This figure has one of the most unique and graceful pose of my collection. I decided to go with a slightly darker skin tone for her so that she’s a bit tanned. Probably one of my first mods, I changed the bikini bottom so that she’s more mature-looking. In the original sculpt she was wearing a larger piece that covers most of her backside.
This kit was pretty difficult at the time I built it, with bad arm breaks and hair strands.	Her back shows her flowing hair, very nice. I should’ve done something about the name tag at the bottom though. I didn’t want it to be prominent, but may be I should have sanded it off and filled it.
She’s also a bit off-balance as well.	Another good view of her flowing hair.

Introduction

Edit (05/08/2005): Shiori remains one of my favorite figures, so she gets an early update from my new photo rig. Now her grace is more prominent!

The most popular girl from the game Tokimeki Memorial. And what a pose! She looks so dynamic yet relaxed, and in swimsuit nonetheless. I love Masahiko’s faces… round cheeks and delicate mouth – this kit has it all! Well almost…

The arms. It was a lot of work and at that time I didn’t have the skill to do a good job, so even now there’s still a little bit of parting line visible. I had some uncured epoxy left in the gap which I used to bond the arms, so I kept sanding off the epoxy and left a depression. It was horrible – hot air from hairdryer can cause some epoxy ooze up! Finally I went with superglue to fill the gap, but then it was too late…

Painting – the skin tone is darker, but it kind of work as a sunburnt skin. I didn’t do too well on the white bikini; the blue gray shading just didn’t work as well as I thought. Some of these lessons I learnt from this kit applies later to the Nuku Nuku kit. The base I mixed white with cobalt blue, but the shade was still too dark. The whole kit is affixed on a Wave D-base round.

This kit took more than 100 hours I think… but I really love it!