Kotobukiya's Bishoujo Invisible Woman won't be fading into the background!

I’ve been a great fan of Kotobukiya’s Marvel Bishoujo Statue series, but they’ve thrown me lately with some scale issues. Their Marvel Bishoujo Invisible Woman Statue gets things somewhat back on track in the scale stakes, but I do have some other concerns with it which keep me from pronouncing that Koto is completely back on track with this series.

Sue Storm is a favourite character of mine, and a leading Marvel female that doesn’t get the amount of attention in the collectibles department that I feel she deserves. I was very happy to hear that she was to be released in the Bishoujo line, and the solicit photos of the piece gave me hope that it would be a success.

I like the way that the majority of Sue’s body and costume are sculpted, but I’m not wild about the pose for this piece. I understand the there is a cutesy element required for this genre, but the way in which Sue is holding a few strands of her hair just looks silly, and creates issues I’ll talk about in a moment with her head and hair. As I mentioned, the sculpt work itself is excellent - I especially like the detail on her uniform - the creases and wrinkles are all very nicely done.

The work that has been done to create the translucent elements of this piece are really outstanding. Sue’s hands and feet are starting to fade away, with the ends completely see-through. This is best seen on her left foot, with sections of the base visible behind it, and her right hand, which is placed on her hip and also completely translucent. Further, the ends of some strands of hair are also disappearing - also a great touch. Beyond the translucency, I really love the paint job on this statue. The metallic blue chosen for her uniform is quite stunning, and compliments the nice sculpt work on the body and uniform.

Scale-wise, this piece is certainly not a Ms Marvel-style giant, but it’s still not back to the original scale for this line, being more in scale with the slightly larger Black Cat than the earlier pieces. While I’d obviously have preferred that the line stay in a uniform scale, I’d much prefer pieces of this proportion than another Ms Marvel sized gargantuan-ess.

Invisible Woman has one of my favourite bases in the line to date. The monster hand and cracking force field create a diorama effect that has an impressive amount of detail compared to some of the plainer riser style bases we’ve seen before. I’d love to see more of this style of base as long as the additional pieces don’t get too big and dominate the figures.

Clearly, I like a great deal about this piece. Where it loses a bit of shine for me, however, is the headsculpt. There’s something just a tad off about the position of both the head on the neck and the hair on the head that creates a slightly odd look. I’d like to be able to slightly adjust the positioning of each, but of course this is a statue, not an action figure!

There is a variant version of this statue which was exclusive to SDCC which has Sue’s shorter hairstyle which removes some of these issues, but it also has a different, and for me much less preferred, version of the costume and no transparency. Perhaps, if I ever manage to come across one for a reasonable price, I might consider it if the positioning of the head is better than this version.

Despite this issue, I’m very glad to have the Invisible Woman in the Bishoujo collection, and she does look great standing alongside the other pieces in the line. I do hope that Kotobukiya can stabilise the scale issue in this line and at the very least keep things at these proportions for future releases - one of which I do hope will be Storm - I can’t believe we haven’t seen her yet in this line!

You can see more pics at Facebook, discuss this at the AFB Forum, and you can comment on this post to enter the October AFB Comment of the Month Contest!

Until next time!