Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

Now everyone who has read more than two posts here would know one thing - to me, Last Exile is the greatest anime ever. So I just have to buy everything Last Exile related, especially figurines. Pity there’s a dearth of them since back in 2002, the PVC figure industry wasn’t as massive. Besides this 1/8 scale PVC of Alvis Hamilton by Alter, there’s only the upcoming Grand Stream Trading Bust set also by the same company. Beyond this are expensive unbuilt resin kits of Lavie, Tatiana (woooooo!!) etc.

One of the biggest factors of Last Exile’s greatness is the character, costume and world design - all by the artistic genius Range Murata. Range has predominantly two types of costume design - the functional realistic, which is normally in dull tones like grey, and the extravagent, featuring crazily elaborate costumes much like Maestro Delphine’s. While both are nice, I prefer the former, since it brings out his unique style of steampunkish industrial fashion.

Range’s characters normally have very flat hair,  and out-of-worldly hair accessories. Large expressive round eyes are also his style. As such, Alter’s faithful reproduction of Alvis is very commendable. It captures everything Range Murata would have in his art.

TOO CUTE!

Alvis is impossibly cute. She’s so chicchai, that she requires a 5 cm tall stand to prevent the figurine from looking like a trading figure. Yet no details were spared in reproducing her exact outfit. The buttons look like they are real, the crest is sharply painted and there isnt any flaw. The buttons look so real because they are painted with metallic silver and then had their centre painted black.

For her cuteness, Alvis gets a good pat on the back.

Look at her sailortop. Perfect!! There’s a lot of shading on the grey top too, so it looks really 3D and natural. Alvis is also wearing shorts, so no SHOW FOR YOU LOLICON PANTY BOYS! The many natural-looking wrinkles and folds on her clothes also add to Alvis’ lifelikeness. Ok actually I lie, her cuffs suffer a bit from sloppy painting. But her shining cuteness is so blinding. I can’t see no flaws!

"Aye Aye! Oniichan."

The face is amazing. You just feel like going up and hugging her, despite the fact that it’s a 15 cm tall piece of polymer. Range’s trademark round expressive eyes are expertly recreated. She has a bit of a blush too.

The hair is another plus point. Since it’s pretty short, there was no need for a midhead seam and the fringe piece was made very small. This reduces the seamline to a negligible one. Yup, lots of shading here too. Her twin .. bowls are cute.

Can’t really see the line from the front.

Stand tall, stand cute, voices that care are crying out loud. (+ points to people who get the reference.)

The base is a matte dark grey stand with the words "Last Exile" tampo printed on very cleanly. It’s simple but elegant. The colour fits Alvis’ scheme well too, unlike some of the other Alter creations which suffered from poor base colour choice.

Alvis is wearing a pair of black boots with red soles and fasteners.

The PS2 was a good stage for her actually.

Here she looks a bit like Horohoro’s spirit.

So in conclusion, Alvis was a great buy! She was actually released late last year and for some inexplicable reason I chose to not buy her. Then I went on a massive hunt but she was out of stock. And suddenly, Stripey informed me that the new store in CSC carried it, and for lower-than-retail price as well. I paid 47 S dollars for her.

She doesn’t have any accessories unfortunately. It would’ve been nice if the goat was an optional part really. But other than that, I have totally no complaints and this is one heck of a figure! Go buy it now! I seriously want Tatiana too. Go Alter!