Hatsune Miku

The ever-popular virtual idol Hatsune Miku is probably the Nendoroid with the most incarnations in both regular and petite sizes. Because of this, I have selected Miku as a standard for comparison to other petite figures.

Most of the Miku Nendoroid Petits that I own seem to be roughly the same size. The figures in the following image include Saihate (サイハテ) Miku, and the 2009 Racing Miku.

Cheerful Miku is similar in size, though her body proportions are slightly different due to her pose. If she were in a standing position she would probably be at least 70mm tall because of the length of her legs.

Hachune Miku (はちゅねミク) is also the same size as the other Miku figures, but again her proportions are a bit different. Her head is smaller, her body more compact, and her legs are longer.

Hachune Miku is actually one of the nicest Nendoroid Petit figures available because she has so many points of articulation (knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, neck, and hair).

One of the exclusive Miku figures that I own is the Project DIVA Miku from the PSP game. The sculpt is slightly larger than other Miku petites, with head:body proportions that match those of a full sized Nendoroid more closely.

Another exclusive figure is the 2010 Snow Miku commemorating her hometown Sapporo Snow Festival.

As can be seen, Snow Miku is a re-paint of the Project DIVA Miku. They really need to do a Sakura Miku re-paint of this figure as well.

I really like this years Snow Miku design, but unfortunately, no petite version of the Nendoroid was made.

In closing, I present one of the videos I saw at the Vocaloid: Sound of the Future Panel during AX2009 that finally got me to take a closer look at Vocaloids, and made me a fan of Miku.

Super Dungeon Explore

I don't know why, but when I saw pictures of this display for Super Dungeon Explore, I imagined that the figures that were to be included in the game would be the size of Nendoroid Petits.

After buying the game I discovered that the figures were less than 1.5" tall, which caused a bit of disappointment :(

Undaunted, I created larger versions of the dungeon tiles with a 2" grid, and printed up some cards with pictures of the figures that I would use as proxies for the SDE characters.

The monsters proved to be a bit more problematic. I liked the SDE kobolds, but they just looked too small to use in conjunction with 65mm figures.

While I don't mind using smaller figures to represent kobolds, I wasn't keen on recreating this particular scene while playing SDE (though as far as actual outcome is concerned, it probably is more or less what really happens during gameplay).

Because I am typically the Consul, I decided that my forces would consist of maids. Almost every series of figures seems to have at least one maid in it, so I have a lot of them, and they are easily recognizable as a single "class" of opponent.

Maid café spawning points were made out of papercraft kits with signs scaled down from logos found online.

Anyway, using Nendoroid Petits saved me a lot of time with regard to painting and assembling figures. The larger dungeon tiles require a larger play area, but I think the larger figures are more appealing for this particular genre.