I have always wanted to go back and do some vintage figure shoot (I guess at least some of you must be bored by the constant Dollfie posts, let’s break it up with something different!), but the lack of proper equipment has prohibited me from doing so. Some of my earliest prepainted figure collection date back about 7 -9 years or so and the picking were slim back in those days. PVC figures were no where near as high quality as we see from Good Smile Company or Alter today. Instead, most of the above average quality figures were cold cast polystone, or just resin figures that you need to paint yourself. Today, we will take a look at my Evangelion duo that has been part of my earliest collection. Their quality is of course, not close to the high standard we hold the top tier figure manufacturers today, but they are indeed vintage and we can see just how far the figurine industry has come along!
The 1/4 Ayanami Rei was manufactured by Kyosho back years ago, first as a resin kit but was later released as a complete figure, it is recently picked up by Aizu Project for re-release. The Asuka on the other hand, was a custom painted Realize Original Kit No.33 1/4.5 Asuka! She was first featured on a Hobby Japan Extra 1998 Spring. Since I love this kit so much I had it commissioned to be painted some time in 2003.
Ok, enough mumble jumble, let’s dig in to the pictures!
This Asuka is no doubt one of the best looking Asuka resin kit back in her era!
Until this day, this is still my favorite Asuka scaled figure (not including Dollfie Asuka of course!)
Next up is 1/4 Ayanami Rei who rises from the ashes again! I can’t believe it’s getting released after what? 7 years or so? It is a very good figure and I am glad she will come alive again in the hands of Aizu project! One of the best manufacturers of polystone figure. As you can see, details on this 1/4 figure is very crisp! She also has that very “rei” expression on her face. The skin tone may be a bit odd, but it was like that 7 years ago >.>; It was considered “really good” back then >.>;
Definitely one of the best polystone figure of her era as well, figure of this quality was seldom seen back in those days!
May be it’s due to the surging demand of Evangelion goodies because of the movie? The plotline in Evangelion 2.0 definitely favored Rei, Rei fan should be rejoiced, perhaps a happy ending is in the making?
I hope you all enjoyed this vintage figure shoot! I am lining up a few more of my “vintage figures” for a shoot out sometime in the future!
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Hmmm, as much as I like Asuka, her face with this figure just seems odd. The spacing and look of the eyes, the mouth, and the shape of her face don’t seem right to me >_<
Rei looks better though ^^;
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Perhaps so, after taking a serious look at it again in years, I do agree this Asuka is not like what we usually see today. Do keep in mind that her design was done over 10 years ago and the styling of figurines have changed over time. I would very much love to see a modernized make over for her “form” though, that would be pretty epic. The Rei was done much more recently in comparison, she is only about 7 years old :3
I have to say…that Asuka looks aweful. Kinda makes me glad I joined the hobby last year.
I can’t believe a Rei figure would look better.
Lol…. she was the cream of the crop 10 years ago >.>; But looking at her now, yeah there is a huge gap in this 10 years span. For the very same reason why there wasn’t a good plugsuit version of Asuka, the technology just wasn’t there before. The Kotobukiya version, is in fact a huge improvement over what’s out there.