When Kotobukiya revealed their Mystique Bishoujo, one of my favourite characters in one of my favourite collectible lines, it was only a matter of time until I grabbed one for review! Let’s check it out.
Quick Buying Options : Available at BBTS, Amazon, Entertainment Earth, and Ebay.
The box is a traditional Bishoujo design. Lots of white, illustration of Mystique, images of the Mystique statue (front/back) on the back of the box, and a window box up front. It’s packed in a plastic clamshell style case, and Mystique comes in a few pieces. Large circular transparent base, the figure, and the gun. You can also detach the head but you don’t need to worry about dropping it, it sticks firmly in place.
The base is one of the most plain ones to date, it’s a large transparent circle with two peg holes, where you place the pegs in her cape. The soft plastic of the cape was easy enough to bend into position. The original art didn’t give much room to inspire a clever base so it’s fine, certainly functional enough.
The paint is the best part of the statue. They picked a great shade of blue, similar to the Sideshow Premium Format shade. Her dress is a pleasant silver with dark shading and in the highlighted areas, it looks almost white. The skulls are clearly hand-painted since there’s a fair bit of variation. Not particularly well detailed but they’re tiny so no worries. The lipstick and hair compliment each other well.
They did the partially transparent hair tips thing they’ve had going on lately. The original concept art had the hair a much more bold bright red, which would’ve been interesting to see, but this is still nice. The left heel of her shoes has some paint chips/paint errors, it’s a little disappointing because you can see it from straight on.
She’s as curvy as the original reference art and they did a pretty great job bringing the illustration to life, with one annoying issue. In the original illustration, Mystique’s head tilt was higher. In the final statue, she’s looking down. The statue doesn’t display that well below your line of sight, and it displays alright at eye level, but it displays best when you’re looking up at it. Otherwise, you can’t see much of her face! In the original illustration, you would’ve seen her entire face at eye level. The mold lines on the arms are a little more noticeable than I’d like.
Some particularly nice touches about the sculpting are the fabric folds, the way the hair flows (and the way they did the construction on the hand running through her hair) and the curve she’s got on her stomach to face the viewer. In particular, check out her stomach and chest, they sculpted the fabric to go along with her slight twist. The face is pretty cute but due to the way the eyes are positioned, looks a little too intense, they lost some of the sultry look she had going in the art.
3.5/5. It’s a good statue, downright nice if you have the right display situation for it, just not great. Without the paint issue on mine, I would’ve given it a 4. Without the head tilt and a head more accurate to the art? Probably a 4.5.
Buying Options : Available at BBTS, Amazon, Entertainment Earth, and Ebay.
shes so cute in the picture. 
