Mami Tomoe

Review by Animaven

Oh, Mami. She owned Saimoe last year. She took the tragic way out and won the hearts of fan boys (and girls) everywhere. With her bouncy curls, her sweet smile and tasty looking teatimes, Mami was undoubtedly the winner of “Madoka Magica” - even if she didn’t get the big universal crown at the end of the anime. 

Is it any doubt, then, that her figma would be lovely? Thankfully the good people at Angolz sent us one so we could find out firsthand. 

Here’s the box: yellow, like her hair and skirt. 

And here she is in the case. 

She’s got all the standard fixins here: base, guns, faces, Charlotte. More about Charlotte - my favorite witch - later. 

Luckily, Mami is capable of standing on her own. I love figures that can stand on their own; often the stands get in the way of shots, especially when you take figures (or figmas) out for fun shoots. It impedes the fantasy. 

Here she is with her stand.

Mami is unequivocally lovely. She has a sweet face, a slight blush and impossible hair that makes her feminine and, strangely enough for a girl with so many guns, harmless. 

She’s also got a flair of pop culture by way of steampunk. Check out the corset. 

You can also see the unevenness of the paint job on her hemline here. 

From the side, you can see the cap, the hair sculpt and how her head sits on the neck stem. A few of my figmas have a problem with the chin jutting out too far; Mami does not. She does, however, have excess material in the spirals of her hair. 

She has this beautiful little bow on the back of her skirt. 

Let’s look at Mami playing with her guns. 

As you can see, she can hold her guns both from the handle and the barrel. 

And there’s a little bit of charm from the girl we know so well. This is her second face. 

And she can do a little jig. 

Here she is surrounded by her guns. She’s got a good few, and they go at attention with their own stands. They are mostly stable, though a mild breeze will bring them all crashing into Mami. 

This is a good glimpse at the guns. I like Mami here; she’s reaching for a gun, winking at someone off-screen as she prepares to take out a witch. It’s this lightheartedness that makes her so loveable and put her in the place to be so tragic. 

One of the beautiful things about Mami is the sheer adorable-ness factor of her biggest, most important villain: Charlotte. Charlotte, in order to be the ultimate match for Mami, needed a little oomph in the cute department. Or, as The Bloggess put it, a hug is a strangle you haven’t finished yet. Charlotte’s charm operates on this principle. Mami and Charlotte deadlock in a battle of the moe, and as deadly as Charlotte is, she does it with pink hair and polka dots.  

She is the tiny toy who would become a clown.

And her back shows us the nightmare she will become. Even in that face, though, we see kitsch - not danger. 

Of course, Mami’s terrified face could come from another source.

All in all? A solid figure, fun to play with and an excellent addition to my collection. She has some issues, sure, but nothing major and easily overlooked.