Actar, “accurate representation”,Touhou. A list and more.

Very accurate character representation! Compare below.

The release of figma Reimu makes me feel two things: anticipation, and unease.  I’m feeling anticipation because it’s an accessible figure for reasonably high quality and the fun accessories, and unease because of an upcoming precedent that would happen because of it’s upcoming release. 

tl;dr, A list of three problems with “accurate” and Reimu:

1. “Representations” are actually interpretations instead

2. Just because it’s Max Factory = definitive Reimu look?

3. 2d to 3d isn’t an airtight adaptation

stop whining too much about accurate representations of a character. Appearances are still a matter of taste and the choices/alternatives made available.

Just to know what kind of precedent we are looking at, here’s what Actar had to say about figma Reimu being unveiled. The original post says this:

“Also happy that there will be a figma version released as I always prefer a more accurate representation of a character as opposed to the cute-chibi nendoroid form. So will get the Figma instead and that would also save me some cash.”

Next to that post, I did say that Actar’s comment about character accuracy was wrong. If you look at the gamut of representations of Reimu, that too is thrown into question, it’s not really “representations” as they are interpretations. Even ZUN keeps changing how Reimu looks. The only one that seems to show form of consistency is the way Alphes portrays Reimu.

That being said, it’s a gaping flaw when Actar mentions the word “accurate” in a Touhou-related topic.

The status of figma with regards to figurine quality and the idea of being character-accurate or proportionate places it in the minds of people as being somewhere on the top of a hierarchy of figure brands and lines.  There’s not much of a divergence of appearance between the character art/official pin-up art and the Max Factory figures. The only thing that’s worrying then, is, that the idea of Reimu as portrayed by the figma version would be simply thought of as the “official version”. The irony to this is that, even the official versions may vary.

source: Neko Magic

In fact, the figma version of Reimu closely resembles that of the style of Griffon’s line of Touhou figures. It’s practically an articulated adaptation.

That being said, the “accurate representation of a character” that would follow “official versions” for Reimu would have to take ZUN’s art style ounce-per-ounce. Doing that would be unfeasible and would be akin to turning a banana split into a fruit salad, if you know what I mean.

In the end, what ends up happening is that interpretations, rather than representations of some sort of official accuracy are produced. Even punyari has come to the same notion when he reviewed the Griffon Reimu figure:

“I say that there really is no “right” way to draw Reimu, just like Miku, I have seen so many drawing styles and ages. The correct look for Reimu is up to the artist.”

Secondary to this, there does have to be some semblance to the character. In that case, making a figurine of a character has to come within a certain range of style and proportion. This is what you call “keeping it in the ball park”. Of course, there have been some crappy figures produced over the years and we can clearly say that they’ve knocked the ball out of the park. With regards to keeping it in the ball park, the problem with figurines being produced after a character/series appears in more than one media(game vs. visual novel vs. animation vs. comic) is to either stick to one style of the character as it appears in that form of media, or try to produce a design that reconciles the stylistic differences.

An example of having to pick between a depiction from one of the media is with the Koihime Musou figures. They either pick the visual novel version of the character design from Dogekobo or pick the animation design from Baseson.

Reconciling the character designs would be like Beat’s 1/8th Shana set of figures, which is discussed by Polyvinyl Crush:

“here is also the difficulty in taking something from a 2D medium and translating it into a 3D medium.  There is also the difficulty in taking series with many incarnations, like Shakugan no Shana, and making the multiple character designs work.  On top of all that, the face itself is the single hardest thing to sculpt and then reproduce a thousand times.”

There will, or may be times when the resulting reconciliation would homogenize or generificate the figure’s appearance, especially the face.  That’s risky nevertheless.

Remember, the creation of a figure from a set of drawings is already a process of interpreting and adapting from one format to another. The process is very much like transferring an artist’s illustration to a set of books or printed matter before the time that chromolithography was created. Back then, the engravers who translated the artist’s illustration on the wooden printing blocks couldn’t accurately translate the work, and thus, an interpretation was made. The difference between then and now is that that was a transferrence between printed mediums. Today, the divergence is drastically cross-media, 2d to 3d. I would say that yes, that means having to consider that adaptation/translation of mediums would require working within a ballpark figure of tastes.

I’m afraid that people would consider the figma Reimu version as the “most ideal” or the definitive idea of portraying Reimu. The comparisons I’ve shown should make you more aware of the problem sometimes when the word “accurate representation” of a character is used.

Explore posts in the same categories: action figure, action figures, figma, figurine, rant

Tags: 1/8, accuracy, actar, character design, figma, list, max factory, postmodernism, rant, reimu, sculpting, stylistic preference, touhou

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