Mai Shiranui – King of Fighters – 1/8 – resin figure

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There’s no need to do fancy composite this time, the kit speaks for itself.
Ok, I admit it, it’s difficult to merge backgrounds with the base 😀
For details on the modifications, see Making of Mai.

The chest floating “strap” that I modified shows here, and the waves looks quite ok when viewed horizontally.
Yes, this huge backside view is excessive but indulge me 🙂

Introduction

Yukishiro-san’s WF2003 sculpt of Mai is, alongside with her twin sister Blue Mary, by far the best posed fighting girls in recent memory. There were a lot of kits of Mai before, some by big names in the hobby, but none captures the extreme dynamism like this kit does. In terms of the pose alone, this kit has the great stretches Mai does before executing her fiery moves, while not feeling very forced.

However for all her glory, the fatal flaw of the sculpt was her face. Using the same approach as his other figures, Mai eyes were tall yet narrow, separated too far, and her nose was a little bump. Combined with the crude front hair piece, the figure looked like a Disney character more than a seductress that Mai is. That “cute” really doesn’t fit with her pose… so I went ahead and gave her a face-lift

Another thing that needs improvement is the lack of details for some parts. Like Blue Mary, the ends of her hair are very blunt, and in many cases multiple hair bundles end in one flat surface that has no detail at all. The gigantic waist bundles are also ended flat and detail-less; it reduces the kit to a more action-figure look than a delicate garage kit.

Finally, a great kit like this should be given the appropriate base, and I was inspired to do a tradition wave-splash-on-the-rock thingy (like those Toei movie openings ) Although it’s commonly done for naval ship dioramas, I haven’t seen one done for a larger scale kit, so what I did for Mai was mostly trial and error.

For details on the modifications, see Making of Mai.