey as the rest of her outfit.
The prints on the eyes seem to be the same pattern, but the colours differ, so this part looks fine.
The inner mouth on the bootleg is lighter – probably could do with being less neon, but isn’t too bad. Also her teeth are painted neatly, which is sort of rare for a bootleg.

Headset:

Before we look at the headset she’s wearing… that hair seam on the top of the bootleg’s head is distracting me. Not only is it gapping, we seem to have some glue or something in there that’s given it a yellow line.
OK… headset… The paint is much messier and less precise – the purple paint at the top of the headset doesn’t follow the lines it is supposed to, the part that joins the ring to the earphone hasn’t been painted, and we’re missing some grey shading and the grey dot on the earphone itself.
The headphone on the official has a translucent-y back, but the bootleg just has a paint blob, giving more detail to the official. The bootleg headset is finished off with some purple paint thrust at the back of the mic, leaving it only vaguely in the right spot.
From this angle, we can also see how the bootleg’s skin and hair is shiny.

Top of her head:

The main seam line is definitely rougher on the bootleg, and we have that mint-green hair going on. The rings around her hair have some very visible seam lines on the bootleg, which aren’t very apparent on the official. The paint shading on the bootleg has a lot more variation in colour, which isn’t bad in of itself, but it goes a few shades too light, which really doesn’t help the off colouring.

Hair ends:

For this part, the official has more colour depth, and has a matte finish. The bootleg is shiny and has a fair amount of excess plastic, especially on a couple of the hair tips. The hair is also more bunched up on the bootleg and less liable to keep its shape due to the plastic used.
If we look just above the bootleg’s hand, we can see where the moulding has gotten quite dodgy, where the “stray” strand connects to the main strand.

Hair strands from another angle:

For this part, the lack of shading on the bootleg hair is very apparent. We also get to see very easily where the joins are in the hair. With the official, the joins do show in places, but it isn’t too bad imo. We can also see where the back hair strand has been scrunched in on the bootleg, instead of flowing free as it should.

Chest:

And here we have the super-silver outfit! Where the top is a pearly white on the official, we have silver on the bootleg. The moulding here is awful on the bootleg – all the edges have lost their shape, and the details have gone wonky and misshapen. The worst parts for this are the triangle window on her chest and the black part at the bottom of her top.
The painted details on the bootleg’s top are mostly correct, though we are missing the black lines through the centre. Probably a good thing though, given the messiness of the paint in general on this figure.
The transfer/stamp for the logo on the bootleg is terrible, and is barely legible as a result. Certainly not the finest reproduction here.
Next noticeable element is her tie – the painting on the top part of it has been done OK, but the tie itself is opaque on the bootleg instead of the translucent of the official, as well as having a poor moulding job.
Then comes the “vest”. Not sure what to call this, but I’m going to stick with vest for this review. The design has many lines – the bane of many bootlegs, and indeed here we have the sloppy paint job as can be expected of a bootleg. The sheer parts have been painted on the bootleg, so it doesn’t look super-odd.
Lastly, we have her skin – the lack of contrast between the sheer parts of the vest and her skin on the bootleg show how bootleg Miku is more tanned than she should be – Miku is usually portrayed as being very pale.

Side:

Here we can really admire that terrible logo and poor green linework on the bootleg. We also might have a clue here why the moulding on the top is so bad – it looks like they’ve reproduced it as the moulds join in different places – the official we can see a mould line on the strap (next to the purple part) whilst the bootleg’s join is on the cup.
The seamline on the body is also in a slightly different place – if you look just above the skirt on the official, you’ll see the mould line close to the green line on the vest, whilst it is a lot further away on the bootleg.

Back:

Viewing her from the back, the hair on the bootleg looks super-weird due to the difference in colour between the hair on the back of her head and her pigtails. The hair tufts at the bottom of her hair are also pointing upwards a bit more.
With her hand, it is pointing more upwards on the bootleg than it should be, and the bootleg’s nails aren’t painted well. We’re also missing the green detail at the top of her sleeve.
The back of bootleg’s outfit is interesting – the top bit has been painted silver, but the lower detail has been inexplicably painted white. What they painted white and what was painted silver on this bootleg figure seems very inconsistent.
For the lower detail (fastener?) we’re missing the glossy part in the middle of it, and it is thinner and taller than it should be, giving it a more oval appearance.
The green linework here isn’t as blobby on the bootleg as it is on the front and sides. Still not great though.

Skirt:

Yeesh. Where to start with this one? Colours? Completely off. Apart for maybe the green lines at the edge of the skirt. For some reason the circular “button” details here are a different green on the bootleg, whilst it’s a matching “Miku green” on the official (and glossy).
The centre of the upper part of the bootleg skirt is easily the worst part of this – the paint is awful, the green border is missing and the moulding is terrible. If I had to display this bootleg, honestly it’d be tempting to snip off this skirt due to it being so poor (and it doesn’t come off like it should). The lower lines are very roughly done, and incorrect. The upper lines are too thin and the joining lines do not match the official at all – there are 3 where there should be 2 and none joining this part to the skirt hem. And talking about the hem, the green paint here has been applied very haphazardly.
Again, the logo here has been poorly reproduced, but at least the main part of the logo is legible.
The silver paint has been oversprayed on one side, but not enough on the other side. Well, it evens out to a proper paint job…?

Side of the skirt:

Here we can really admire that overspray on the bootleg, and we also have a seam line not present on the official. The official has some overpainting in parts, but it’s nothing compared to the sheer messiness of the bootleg in the respective areas.

Back of the skirt:

Here, the green linework on the bootleg is actually close to prize-figure levels of messy. Instead of “wouldn’t pass prize figure QC” levels of messy. The dark green paint and the black paint is a fail here on the bootleg – very poorly done. Official is looking neat and tidy though!

Left arm:

And we’re back to the closer shade of paint to the official here… In terms of raw colour, this isn’t actually a bad match for the official, so it’s a bit strange why they made certain parts of her clothing silver. Though that’s about the only positive for the bootleg’s paint in this area.
So, missing paint details on the bootleg: Green part at the top of her sleeve, green button on the cuff, lack of shading on the sleeve and the black rings on the glove. The bootleggers obviously noticed a shade change between her sleeve and her glove, but this has been replicated by the glove being a different colour instead of replicating the shading that it is supposed to be. The glove paint on the bootleg didn’t make it all the way up the gloves, leaving her with mutant hands.
Lastly for the paint, it looks like bootleg Miku dipped her fingers in the nail polish instead of y’know… painting her nails. Does look quite funny from certain angles.
Again, the seams are very visible on the bootleg. Official, you can see a bit of a seam on her hand if you look closely.

Hand:

Here we can appreciate the details that went into the official – with the shading and the small details being painted neatly.
And then we have mutant-hand Miku dabbing in the nail polish.
The cuff on the bootleg’s glove has also been moulded poorly, and feels like the button is more on top of her wrist rather than to the side.

Top of the boots:

For the purple/grey detail, the bootleg has lost the middle grey bit. Probably not a bad thing for the bootleg, given the poor paint overall. Again, the green paint is messy and we also have the grey paint on the main part of the boot bleeding into the white.

Legs:

We’ve got some attempt here of matching the shiny finish of the official’s outfit here, but it doesn’t live up the the pearly finish of the official. The pearly finish was one of the things that attracted me to getting this particular Miku.
Paint is also messy here on the bootleg – most apparent in in the green areas from these angles.
From the back, we also get a lovely seam line to look at on the bootleg.
For the official, we have a couple of zippers swinging out from the boot, on the bootleg these have been flattened up against the boot.

Closer shot of one of the feet showing the worst of the paint here:

Paint slop and scrapage. What more could you ask for? Oh yeah, the seam line.

Back of the legs:

The bootleg has some very bad overspray on her right leg, very much covering the white area of the boot. We can also see how she’s not posed right, which is why she leans funny when assembled.
Her panties are a darker grey than the official’s – not that you’ll be seeing them much seeing as the skirt isn’t removable. We’re also missing most of the green linework – only the top band has been painted here.
At the top of the boots we have yet more messy paint and the purple line details are missing.

Foot:

Finally down to the bottom of the figure! Paint is messy here, but at least we have all the details. Here we can see the stand for her foot isn’t quite the same shape as the other, also contributing to her standing funny. I didn’t quiiite get her to the bottom of the stand pegs for the detail shots, but in the spin-around, you can see how much she faces the floor when properly on the peg (I had to redo one of the base shots – usually I’ll do base and accessory shots first, but I realised one of my base shots was done incorrectly after I did the spin-around shots. Which lead to the bootleg’s foot peg nearly shearing off).

Conclusion

This bootleg is straight-up bad. Even in the box, you can tell there’s something not quite right, thanks to the hair, and potentially the logo on her top if you’re looking closely. The overall quality and appearance is poor – her pose has been messed up, some parts are poorly moulded and the paint is messy. Also only certain parts of her clothing have been changed to a silver colour, which looks kind of odd as some of her outfit is still white/grey.
In terms of differentiating this one from the official… the outer box is clearly missing logos (especially the one on the plastic), and the figure having different coloured hair and outfit make it stand out as not the real thing. There does seem to be a bootleg out there that is closer to the real thing, so to watch out for that one, look for the shiny hair and poor paint.
Would I think someone who buys bootlegs would be happy with this one? No, not really. Definitely wouldn’t recommend this version of the figure – it’s like a bootleg of a bootleg. The official one comes up reasonably often secondhand, so I’d recommend getting that and eating it on the shipping. One of the other bootlegs may have been worth it for a “prize tier” version of her, but this one is not.