My my my, has it already been two weeks?! My sincerest apologies, but this last month has been quite busy. Graduation, trip to Kansas City, and work all occupied my attention for the whole month. Nevertheless, I have returned! Aside from dealing with real life, this last month was also filled with a great acquiring of goods, including everything from Shinkis to the new Spice and Wolf novel. I purchased Shimada Fumikane’s artbook, beat Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and Crazy Dave and I are in the process of receiving press passes to the upcoming Fandemonium convention! Expect many, many more reviews and ravings from me over the next few months!
So, as tribute to my return to good ol’ Z-Chan, I have decided to do two posts highlighting and reviewing two of my most recent, and greatly hyped purchases. As you may have read in my last post, I jumped on to the Busou Shinki bandwagon and decided to purchase two figures as an initial “investment”. This review will cover my first, and personal favorite Shinki, Strarf, or more specifically, the newer Strarf Bis.
Note: All these pictures were taken with my new iPhone! Also note, I’m no photographer!
Strarf Bis’s Box Art and inner plastic packaging. Parts were taken out of the box beforehand, so do not fear all the empty spaces!
When I first opened the box, I was so overwhelmed with just how many pieces they pack into these things! Busou Shinki figures are pretty famous for their sheer level of customization, and I can certainly attest to those claims. My post on Arnval has better pictures of the complete set of parts that comes w/ each figure, so see those for reference. With all of these awesome parts together, it’s hard to figure out just where to start, but that’s a good problem to have, no?
1) Strarf’s arm apparatus, complete w/ “DOOM Hammer”. 2) Strarf and her standard revolver. 3) Strarf and her awesome grenade launcher!
Busou Shinki are war machines, so it is only appropriate that they come with a threatening assortment of weaponry. Like most other Shinki, Strarf comes with several mecha attachments for added effect. In the above pictures, you can see Strarf’s set of mecha-arms, which can be used to showcase her ridiculously awesome hammer, which I have simply dubbed the “DOOM Hammer”. The revolver and grenade launcher are the two guns in the set that she can wield, and I must say, I love that grenade launcher something fierce.
Strarf Bis “suited up”!
Naturally, the Shinki merged with her mech armor is quite awesome, no? All in all, it makes for a very impressive set. There’s just so much you can do and different combination you can make for various degrees of awesome.
Now, as my last post explained, there’s more to Busou Shinki figures than their corporeal greatness. Once purchased, each Busou Shinki comes with a code that can be activated in the online game Busou Shinki: Battle Rondo. After activation, your account acquires all the parts and pieces included in your Shinki’s set, and you can use these Shinki for online battle. Now that I’ve finally figured the game out, there is a great deal of fun to be had, and I greatly enjoy Battle Rondo overall. So far my Strarf, Lilith, has been met with some success, which only serves to make the game even more addicting! There’s a lot of technical work to be done in developing your Shinki over the course of the game, and the Japanese do have a significant advantage over English-speaking players, but I would certainly encourage anyone interested in the Busou Shinki universe to give Battle Rondo a try. It even comes with a free Fubuki Shinki to start with, so you don’t even have to make a monetary investment!
So this concludes my review and summary of my Shinki, Strarf Bis (or Lilith!). Overall, these are very fine figures which are very fairly priced. It may be difficult to find them in stock, as I came to find out, but anyone interested in this very cool universe will be pleasantly surprised. My next post will be a review of Arnval Tranche, the next Shinki I got this month. Look forward to it!
Strarf is one of my favorites. The pictures aren’t bad for being taken with a phone really. I know the first time I got a shinki I was too excited to take pictures of all the pieces too, just wanted to free her from her plastic prison. Maybe one of these days we’ll clash in BR, I’ve been on rather sporadically lately, but I got another girl who just shipped out today so I’ll probably be back hardcore soon XD One of these days I’ll buy Strarf Bis. Even though I have the original I love Strarf enough to buy it :P
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When I got Strarf I had a hard time leaving her in the box. At the time I still had a week to get my iPhone, and Strarf is my favorite Shinki, so I just couldn’t control myself.
I look forward to seeing you in Battle Rondo! Just look out for me and my Lilith, as I am getting less and less noob all the time.
On a final note, Strarf Bis is a significant improvement over the original. I would certainly have to recommend the upgrade :)
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Lilith! One of the first few at one point, right?
Catacyst, I tried looking everywhere for that fleeting white Shinki I saw that one time to no avail. Maybe it’s from another series of mecha-musume? This might boil into a life mission…
Strarf is an excellent design, with the dark skin and powder blue hair, but I more prefer Arnval’s sort of sleekness when it comes to mechanical equip. Great to know there’s that BR code; still a game I’m really tempted to try, but am afraid of the language barrier for.
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Strarf and Arnval were Shimada Fumikane’s original models, and composed the First Wave. Both Shinki also had re-paints released: White Strarf and Black Arnval. Perchance it was even White Strarf that you saw before?
Personally, I think these two are the best designs in the entire line. My next favorites, Murmeltier and Asuka, were oddly enough also Shimada Fumikane originals. Odd how that guy can produce such awesome works, no?
As far as Battle Rondo goes, I would have to encourage you to try. Despite the fact that the game is Japanese, I have quickly caught on and am now capable of finding my way around. I’ve even been relatively successful this last week! There’s the excellent walkthrough/guide at GameFAQs that has been all too helpful in my progress through the game. Also, the folks at Busou Shinki World are quite helpful and have done a fine job of answering my questions so far.
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