Kobato Hasegawa Figures Answer the Call: 3D Haganai is Possible!

Just more than one year ago, I made a not-so-silent plea to the figure makers to slap together one half-decent scaled representation of the girls of Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai for the shelves.  While there have been some decent efforts recently by multiple makers, none have fully succeeded in capturing character designer Buriki's take on the girls in their natural state as we see them in the majority of the series.  Suddenly, over the course of the past couple weeks, we have two, and they both happen to be of goth loli imouto extraordinaire Kobato Hasegawa. 

Thank you to RoosterTeeth.com for the image

Coming in September from Media Factory, this 1/8 scale, 7,800 yen retail piece take a couple of liberties with Buriki's original artwork, from the cover of the third volume of the light novel series, but captures the girl's essence wonderfully.  Her Franken-usagi takes the place of her big brother, held away from her body a little awkwardly compared to the original, her dress seems to have gained an extra couple of inches of length and width, her mood seems to have brightened significantly, and generally she seems to be more reclined than the drawing suggests, but taken as a total package it's a very strong overall rendition of Kobato.  The figure sports an especially successful rendition of Buriki's eyes, which are far more severe and muted than the typical moeblob.  In a vacuum, without the original artwork to compare it to side-by-side, the figure looks fantastic, but she wilts quite a bit when exposed to the light of the original piece. 

Not to be outdone, Kotobukiya will release their own 1/8 rendition in October, and compared to Media Factory's effort, this 8,000 yen figure's fidelity to the original artwork is aces all around.  Her face, her eyes, her smile, her hair (note the precision of the ends of her twintails!), the satin of her corset over the matte of her dress, all are near-perfect 3D representations of Buriki's original.

Thanks to yande.re for the image

My only complaint with the figure is the fact that the chair Kobato's teetering on seems to be tilted beyond the point of no return--after this cute pose, the natural progression of the scene ends with Kobato in a crumpled heap on the floor, likely with a sore noggin.  The sculptor decided to afford Kobato a slight bit of modesty with the ruffles of her petticoat covering her posterior a good bit more than the original, but I'll refrain from docking points for this offense.  By and large, Kotobukiya has done the heretofore impossible.  I hereby retract my complaint--Haganai can be done in 3D. 

Figure photos from AmiAmi.