NEW PRODUCT: POPTOYS: 1/6 Japan's First Beauty Tomoe Gozen & Military Horse

MeMyself&I wrote:TravelGuide: Nice pics! She looks good, lots of detail. That being said, would you mind telling me more about the blades she comes with? Plastic? Metal? Build quality?

They're metal. Look good to me. I'll make some pics of them later.

brassco wrote:wow...that's quite different from the promo pics...I'm glad i didn't make any po!

Yeah, the face doesn't resemble the promopics much, which is a shame, because I think that was really beautiful. The rest looks as advertised though. And I really like the coat and trousers (although the figure came with staining from the trousers, but since I'm not going to take them off that's not really an issue).

The armor was hard to get off her (several tiny knots).

Here are some pictures of the swords.
I've also put the sword of Phicen's Tomoe (which is plastic) in it, for comparison.
They're taken with just natural daylight. It was clouded, so lighting was a bit dim and the pictures turned out a bit darkish. They were lying on a white sheet of paper, which is greyish in the pictures, so the color is a bit off. The red scabbard is really close to its original color (on my screen).

As you can see both the swords that came with this figure have a wave-pattern at the edge. I guess that's intended and is to show the wear or frequent sharpening of the blade. I'm not sure if it's realistic, because I don't know a lot about swords. It looks OK to me, but the area might be a bit too big (it takes up about a quarter of the blades, it's more prominent on the katana than on the wakisashi*).

I'm not sure if making the blades out of metal improves them. The cutting edge of the plastic sword is sharper. Which kinda makes sense, because if they made the metal blades sharp, they'd actually be selling sharp knives, which probably isn't a good idea.
The plastic also feels smoother.
Downside of the plastic is that it can bend, which the metal doesn't. But IMO that's not really an issue.
The metal blades are a bit heavier.

You can see some greyish residue at the Wakizashi* at the point where the blade meets the hand protector. I only noticed that after taking the pictures. That seem to be some residue glue or something. I could scrape most of it quite easy.

* the katana is the long one, the wakisashi is the short one, if I'm correct.

I think they came out very nice, TravelGuide. And nice sparring, too.

TravelGuide wrote:Here are some pictures of the swords.
I've also put the sword of Phicen's Tomoe (which is plastic) in it, for comparison.
They're taken with just natural daylight. It was clouded, so lighting was a bit dim and the pictures turned out a bit darkish. They were lying on a white sheet of paper, which is greyish in the pictures, so the color is a bit off. The red scabbard is really close to its original color (on my screen).

As you can see both the swords that came with this figure have a wave-pattern at the edge. I guess that's intended and is to show the wear or frequent sharpening of the blade. I'm not sure if it's realistic, because I don't know a lot about swords. It looks OK to me, but the area might be a bit too big (it takes up about a quarter of the blades, it's more prominent on the katana than on the wakisashi*).

I'm not sure if making the blades out of metal improves them. The cutting edge of the plastic sword is sharper. Which kinda makes sense, because if they made the metal blades sharp, they'd actually be selling sharp knives, which probably isn't a good idea.
The plastic also feels smoother.
Downside of the plastic is that it can bend, which the metal doesn't. But IMO that's not really an issue.
The metal blades are a bit heavier.

You can see some greyish residue at the Wakizashi* at the point where the blade meets the hand protector. I only noticed that after taking the pictures. That seem to be some residue glue or something. I could scrape most of it quite easy.

* the katana is the long one, the wakisashi is the short one, if I'm correct.

Thanks for the pics, I do like these blades a fair bit. You are indeed correct, the katana is the larger of the two. The wave pattern along the edge of the blade is also typical of Japanese swords and is called a Hamon. It’s been around for awhile, and this article gives a quick run down of it.

I may have to pick these up. Still refining how I make my own, so a nice reference wouldn’t hurt.

GubernatorFan wrote:I think they came out very nice, TravelGuide. And nice sparring, too.

Thanks. Probably later I'll make more pics of them sparring.

MeMyself&I wrote:
Thanks for the pics, I do like these blades a fair bit. You are indeed correct, the katana is the larger of the two. The wave pattern along the edge of the blade is also typical of Japanese swords and is called a Hamon. It’s been around for awhile, and this  article gives a quick run down of it.

I may have to pick these up. Still refining how I make my own, so a nice reference wouldn’t hurt.

You're welcome. Thanks for the info. Looks like the pattern is fairly accurate, but the waves seem to be a bit to large.

Some more pics. Got to say that the Poptoysbody is less posable than TBLeague, and that the hands detach very easily during posing.