Link:
https://www.tentaclearmada.com/2015/02/touko-in-the-lavatory-from-the-native-creators-collection-nsfw/
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Page:
www.tentaclearmada.com
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Title:
Touko in the Lavatory from the Native Creators Collection (NSFW)
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INFO:
written on February 17, 2015 by Tier
This entry was posted in Figure Review and tagged 1/7 scale, Figures, hentai, Native, Review, toilet, touko.
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Artist:
Tony Taka
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Character:
Touko
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Copyright:
original
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scale:
1/7
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size:
She measures about 17 centimeters in height when seated on her throne
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figure assembler:
Native
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photographer "Tier" - Description:
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Touko in the Lavatory from the Native Creators Collection (NSFW)

Anyone who has been in this hobby for a while can’t be too surprised by the concepts embodied by certain figures. I mean, there’s a figure out there based on an anime-fied Adolf Hitler, every now and then a company shows off a tentacle rape figure, and there’s even a very nice necrophilia-oriented figure up for preorder at the usual stores right now. Still, it was a little strange to see three figures involving toilets going up for preorder at approximately the same time (this one, obviously, and the other two were Ringo Hanamaru and a Kaitendoh figure). To be a fan of anime culture often implies being a fan of certain themes and fetishes, but I freely admit that toilet usage is not amongst mine. Still, if anyone could make this look good, it would be Native, no? Perhaps – but only if they didn’t botch it for other reasons. Which they did, unfortunately.

This figure is, of course, named Touko. As far as I can tell, she’s an original character created by well-known illustrator Tony Taka and adapted into figure form by Native. Unlike many of Native’s earlier products, she is rather small; she’s listed as 1/7 scale, but she has a slim body build that makes her look smaller than that. She measures about 17 centimeters in height when seated on her throne. She comes with a variety of clothing options, though she doesn’t come with any additional accessories aside from her commode.

Incidentally, the address label on the shipping box listed its contents as “Touko in the Lavatory,” so everyone from the customs inspector to the deliveryman knows what was in the box. Thanks, Native.

Tony’s style is highly recognizable, and it’s easy to tell whose work this figure is based off of. His artwork is sometimes criticized for being generic, with a common remark being that he re-uses face designs too often. There’s some truth to that, but I think this figure looks a little more distinctive than many other Tony-derived figures in that Touko looks more or less like a realistic teenaged girl, aside from the anime-style face. She has a slim body, small breasts, and reasonably believable body proportions to go with her normal, unexceptional hair color and style; it makes for a marked contrast compared to many other Tony-adapted figures, which often feature stylized bodies and waist-length hair.

Presumably this focus on realism was why Touko comes with fabric clothing, and that’s where the problems start. Dressing her up isn’t too big a deal, particularly for anyone with some experience playing with dolls; an easy-to-follow instruction sheet is provided to show how Touko can be disassembled to remove or replace her clothing. In her most dressed-up form, she can be depicted wearing a blazer, a blouse (actually just the front and back panel of a blouse, sort of like the fake dress shirts boys might have worn for their high school senior yearbook portraits), socks, and a skirt. I didn’t bother dressing her up with the skirt since I think she’d look weird sitting on the toilet fully clothed.

One problem with having her wear her jacket is that it closes via a velcro strip. This makes it easy to close and allows it to fit closely to her body, but if her jacket is opened up, the loop side of the velcro is highly visible.

You can try to fold it back but it doesn’t stay in place. This makes it problematic to display her with her jacket open; one can obviously just keep her jacket closed but that’s not what Native’s about (as conveyed by their company name) and again, why would anyone be sitting on a toilet while wearing a fully-closed coat?

But of course, there’s always the option of displaying her nude, which only seems appropriate as Native’s name is a portmanteau of “naked” and “creative.” But if you do that, you get something like this.

There aren’t any armbands or anything to hide the detachment points; I guess that’s in keeping with the theme of realism, as nobody wears armbands on their biceps in normal life, but the seams are so ugly that I find it impossible to display her this way. That’s not even the worst of it, though.

There’s another detachment point where her right leg comes off. Presumably this is to facilitate getting her right arm in place, being that the placement of her hand would make for a tight fit if you had to reattach the arm with both legs in the way.

Still, there’s no denying that the large seam arcing over her hip is really ugly to see.

It’s unfortunate that Native chose that direction for this figure, and it’s puzzling that they did so. Providing removable clothing or accessories ought to provide the collector with alternative display choices, but in this case, there’s really no choice at all; the seams are so conspicuous that one feels compelled to keep her mostly dressed, and being that’s the case, why provide for removable clothing at all? Further, the fabric doll clothing doesn’t really add much to the figure, and it presents the threat of staining the surface of the figure.

Touko’s deficiencies are a shame since in other respects, she looks very nice. She has a lovely, enigmatic expression fixed on her face, and one wonders what sort of emotion she’s conveying. Her eyes have a lustrous coating that imparts a life-like sheen to them. And of course, her pose is quite tantalizing; I can’t think of another figure that looks quite like this.

But in the end, it’s difficult to get over the design issues of this figure. What makes it worse is that all those faults were willfully self-inflicted, and that with a little introspection this figure could have been remarkable. Ultimately, this figure disappoints, and the only consolation is that for anyone who wants an ero-themed Tony figure, Dragon Toy and Alphamax have a variety of appealing products for collectors to choose from instead.
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25 Responses to Touko in the Lavatory from the Native Creators Collection (NSFW)
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Tian says:
February 17, 2015 at 10:52 PM
Kind of a weird subject for a figure… shame that this one didn’t turn out great. I was totally expecting the usual armbands and whatnot to hide the seams. They’re a necessary evil.

That hip seam is the exact same problem Embrace Japan’s Sigrid figure has. Except it looks like Native’s is made a little better. Anyway, sucks that it’s a Native figure that you don’t really wanna display naked. I hope you ordered their Elevator Girl though 😀

Reply
Tier says:
February 19, 2015 at 2:40 AM
You see these weird coincidences in anime … like I remember there was an anime season where two series were about Nobunaga, and I think there’s two anime series airing right now with Fafnir in the title. I guess I’m not too surprised that three toilet-themed figures all went up for preorder at around the same time; having seen my fair share of hentai CGs from various visual novels, I can tell toilet usage is a pretty common fetish.

I definitely would’ve preferred armbands on the biceps, and while I don’t know what they could have done with the leg, I have to imagine that anything else would have been better than what they chose. It’s pretty unfortunate that they went that route since that seam is always going to be visible if you don’t use the skirt, and who wants to use the skirt with a Native figure?

I did not order the Elevator Girl, though if it turns out nicely I’m sure it won’t be hard to find post-release. I’m kinda more interested in the ero stuff that SkyTube and Dragon Toy are doing; they’ve been killing it as of late.

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Wieselhead says:
February 18, 2015 at 3:14 AM
Huh, that was unexpected, seeing gaps uncovered is so last century Native could do this a lot better, on the other hand the eyes are made in a rather futuristic fashion http://myfigurecollection.net/picture/1199881&ref=item%3A144438 I really like her face.

It are just mm sized gaps, but the visual appeal suffers quite a bit. She wears clothes because it’s damn cold there XD The real clothes might be a fun idea, but they don’t fit her petite body that well, my Azone has much better socks, well the panties seem to be in scale. If it don’t work with cloth, use damn plastic like always. It feels like a ripoff with this Native figure, couldn’t they put more love into making her.

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Cerberus says:
February 18, 2015 at 3:54 PM
normally there are arm and leg bands added to these junction places to hide the gap, even sometimes they are not there in the original illustration. Here for Touko I guess they just don’t want you to display her completely naked…..
Some of these ideas on Touko is indeed revolutionary even though there were previous plastic figures with fabric clothes already existed I guess. Unfortunately Native did not pay too much effort to this set clothes. I’ve seem pictures from other collectors and they are pretty happy playing around with other custom outfits, either hand made or from small scale dolls. It’s a little bit surprising this is 1/7 scale. Make it 1/6 will not only help Native themselves to make the clothes look better, but also allows easy search for alternative clothes for the collectors because there are tons of custom outfit for 1/6 dolls.

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Tier says:
February 19, 2015 at 2:44 AM
I’ve seen some of those pictures as well; that’s definitely a good way to improve the look of this figure, though I think it’s deceptive to require a collector to buy some aftermarket clothing just to bring this figure to an acceptable display condition. Someone really needed to step in early in the design process and ask, “Is this really a good idea?” Making the figure larger would’ve been nice since, as you say, there are a lot more options for buying clothes at 1/6 scale … or even 1/12 scale, I think, as I think Azone markets some products in that size.

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Tier says:
February 19, 2015 at 2:42 AM
She really has a very pretty face; it’s obviously a Tony face but somehow it looks different than a lot of the stuff he’s done, or a lot of the figures that have been made from his work. They definitely should’ve just gone with the usual plastic clothing; the fabric stuff just does not work well with this figure. It feels like they decided to do this stuff just for the sake of novelty, and that’s usually a terrible reason to do anything.

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Kevin says:
February 24, 2015 at 9:02 AM
Agree with you all the way. Her face, her body, everything is already perfect (which rarely happens with Tony figures, in my opinion) but they just had to ruin it with the fabric clothing. I’d be down for a revisit to this in all plastic form.

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Tier says:
February 27, 2015 at 2:06 AM
Hopefully they don’t ever re-visit this idea. I noticed that their upcoming Tony figure has a parasol made from “real Japanese paper”; I hope that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to punch a hole in it or something.

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RobCole says:
February 18, 2015 at 12:20 PM
Where is the money shot?

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Tier says:
February 20, 2015 at 1:43 AM
I didn’t take one, being that her hand is right over her crotch. I’m sure there’s a picture on MFC of her in her disassembled state, which might also show the bizarre way her head comes apart.

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Lord Frivolous says:
February 18, 2015 at 3:24 PM
What’s this about necrophilia themed figurine? I’m appropriately sickened but curious.

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Tier says:
February 19, 2015 at 2:46 AM
That would be the Hell Seducer figure, whom I assume is the happy sharp-toothed skeleton dude and not the young lady getting felt up. I’ve actually known of this figure for years and I never, ever thought it’d get a mass-market PVC version; I’m still pretty damn amazed that it is. I’m not expecting much as I don’t know much about the manufacturer, but this is definitely a figure I’m really looking forward to anyway.

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Devastator001 says:
February 20, 2015 at 6:46 AM
Whoa… that’s surprising form Native, O_O; The arm seams would have been easily solved by giving her bandages like they did Elfriede and no idea why they do that with the leg segment 😛

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Tier says:
February 23, 2015 at 11:36 PM
Yeah, it’s … peculiar. Maybe they could’ve gotten away with it a few years ago but with SkyTube making so many nice Tony figures, it’s really difficult to justify these design decisions now.

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Steve Chen says:
February 20, 2015 at 9:35 PM
Thanks for the review Tier. I was agonizing whether to get her or not. Those seems have made me decide not to. Arrgh! What was Native thinking? I’ll get the upcoming Tony geisha instead.

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Tier says:
February 23, 2015 at 11:37 PM
Yeah, I’d have skipped this if I had known about it. I learned about it from a commenter here, actually, but I’d already put my preorder in by that time, as I recall. Oh well. I’m definitely going to be wary of any figure with a gimmick like removable fabric clothing now.

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Steve Chen says:
February 24, 2015 at 5:35 AM
OCD……..what was I thinking…..seams. Sorry for the mispell. The Elevator girl looks like a good prospect. Btw, speaking of Tony, you got Sugie by Skytube? Without jumping the gun, I have a gripe with a certain decision by SkyTube’s decsion to waste a piece of plastic that could have made the Sugie a bit cheaper. You noticed it right? (the palm frond and the “arm”)

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bostonBrandon says:
February 21, 2015 at 5:14 AM
I was so happy to see that you posted a review of Touko! Great pictures as always,but what a disappointment from Native. I attended the Native panel during last years AnimeExpo and kind of got the feeling that the upper management isn’t really the right guy for the job so to speak.
This recent bungle along with the large influx of chinese knockoffs of Native specific figures has me wondering about their future. I’ve held Native in the highest esteem since I started collecting but have to agree with you on Dragon Toys and Skytube who are now knocking it out of the park on a regular basis.
In other ego news, I just heard that Starless will be seeing a US debut in the next few weeks. Any thoughts?

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Tier says:
February 23, 2015 at 11:43 PM
Ah, I didn’t know they had a panel for Native’s figures; that has to be interesting, talking about porny anime figures at a convention. I think they’ll be okay since as far as I know, they’re just an imprint of Max Factory and they’ve always got their Figma empire to fall back on, but it’s tough to say that they are the undisputed best in the business when it comes to ero figures. I’m interested to see how Arianrhod (spelling that off the top of my head, I might have gotten that wrong) turns out from Dragon Toy; her pose doesn’t seem like it’ll hide much at all, unlike this figure.

Starless the eroge? That’s from Mangagamer if I recall … there’s a couple things that’d make me really hesitant to buy it. One is that Mangagamer uses some kind of always-resident DRM service that you have to install run on your computer in order to play their games. I’m sure that it doesn’t do anything malicious but just the principle of having to run something like that annoys the hell out of me. Second is that I’ve seen the game’s CGs and it has some nasty, nasty scat scenes. Like, there are scenes where the volume of expelled waste doesn’t seem like it would be able to fit in the human digestive tract. It’s a shame since Sei Shoujo’s art is really nice otherwise. Me, I’ll just buy the SkyTube/Alphamax figure that I saw at Wonder Festival.

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Aya says:
February 21, 2015 at 6:17 AM
I always thought she would looks nice naked, never thought there would be so many seamlines so even it’s a creative idea using fabric clothes but it don’t seems work well on this cast off thing.. any idea if the fabric clothes might stain her ?

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Steve Chen says:
February 21, 2015 at 12:22 PM
Too early to tell about the staining.

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TomTheCat says:
February 22, 2015 at 11:01 AM
Always be careful with fabric clothes. It is possible that they don’t stain, but it is more likely that they do. There’s also no rule of thumb regarding how quick staining would occur. Some months ago there was a Rias Gremory figure by A+ or A-Toys or A-something which had a leopard print fabric bikini. Quite a few figures came already stained right out of the box.

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Tier says:
February 23, 2015 at 11:45 PM
I’m not sure but I have the bad feeling that there’s a good chance of it. If they didn’t spend time thinking how poorly these seam lines look, I do not think they would have had much concern about possible staining effects (the product page lists a short disclaimer about possible staining, but that’s it). That said, I guess I’m compelled to keep this figure partially dressed anyway, so any stains won’t be too visible on my figure.

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icelava says:
February 28, 2015 at 10:44 AM
Given that Tony has direct input on figure projects, one can only speculate if these were a result of compromising decisions at the overall team level, or one side losing some level of influence on design decisions.

Instead of those mysterious metal rings she could’ve worn ribbons, especially at the thigh so the hip need not be dislocated.

Nice face and realistic body, but toilet training is not my interest.

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Cantan says:
March 4, 2015 at 7:01 PM
For some reason I saw this review and thought you had already posted a review of this figure before. Must have been a promo shot although there are a few figures with similar poses and outfits…

I am experiencing a degree of schadenfreude over your postage issues having experienced so many of my own over the years. Import taxes, handling fees and then stupid customs officers who couldn’t calculate the exchange rate correctly from ¥en… (Amiami banned me after I refused to pay import fees in excess of the value of a figure and wanted a refund!)

Native annoyed me as they take overseas orders now… just not from here. They ship to France FFS – so had to use a proxy recently. Still I will be spared a description of “Tomoe Nakahara in a kimono but she has forgotten to wear her underwear” on the shipping label when it arrives.

Tomoe is the first of their figures that I have been interested in for quite a long time – this one and the elevator girl have seemed a bit lacklustre and uninterested. Hope thry improve!
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