Valkyrie Profile ~Lenneth~ Sculpture Arts

It has been a really looong time since the last post about my toys collection. In fact, this post is close to half a year late since when I received the item. Today I will show off one of my holy grails: Valkyrie Profile ~Lenneth~ Sculpture Arts. I never can understand why there are not many Valkyrie Profile related items. The game is unique, interesting, and pretty good while the art and character design are impressive too. Thank goodness Square Enix included this into their Sculpture Arts line and this is much more impressive than Final Fantasy ones.

A bit of story on this item, the piece that I own is actually my second piece. The first piece arrived with a bit of damage to the "light rays". Not a major damage but I decided to make a claim because at the same time I could not slot in the pegs to their designated slots. Imperfection on such a high value item is not to be tolerated. I received a full refund, well not really full because there was currency conversion which set me back by $8.93. Another reason for me to return because there was a second piece put up on sale so I decided to try my luck and bought this second piece in the hope of perfection. 

Considering how beat up the external shipping box was, I was very happy that the content was undamaged. Due to the overwhelming size, the seller had to make his own gigantic box to fit this in and hence the terrible appearance of the box.

Sadly this second one also suffers from the same issue with the pegs. After further googling, I discovered that this is a QC issue which affects all figurines!! Damn you Square Enix! Haiz.. In total, this second piece cost me about $50 less than the first one. After conversion I paid $786.55 (inclusive of shipping and customs) for this beauty which is considered not bad since her original retail price is 54000 Yen. I am in a self denial mode as I noticed that shops were selling this at about 40000+ Yen (or about 20% off) when it was first released.

I am not going to highlight the good things about this as from the images alone, I believe that everyone will agree that this statue is impressive. This is completely in a different league even when compared with the already impressive Final Fantasy VIII Transcendent Artist's Collection. The box is gigantic at 44cm (L) x 32cm (W) x 64cm (H) and the whole statue stands tall at 43cm. Lenneth is also quite big as compared to Final Fantasy VII Sculpture Arts which have very small characters as compared to the background. The whole thing weighs close to 12kg!!

Lenneth is floating on a church diorama. I have to give 2 thumbs up as the design is really successful to depict her flying in the air. On each wing, there is a small peg to be attached to the background. At the same time, the "ray of lights" effect comes with a pike each to be inserted to Lenneth's sides. Unfortunately, there is no way that these for peg-slot pairs can be fitted. Without forcing anything, only 3 pairs can fit nicely making the whole figure unstable. Forcing all 4 pairs to fit will cause one of her wings to "break" from her back and the pegs at her wings are at the thin parts of the wings which may potentially cause breakage in the future with long duration of display.

 The peg issues

Forcing the wing pegs to fit results on the right to come off from Lenneth's back

The other complaint (I promise this is the last one) that I have is how the "rays of light" is too yellow (dirty yellow in fact) that the whole figurine does not look as impressive as the official images. 

Okay, enough for my words and complaints. Let us enjoy the pictures :)

The 4 pictures above are not exactly the box. The box is just plain white inserted to a 4-sided cardboard with the pictures above.

Let's open the box

The manual on where to insert what

Lenneth's body and head, sword and sheath, as well as the church ceiling decoration on top

The church diorama and the 2 "light rays" effects

Let's start assembling it.

 See how the 2 "light rays" do not look right and balanced even without Lenneth

The statue in its full glory

Side views

Back view

The awfully plain base contrasting with the over-the-top cool statue

 Close up shots to appreciate the details

The details on her armor and the wings. Not the boobs!

 Angel stained glass from the front (left) and the back (right) of the church base

 Nice details on the carvings on the wallas as well as the stone texture of the base

However, when you try to see more closely, you can see numerous imperfections

No idea if the darkened parts are due to fingerprints??

Small paint chip

Another paint chip at the bottom

Sort of bent eh?

The dirty yellow light effects which are disappointing

I thoroughly enjoy and am a proud owner of this statue although objectively, I am quite disappointed with Square Enix's quality control. This statue was released in 2008, close to a decade after FF VIII Transcendent Artists Collections but unfortunately has lousier quality as I found no imperfections with FF VIII Transcendent Artists Collections. Paint issues may be considered minor but the peg issues are terrible. I am also disappointed with how the light effects appear much shittier in the real products as compared to the misleading official images.

Official advertisement as a comparison

I will still recommend this to the fans of Valkyrie Profile or to collectors who like cool and badass statue to their collection. I dare not to re-open and display this back after my house moving. Praying hard that nothing broke during the transport T_T