Cure Marine
Review by Dkun
I got my Cure Marine at HobbyLink Japan. Get yours there!
In my last review, I mentioned that initially I hadn't watched any Precure. Well after getting the Cure Passion Figuart, I decided to watch a couple episodes of Precure. I first watched some of Fresh Precure and I thought it was alright, but nothing remarkable. Then I watched Heartcatch Precure, and within two days I had watched pretty much all of it. Between the art style and animation, I quickly fell in love with the show. By the time I had finished the show I decided right then and there that I needed to have a Figuart of Cure Marine. Her spunky attitude, awesome fighting skills, and incredibly short stature made her an instant favorite for me.
Cure Marine comes in a very blue box covered in flows. This box is absolutely huge, and the reason for this is her ridiculous hair, more on that later.
Cure Marine once out of the box is very blue. Her outfit is covered in cool colors and soft shapes and patterns. Very stylized, and Bandai did a good job of capturing her animation model in sculpted form.
Marine's hair is all sculpted so that it's flowing in the wind slightly. This also means that her hair is incredibly heavy and is always weighing the figure down.
The articulation on Marine is very similar to Cure Passion, only less hindered since her skirt is much shorter.
Cure Marine comes with a good number of accessories and I'm quite happy with them. She has two alternate faces, an open smile, and a shouting face. Both of these swap much more easily than Cure Passion, with just a peg and hair piece that removes from the giant wad of hair.
She has seven alternate hands, including fists, holding hands, splayed hands, and a pointing hand.
Cure Marine comes with two items she can hold. First is her Kokoro Perfume, which is the transformation device used in this series. It is very tiny, and very easy to lose.
The other item is Cure Marines main weapon: the Marine Tact. It fits snugly into her hand and the prism on it can even spin.
A stand is also included, which is much better than the stand included with Cure Passion. Unfortunately this stand also refused to stay together, so I ended up using a different stand half way through taking these pictures out of frustration.
The best accessory and half of the reason I got this Figuart was this tiny little thing. This is Coffret, Cure Marines fairy partner. He incredibly tiny, well sculpted, and adorable.
His head is even ball jointed!
I was incredibly excited for this Figuart once it was on its way. However now that I have it, I can honestly say that this is the worst Figuart I own. It's incredibly floppy, the waist joint is popping off constantly without reason, the arms pop off every time you try to move them. The hair is STILL that incredibly heavy PVC that makes it impossible for the head to look straight. In fact, Bandai was aware of how heavy the head was, so they included an alternate peg so that she could look straight and not have her head tilt. Only problem being that the peg isn't thick enough, so when you use that peg her head literally ROCKS BACK AND FORTH BECAUSE IT'S SO LOOSE.
This Figuart is flimsy, loose, wobbly, and incredibly frustrating. If it didn't come with Coffret I would think that it was a complete waste of time. The worst part being that I really want to like this Figuart! I love this character and the source material, but there is no denying that this Figuart is just not any good at all. It poses just fine, but because so many joints are loose, it just doesn't stay together. I'd like to think that I just ended up getting a dud Figuart, and that all other Cure Marines are not this bad, but that seems very optimistic of me. I can't recommend this at all, and nothing pains me more to say that about my favorite character, Cure Marine.
I got my Cure Marine at HobbyLink Japan. Get yours there!
