Over the past couple of years, there has been an influx of Chinese figure companies coming to market. More often than not, they opt for original character figures, which are significantly cheaper. I can only speculate that the licencing and having logistics and design based in China helped keep costs low. Nonetheless, I’ve been keeping an eye on some of them. One particular company that sparked my interest was BearPanda. I don’t really follow Chinese social media that well, but they showed up on some of the figure sites and folks I follow on Twitter, advertising original characters in the sub 10k JPY range (and even cheaper if you buy directly from Chinese e-commerce sites like Taobao). I’ve seen figure prices go up so much during the time I’ve been collecting, so 10k JPY is now very comparable to figure prices during pre-COVID times (~2019-2020).
Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical at first: I’ve seen my fair share of quality control issues from well established Japanese companies (I’m looking at you, Phat!), and for newer companies, there’s just not a whole lot to go off from. Perhaps [and I speculate that] this is also why they’re also slightly cheaper: encourage folks to buy one and give them a shot. Indeed, I was enticed by BearPanda’s rendition of Biya-sensei’s original character Yuna in a bunny suit, which happened to be a 1/4 scale figure at 9,000 JPY. This figure was based off the following illustration posted on pixiv:
I initially didn’t pre-order her; however, after seeing some initial reviews of Yuna come out (from EXkurogane Studio and others), I bundled her with the ALTER Fischl figure I had on pre-order in mid-January, and had them shipped out together.
I received her about a month and a half ago, and my, oh my, she looks great! Starting with the box itself, it’s a basic, but solid box protecting the inside very well.
Opening it up, the plastic clamshell holds Yuna solidly in place. She comes with her pony tail and the bunny ears detached in another plastic mould right below the main figure. She also comes with a swappable face plate (more on this later) and the artbook. Since I didn’t order directly from Chinese retailers, this version doesn’t come with a flippable version of the artbook, where it’s exactly like the PVC version except each “page” of that artbook is also printed so you can technically flip and see each page (albeit very small). This figure also comes with two other plastic sheets as well, which appear to be some colour matching plates for the skin tone and the black used on her clothing.
Taking her out of the box, I found it quite challenging to install the bunny ears into Yuna’s head: it was an extremely tight fit, and at times it felt like I had to exert more force than I would’ve like to get it in. I wish BearPanda would include dummy inserts like the ones seen on FREEing’s figures to ensure the connection hole holds its shape while in storage. But yeah putting her all together, she looks pretty sexy. Yuna’s got some very short glossy black hot pants with suspenders to her glossy black bra. You can pretty much see most of her butt cheek, so it’s definitely not safe for work.
Coming back to the alternate face plate, this is one that features “following eyes”. Basically, instead of the usual eye decals, this face plate has a clear, window-like transparent cutout where the eyes are, and inside the eye pupils are there. When you stare at this figure from different angles, the pupils appear to move to different sides of the eyes. I thought it would be off-putting, but I actually quite like it: it gives viewing angles a whole different meaning! Here’s a couple of photos from different angles to illustrate the point: I think it looks really cool!
As we move further down, we’ll see her hands holding the art book right above her breasts, and this pose squeezes them together, which is exemplified in the sculpt. The art book does hide her face a little bit, but I think it creates this nice shy atmosphere. It sort of provides a slight contrast between what she’s wearing and her (potential) embarrassment of trying to hide behind said art book. Below her breasts, I really like that the suspenders are actually suspenders: they are a separate piece of plastic that go straight from the pants to her bra and don’t follow the body line. All of this to say they didn’t cheap out and did this right. Lighting around her belly area makes this quite apparent, and I love it. Oh yeah, her belly button is also 💯💯💯.
Continuing with the sculpt, overall, I thought she was nicely done. Yuna’s legs, especially around her knees, are very well-defined. You can tell where the muscles are on the back, and where her knees were. The cuff around her left leg gives a slight tease of a constriction, but doesn’t overdo it so as to take away the focus from the rest of the figure. The curves around her butt cheeks are there, and with the right lighting, they’re made to stand out. On her back, her spine and shoulder blades are also visible and feel natural. She has undeniably large breasts, and the placement of her hands to squeeze them definitely accentuated those assets. Finally, her really skimpy top (if you could even call it that) had wrinkles and textures that just made it feel like I was looking at clothes.
As we reach her feet, Yuna’s boots are basic: they’re completely glossy black, and they do have some outlines here and there. With different lighting and whatnot, it does help showcase them a bit; however, I do wish there was some contrasting colours here (like silver or white) to highlight and bring out the outlines a bit more. They just seemed a bit plain.
In terms of her hair, the colouring is quite nice. Her ponytail does feature a slight purple/pink gradient that was executed well. The base of her hair is a darker shade of purple, while the curvy portions and the end of the ponytail sculpt are slightly highlighted with a lighter shade of purple-pink. Sculpt-wise, you can see the detailed strand pieces very distinctly, which adds to the quality of the figure.
Overall, BearPanda did a great job executing on this figure for one hell of a price point. Yuna looks amazing, and BearPandy is really giving FREEing a run for their money on quality at this scale size. The bunny girl portion of this figure is subtle, and I do appreciate it in contrast to the other bunny girls I have in my collection. If you’re a bunny girl or an ecchi 1/4 scale figure collector, I think Yuna should be a “must-have” for your collection!
Anyways, that’s all I got this time around. It’s also been a while since I last posted: I’ve been busy with various life things, but I do have a couple of topics I want to talk about but haven’t had much time to write about them: hoping to get to them at some point in the next month or so. I might do a collection update post soon, as several new figures have arrived recently, but haven’t had a chance to review them all in detail. Look forward to them when they come. 😉
Until next time!
~Lui
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