|
>>
|
No. 3795
[Edit]
File
161136445828.jpg
- (851.74KB
, 1500x1125
, tomomo and sora 3.jpg
)
My Tomomo Sweet Eater form plush arrived today. I’ve taken pictures to compare the visible differences between these two. Pictured is Sora, the blonde one, who came from the first wave of 100% Orange Juice plushies and who I will be comparing Tomo to.
In case you want more information about the character you can always search more about her but the extremely basic points are that she comes from her own game that is part of the Suguri series and is a playable character in the crossover board game 100% Orange Juice. Tomomo, however, made her debut as the villain of 100% OJ. With that out of the way for anyone curious, I can get the history out of the way next.
Fruitbat Factory, the publisher of both games, arranged a Kickstarter campaign for a first wave on January 30th, 2018. It featured plushies of Marie Poppo, Suguri, Sora, Star Breaker, QP, and Hime with character and hyper cards to be included and a character accessory for each one to be unlocked as funding increased. The second wave, which started on October 8th, 2019, followed a similar format but with the addition of wall scrolls and featured Marc, Aru, Alte, Tomomo – Sweet Eater form, Saki, Ceoreparque, and accessories for each. And now with the history done I can move on to the comparison of the plushies themselves.
Tomomo and Sora feature some small differences between the two. Tomomo, as you can tell, has a lot more detail in her design. She sports a kind of coat, a white dress under that, ends in a pleated trim, wings, a ribbon around her hair, and a heart at the top of her dress. Needless to say, Tomomo goes (super) all out (mode) for the magical girl look. Sora, however, wears a simple seifuku and a skirt. As you can probably tell, the details on her outfit are printed onto the fabric unlike Tomomo’s outfit that had more effort and resources put in to make it look nice and more faithfully bring the outfit to life.
They both feature their in-game weapons as accessories, that is, Sora’s sword and Tomomo’s magical red bean ice-cream, both made with printed on fabric with a slight fuzz to it. Sora has a little magnet in the handle of her sword and one in both hands which allows her to “hold” her sword. Tomomo’s ice cream doesn’t have that, unfortunately, despite also having those same small magnets in her hands. I don’t know if I missed it somewhere on the ice cream but it’s what I noticed, along with what is likely a budget saving decision to make the handle out of felt instead of make it like Sora’s where the sword handle is a part of the plush sword itself, allowing insertion of the magnet.
They both include their character and hyper cards along with card sleeves to hold them in. As you can tell, Tomomo arrived with a thick plastic card sleeve unlike Sora who can store her cards in a cheaper and flimsier one. The cards themselves are also very different. The colors on Tomomo’s cards are more vibrant and are printed on a thicker material while Sora’s are more like a traditional card material. I think this is because some customers from the first wave complained about the cards being damaged and the card sleeve likely did little against this. When you can only get the cards from buying the plush they’re included with, it probably makes some sense for card enthusiasts to want some kind of security for these. The tags use the same smooth cardstock material as each other though Tomomo’s also sports more vibrant colors. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or not but for tagfags I would still make note of it.
Finally, the differences between the plushies themselves are a little surprising. Sora is rather firm from having so much stuffing inside while Tomomo, contrary to her character and stats, is softer because of a lack of stuffing. I think whether or not that’s a good thing is subjective but I personally don’t like it as much. It is likely a toy and not a collector’s item and this squishier feeling reinforces that. It can probably sit up just fine, which is a point I will return to and expand on later, but I still appreciate Sora’s firmness. It gives me the impression that it really can be a collector’s item but is also durable enough to be a toy. Either way, I always had the impression that, despite the outfit using fabric with printed on details, the plush itself was a quality product that Fruitbat Factory could be very proud of. While many reading this probably don’t really hold any plushies they might own or purchase to any high standards, the pattern used to make the plush all one piece stands out to me among other plushies I have which sometimes have parts like limbs or accessories sewn into a body making them flop around and not be very firm. Of course, I don’t expect such firmness from things made out of fabrics but I notice it’s absence and appreciate it’s presence for showing me that this product will likely last longer. Despite that tangent, if I were to assign this Tomomo plush a score for it’s quality I would not reduce it very much, if at all, because the outfit makes up for this minor fault. Anything that would cause the score to suffer in my eyes is just the ice cream.
I feel it would be an injustice to the quality and effort I can see and feel in the plushies core qualities themselves so I would like to talk about it here. Again, the plushies’ bodies are all one piece using fabrics that give it a soft and slightly furry (I’m not sure if that’s the right word to use since fuzzy and fluffy don’t quite communicate what I mean) feel to it unlike some other plushes which only use such a fabric on the hair and maybe the face but not through the rest of the product. These like to settle for using a fabric that resembles deersuede, some kind of soft and cheap cotton or polyester (I think) kind of fabric, or simply reusing any fabric that can have details printed onto it like their synthetics or what resembles cotton or polyester. The first two I mentioned can pick up dust and lint over time with the second one snagging which makes me worried about damage that can occur over time because my skin can sometimes be rough. The last one mentioned, synthetics, mostly removes those concerns but it looks and feels like a budget choice to create a budget product. Something to enjoy for a short while or put up as a decoration and not a piece of merchandise of a character you care about enough to have bought it in the first place with the merch itself accompanying or even representing some part of your feelings about the character or their source material. While the fabrics used on the OJ plushies I reviewed are the kind to pick up lint and dust over time maintenance is easy and the presentation is still very high both in it’s appearance and it’s feel.
I would be happy to try and go into more detail about the plushies themselves despite my limited knowledge on fabrics and the practice of working with them because I feel that these really are high-quality plushies with great decisions having been made for the resources and patterns to be used though I think I said almost all I can say on the subject. Anything more would be replacing touch with words, but again, if anyone wants that I would be happy to try. Despite the high price I paid for each one (almost $70), it’s something I don’t regret that much because the products are made so well and are something I would happily recommend to anyone who is fond of the characters of Orange Juice or the franchises it crossed over or even just the game itself in the case that any one character doesn’t particularly resonate with you or your favorite doesn’t have a plushie yet.
As for a long side tangent to make, I want to compare these to the ever popular and well-known Touhou Fumo Fumo plushies. I myself am very fond of them and they have a strange comforting aura to them despite their faces often expressing such disinterest or smugness. But the fabrics they use for the hair feel more like some kind of fleece, which is not a very high-quality feeling fabric. A hand wash should make the fabric nice and fluffy before it eventually mats itself over in time while a machine wash is not only recommended against but also not as effective. The fabrics used for the clothing and skin are nice and I have few complaints about them minus the potential for snagging, again, a long-term concern and when it comes to Touhou fans I would imagine it’s something at least a few would worry about, especially since Fumos are not always so easy to buy reliably for consistent and reasonable prices.
I don’t know how many people reading this are unfamiliar with /fumo/ but it’s usually calming pictures taken with a Fumo plushie somewhere in the photo, sometimes multiple Fumo plushies. As fun as they are to shoot and to post, the plushies are not always easy to sit up in the first place and need some kind of assistance for stability even when sitting on level ground because they are so top heavy due to their large heads and small bodies.
The OJ plushies do this much more easily because the weight is distributed better and the legs and body are thicker, providing more stable support. Tomomo is a neet so she might like to fall over and go to sleep sometimes but a simple push down helps her stay in place so even she can sit upright on her own with relative ease despite her lack of stuffing compared to Sora. To many it is not a huge issue but a plushie that falls over needs accommodations when set up for decoration or used for photo shoots and is something I consider worth noting.
With that, I think that is all of the important things I wanted to talk about with these high-quality plushies that I am extremely happy with, eager to recommend, and my possibly unpopular preference for these over Fumo Fumos. Fruitbat Factory and the people hired to make these did a wonderful job and I can’t wait to take photo shoots with these.
|