By Loran
Hey, something other than a robot for once!
You know, despite my mixed feelings on the franchise, I’m glad I got into the Nanoha franchise. I always disliked getting into Magical Girl shows because of how damn hard it is to get a hold of any merchandise for it. Well, not here. Max Factory got the license and gave us a whole crapload of Figmas for this series, and I couldn’t ask for a better for a better company to take the reign.
Teana Lanster from the third series, Nanoha StrikerS, is the most recent Figma in the Nanoha line. Unfortunately, she came out at the same date as Black Rock Shooter so it seemed like she got shoved into the background while everyone wet themselves over BRS (Yes, I have her, too, and yes, she’s awesome, but c’mon). It’s a damn shame, too, because Teana is pretty great.
She’s very nicely detailed with all the typical joints of a Figma. The paint applications are top-notch, as to be expected of Max Factory’s quality. Both parts of her jacket, skirt, and belt are all soft plastic and don’t hurt poseability at all. One issue I do have is with the belt-it doesn’t stay on very well, kind of like the G.I. Joes from the early 2000’s. It’s sort of annoying, but it can be ignored.
Teana actually comes with two choices of heads-yes, not just faces, heads. The standard head has ponytails mounted to the head instead of putting them on joints, which is a good thing, because it really helps prevent them from breaking off.
The other head has her hair down, like in the last episodes of the series. It’s a really nice extra accessory, and it comes with its own joint. She comes with only two faces, sadly, but they’re what you’d expect-angry face and normal face. I kinda wish I had some random schoolgirl Figma I could throw the other head on, but whatever.
She comes with the two things you’d expect every other Figma to have-the stand and hand rack. One issue I’ve had with her (and Subaru, for that matter) is getting the stand into her back. Maybe I just have bad luck but hey, the hot water trick never lets me down. Of course, she has the standard array of hands (regular trigger finger, open, fists, and special weapon hands).
Being the mage in the series that uses guns for weapons (yeah, I don’t really get it, either), she comes with a total of five guns plus effect parts. She has nice slanted hands that hold the weapons in a great dynamic way. The longest guns have effect parts that make neat sword-like weapons, though getting them all together is a bit annoying. The smallest guns have bullet effects and more blades, and the “standard” size gun is mostly for display-none of the clear effect parts fit in it.
However, that’s all she has as far as accessories go. She doesn’t get any other cool parts to make her more playable with Subaru. I wish they included some targets with her, but maybe they used up their accessory budget on the second head.
Overall, Teana is a pretty good Figma. I can’t consider her my favorite mostly because of the annoying issue with the belt, but it doesn’t hurt her so much it completely ruins her figure. She’s good, and definitely worth buying if you’re a Nanoha fan and already have/plan to get Subaru.
