Love Live! SIF: Nishikino Maki

A couple years back, I used to play a mobile rhythm game called Love Live! School Idol Festival. It’s an idol franchise from Sunrise, and even today, is still going pretty strong in Japan. This game features high school girls in different outfits, which you can unlock by rolling gacha (don’t we all love those gacha drop rates /s) and playing in events. I won’t go into too much detail, but this franchise consists of mainly two groups: the original group called μ’s (Muse) and the newer one called Aqours. From the original group, two of my favourite characters are Hoshizora Rin and Nishikino Maki.

This figure that I have is of Maki, and is based off of one of the Halloween card illustrations in the game. This card was obtainable through one of the events, with the idolized version of the card represented as this figure. Below are some screenshots from the English version of the game from when I used to play. The figure itself was released by Alter in 1/7 scale back in September 2016, with Makio Munetoshi sculpting her. AmiAmi had her on pre-order for 14,300 JPY. I bundled her with some other stuff, so shipping ended up being 3,700 JPY. Unfortunately, I got (righteously) hit with import tax, and had to pay roughly $61.13 CAD to customs, bringing the grand total to be $274.04 CAD. She is one of the more expensive figures I have, but I am glad to have gotten her: I really like the attention to detail, and how closely it resembles the actual illustration.

I did take some photos back in the day before I took her out of the box. The box itself is really nice, too. Like many figure collectors, I do keep all my figure boxes in storage. They take up quite a bit of space.

I’ve kept her inside an IKEA DETOLF display case for almost two and a half years now, and every time I go look at her, I can see the immense level of detail given to her.

She comes with a few things. First, she has a lantern, which also appears in the card illustration she’s based off of. The lantern itself can light up with an additional button battery, but I’ve opted to not use it to avoid corrosion and whatnot. In addition, the veil is also detachable, leaving Maki’s back exposed. Even this portion was sculpted and coloured with great detail. The final piece is her hat, which is also detachable, but when used, is cleverly attached to her head using magnets inside the plastic itself. Pretty damn smart if you ask me.

Starting from the bottom, her shoes are really nice. It’s got this two tone silver and blue going on, and the lacing going up to almost her knee look great. The red bow and frills were nicely recreated. A little higher, we ca see her web stockings. I don’t know how they managed to pull that off, but they look superb. You can actually see the web detail with her skin still showing through.

Moving up, Maki’s skirt is also very detailed. The skirt ripples are there, and the frills on the end of the skirt add a nice touch, along with her two long and fragile pieces on the back of the skirt. The roses on her skirt have also been faithfully recreated. I also like the translucent top near her stomach, along with that extra texture all around. Her chest has a cute little bow with a bat.

Maki also looks great without her veil. We get to see her entire head, plus it leaves her back exposed. No detail was spared behind her back where the veil was covering her. The back of her top has similar frills seen on her dress, and even has the tied knots behind her back. Even though the illustration didn’t show her back, I think it was exceptionally done.

Overall, I like Maki, and I like how this figure turned out. Now having her for two and a half years, I still don’t get tired of looking at her. I’ve had relatively consistent figures from Alter these past few years, and as I mentioned in my other figure post, I’ll have another two coming next month. For now, I’ll leave you with this Maki.

~Lui