Hey, everyone! This is my first article/review here, but I recently obtained a grail of mine and noticed there weren’t any reviews of her, so I thought I’d try my hand at one! Please excuse my not-so-great photos, and without further ado, the main event!
The figure in question today is item/288176, Vocaloid – IA – 1/8 – Rocks ver. by Aquamarine.
I purchased her pre-owned on eBay for $175 USD (¥19,481) which rounded to about $200 USD (¥22,265) with tax and shipping.
Some minor background about me and IA:
IA (イア) is a Japanese VOCALOID developed and distributed by 1st PLACE Co., Ltd., and was released in January 2012 for the VOCALOID3 engine. Her voice is provided by the Japanese female singer-songwriter, Lia. (Taken from her Wiki page)
I’ve been a vocaloid fan since about middle school and IA has always been my favorite by far. sorry Miku I didn’t get into figure collecting until years later, but upon discovery of her figures I fell in love. I was late to the party on both of them, and due to her lack of popularity and availability, both of them jumped a bit in price since their releases.
She only has one other scale item/120935 that I picked up (and will be using to compare during this review) in late 2019 also pre-owned, plus a 1.5 version of that one item/263234. This figure, however, always seemed to be out of the question because most places seemed to have it 4x the retail, earning it the grail title— until now!
I managed to snag this one out of the blue for only about $70 USD more than her original retail, which is pretty exciting since most other listings are nearing $400 USD and I knew she wouldn’t be getting a re-release due to Aquamarine’s recent bankruptcy. Anyway, onto the actual review now!
The Box:
Her box is that of a typical scale. There’s a plastic window that allows you to see the figure inside, plus some art on each side. Not terrible, but not anything special. It does its job, but there’s not much else to say about it.
The Figure:
In combination with her music, I really love IA’s design. This particular figure is modeled after her IA ROCKS update, so it’s a bit different from her other figure, as shown.
This one is a similar outfit, but with a couple differences like a lack of her crop-top, a third stripe on her left sock, and a few more minor details. In this figure, her skirt is more of a hot pink instead of the pale pink of her other outfit.
Her pose is something I like as well. It’s more static than the jumping/falling of her other figure, but it’s a good difference. I think her hair sculpt really helps it look more dynamic.
I actually like her face a bit more than her other figure! She’s got such pretty eyes and her face isn’t quite as wide as her other figure appears.
Now for a negative: I was honestly kind of disappointed with her hair sculpt/paint. I knew I enjoyed the thicker volume and lighter color of her other figure, but I didn’t realize how bad this one kind of was. It didn’t appear this bad in official and user photos, so I have to wonder if it was something from the previous owner (although they said it was barely displayed) or a trick of others’ cameras.
The paint in a lot of places is very dark and a lot more grey than the typical platinum blond I associate with IA. Her bangs are kind of sloppy and disappointing as well. I do like the brighter pink undertones that her other figure lacks, but overall her hair is fairly disappointing, which sucks because that’s often important to me in my figures.
Scale:
She is a 1/8th scale, but like her other figure, I find she feels small.
For example, next to Kotobukiya’s Nezuko, also 1/8th, she looks much smaller. It’s not a major issue, but one I’ve noticed. It might also be Kotobukiya’s scaling, because all of their scales I have feel larger than 1/8th, or something to do with Aquamarine since I’ve noticed it in both of IA’s figures.
Base:
Her base is very plain. It’s a simple white circle with “IA ROCKS” in pink. However, unlike her other figure, she’s not actually pre-attached to her base, so I might look into making her a different one in the future that I like better.
Final Thoughts:
When I started thinking about writing this review before she arrived, I expected it to be incredibly boring and full of rave reviews. She’s been on my wishlist for years now and I’ve gotten to the point a few times where I really entertained buying her at that $400 price tag.
However, now that I have her I can’t say I’m a little disappointed. She’s still a really nice figure, but there’s just a few things like her hair and her base that bug me. I’m very glad I didn’t end up buying her for $400, because I think I would have been even more frustrated with that. I really do like her overall, but it’s not exactly what I expected.
I don’t mean to write this to discourage anyone thinking of buying her, only to share my thoughts. There’s aspects I complained about that others may enjoy. She’s very nice overall, but perhaps not for $400, so maybe take that into account if you’re in the market. I think I’ll hang onto her for now because I just love the character so much and there’s some other things about her I like, but I’m not sure if she really deserves the grail title I awarded her previously.
Regardless, thanks for reading and I hope to return with a more uplifting review in the future! ᕙ(`▿´)ᕗ
ncG1vNJzZmilqZu2qMHRnpqopJyasLW1zqdlp52kZK%2Btu8Zoa3JuZ24%3D