[TAMASHII PREMIER] Cure Black & Cure White

光の使者、キュアブラック！

光の使者、キュアホワイト！

ふたりはプリキュア!

This year is the 15th anniversary of the Pretty Cure series and that means there's tonnes of Pretty Cure stuff coming. So, this figure came out in August of this year but I missed it and just acquired it only recently. So, let's get a look at it.

First off, since Honoka is my waifu, I generally have a higher expectation of the figures of her that come out and this figure really managed to exceed it.

The box comes with a colour print of the illustration that the figure is based on and silver letterings in the front.

Similar design on the back although it's much simpler

Each side of the box comes with and outline of Nagisa in pink

and Honoka in blue

The top of the box has a simple Tamashii Pemier logo.

Talk about premier... The design of the box with its large silver letterings give it some air of premium quality.

The underside of the box cover... But the magic happens next.

光の使者、キュアブラック！

光の使者、キュアホワイト！

ふたりはプリキュア!

In case you don't know much about the series, it's basically referring to this scene which you will see (almost) every episode:

You can definitely tell that there was a lot of thought that went into design of even the box on how to transit the collector from the outside of the box to the figure itself.

Speaking of which, after you open it, you get some instructions on how to change the faces as well as how to install the figure which is a pretty no-brainer. You also get a card.

With the figure out of the packaging, the first item to look at is the base and oh my gosh. While so many other figures are taking the route of a plain base without any detail whatsoever, this one went in the complete opposite direction.

Here's a look at just the base.

There are what look like a tangled mess of rubble and metal with extreme detail. Notice the rivets in the metal beams

And cracks in the rubble. There's even what looks like a bent metal pipe/pole sticking out from the side.

What I really love about this base are the 2 buildings behind. They're designed with visual illusion in mind so that when you look straight on to it the buildings look tall and to scale with reference to Honoka and Nagisa.

But there is one disadvantage about this though... It means that you have to display the figure at eye level or higher but if you do that it would look super awesome.

Next up we have Nagisa / Cure Black.

Both Nagisa and Honoka come with 2 facial expressions that you can choose from. The first one is a more serious look

While the second one is a more gentle smile.

Nagisa has her hair styled in its usual cool manner without much defects.

Another awesome design about the figures are the glossy hearts

Moving on to the rest of her outfit

There is a small mark on the pink of her skirt

Mepple's pouch looks really cute

There are just 2 main issues with Nagisa.
There seems to be a bit of colour bleeding issue. Like you can see where the pain shouldn't be but exceeded its borders.
The other has to do with her skin colour. seems that she has some areas which are slightly more tan the others. But all well within tolerance.

They even coloured her fingernails!

She has one more heart on each of her leggings(?).

We're finally at Honoka / Cure White!

She also comes with 2 of the same type of expressions.

And I still prefer the smiling one. Although this one, the grin itself somehow seems a tad bit too wide.

The bow she has to keep that bunch of hair up.

And the rest of her hair with a very nice blue-dark blue gradient to it.

Her hearts glossy as well

With nice and slender fingers. Hmmm... Nagisa has nail polish/pink fingernails but Honoka doesn't?

You can see that on both the outer rims of hearts on her hands, there's some defects there

Overall, Honoka has the same issue with paint bleeding to areas its not supposed to be in

Only in recent figures, namely QPosket, would you see this underskirt fluffy thing. If you ever watched the anime, you would realise they animators avoided showing the underside of Honoka's skirt because she didn't have this before. (not sure about recent collab movies though)

Good thing is that this can actually be removed. But I'm not going to show you Honoka's pantsu. ;-)

Honoka's shoes are for some reason really glossy.
Not a bad thing, just not used to it.

So, what do you get when you put the 3 together?

There is just one problem with this.
Did you notice it?
Unlike the pictures in the listing and illustration, Honoka and Nagisa aren't facing the same direction. Nagisa is facing off to the left side while Honoka is facing to the right. This feels a bit weird to look at.

Side note: What it would like if you looked at the figure from the top.

There is fortunately a very simple solution. And it's thanks to how balanced the figures are. Both Honoka and Nagisa are pretty stable even without the base but Honoka is even more so. So, if you want them to face the same direction, you have to set Honoka outside of her designated spot

A bit closer. Not really but still better than before.

All in all...

Design: 10/10
A lot of thought and consideration went into this figure and how the experience would be for the collector. All the way from the design on the box flaps to the visual illusion embedded in the base and the individual details on the figure.
This figure was meant to impress.

Quality: 9/10
The only noticeable defects were the minor skin discolouration on Nagisa and some of the colour bleeding. The latter is really so difficult to spot that few would notice.

Value: 9/10
I got it at 16,000 yen although that was from Mandarake and new it was around 18,000 yen. So let's go with the latter to determine this. You're effectively getting two figures with this. At 9,000 yen each, many figures don't even come with a decent base. All things considered, it's pretty good value for money.

At the end of the day, if you're a fan of the series and you haven't gotten this yet...
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?