Haru-chan

Review by Heather Amaral

Meet the spirit of spring! Haru-chan is a part of the Nendoroid line of toys celebrating the seasons. She comes in the traditional window box. 

Ashe’s enclosed in the usual plastic casing. 

She has a lot of accessories. She has three wands, two animals, two hairpieces, three heads, two skirts, arms, legs and the kitchen sink.

As you can see, Haru-chan is meant to perch atop her koi, leading the charge into spring with the weapon of her choice in hand. 

She can also stand on her own. 

She has three different faces. The first is her happy face. The second is a sad one.

And as cute as that face is, she has a sick face which is even cuter. Spring colds do not make her happy. 

That's her second hairstyle, which looks a little Medusa-y. 

Now, let’s talk about that big freaking koi. In order to properly explain how the fish fits in, lets first look at the base. Haru-chan attaches to the arm at the back, which makes her float in midair. The arm is adjustable, though, so you can put her feet on the ground. However, there’s a little peg on the base where the fish plugs in. It’s a pretty complicated base for a Nendoroid. The flat square portion of the base is also larger than most Nendoroid bases. 

Here's the fish on the base. 

Now we put Haru-chan on the base. She has a different leg, one that sticks out as if she’s sitting, that makes it easier for her to sit on the koi. It's a little hard to place her on the fish perfectly. On top of that, we’ve got the cat, which sits on the back of the koi. There’s no peg or anything to allow the cat to snap into place; it merely perches on the fish tail, hugging onto the tail’s curvature. 

Of course, since the cat doesn't snap in place, you can always find other places to put it, like the koi's giant mouth. 

Once she's assembled, though, she's just beautiful enough to take out and frolic among her elements. 

All in all, a beautiful figure, highly versitale in pose and very well-crafted. She doesn't have a single paint flaw that I can see, and the only problem with her assembly is the tendency for the skirt to get in the way of snapping the bottom into the midsection. This is a tiny flaw, though; ultimately, having the figure on my shelf is a point of pride.