My Raphtalia Scale Figures

Raphtalia is one of the main characters in the anime show The Rising of the Shield Hero. This shows source content comes from a light novel series by the same name which currently has 22 volumes. Just like somebody might buy a figure of their favorite super heroes, I like to buy figures from my favorite shows.

The Rising of the Shield Hero became one of my favorite shows after having watched the first season when it aired. So much so that I wanted to continue the story so I bought the 16 volumes that were currently translated to english and have read up through volume 14 so far. The story quickly became one of my favorites as it was one of the early stories when isekai was rare and it still manages to stand out among the now hordes of isekai plots there are today.

The story follows the main protagonist Naofumi who while at the city library suddenly gets wisked away into another world. It turns out he and three other young men from parrallel universes were summoned to this midevil era world to become the worlds Cardinal Heroes in order to defend it from inter-dimensional hordes of monsters. Each of them were summoned as a particular type of hero which dictates what sort of equipment and abilities they have. Naofumi the shield hero, while the other three were the bow, spear, and sword heroes.

Each of these heroes are given companions by the kingdom to help train them and teach them about the world they were summoned to. Oddly enough only a single person agrees to be his companion while the other heroes have multiple. Naofumi's luck turns to the worse after his single companion, revealed to be the kingdom's princess, betrays him, steals all his belongings, and leaves him devoid of all assistance and supplies after she falsely accuses him of sexually assaulting her.

Naofumi tries to plead his case but everybody, including the other heroes do not believe him. Having been shunned by everyone and no longer receiving any support from the kingdom he is forced to fend for himself. In this world, the only way you can increase your level as a hero is to defeat monsters, however being the shield hero he is unable to attack and can only defend making it near impossible for him to level. Because he can not find any companions to help him and the other heroes will not have anything to do with him he is forced to buy a young slave from a slave trader that he can teach to fight such that he can gain the experience and levels he needs in order to survive. He names her Raphtalia and thus begins the story.

This was the first figure from that series that I have bought. Figures are fairly expensive and so I tend to only buy figures from the shows that I really like and want to support. Of course, the quality of the figure also plays a big part of it.

In this case, the overall quality of this figure is, in my opinion, incredible. Most figures do not incorporate designs into the bases and this one does it very well. This figure is of her when she had just began training to be Naofumi's sword.

As you can see in these photos, the detail on the figure is very good. These are scale figures which are usually much more detailed than cast figures. Scale figures are molded by a professional designer and then turned into multiple molded plastic parts. Each of these parts are hand painted and finally put together. This means that scale figures cost significantly more than cast off figures, and being "to scale" they are usually much larger. Prices on these range anywhere from $150 - $400 depending on the figure and scale, and that is only if you are able to pre-order. Buying one of these figures after they have released usually means you'll pay an even further premium/mark up price from a re-seller.

Anyways, I was having a hard time deciding on whether I wanted the version of her as a child or the version of her as an adult since both figures were very well done. So I bought both.

As you can see, this is another one where they went above and beyond and actually designed a really cool base for the figure to stand on which really elevates the coolness factor of the figure when compared to others. On top of that, the figure itself is just as detailed as the childhood version. The grass on the base is actually modeled and not juse a flat painted design. The coloring and shading the rocks is impressive as well.

Overall this figure might be my new favorite out of all the figures I own. Which is only a handful because they are often super expensive... and some of them I had to pay markup on because I didn't get in during the pre-order.

Bunny figures have also become very popular. Usually they are done in 1/4 scale and are quite large and also quite expensive. FREEing is the main company that creates bunny style figures of the most popular characters and sure enough Raphtalia is a popular enough character that FREEing came out with a bunny style version of Raphtalia with a bit of a twist on it since she's already a Tanooki/Human demihuman.

And since I was already buying these two figures I figured I might as well collect them all... And so I present to you the 1/4 scale Raphtalia Bunny Version.

The bunny figures are super neat in that they use actual threaded fishnets on the legs and the good ones have a real shiny paint to the dress. They are also very heavy, and just like the the other scale figures; hand painted.

Raphtalia's bunny version figure is a little unique in that it is one of the few that is not standing and does not have a base. And instead of bunny style ears being added they just used her normal tanooki ears.

Other than that, there isn't really much to say about it. Even though the bunny style figure is done by a completely different company than the other 2 figures, it is very well made and detailed.