Figma Hayate Yagami Review

Well, my only real pre-order for January has come in, and it’s Figma Hayate Yagami from Max Factory of Mahou Shoujou Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS fame… and seeing as how this is the third piece of the series my favourite figure comes from, thought I’d review her asap 🙂

As you can already see, I’m going to have fun with this figure ^_^;;

Hayate makes her first appearance in the second season “A’s” as her loli version. I won’t go on too much about it because of potential spoilers. However, the funny thing is that she probably saw more action in this series confined to a wheelchair, than she does all of the third season’s StrikerS combined ^_^;;

Unfortunately Hayate takes a back seat in StrikerS, so Hayate fans probably hated the series. This shot here in the second episode is probably the one of two scenes where she actually does something >_>

In reality she spent something like 24 episodes doing exactly what you see here. This time it isn’t a wheelchair she is confined to, but an office chair -_-;;

However, it may be arguable that she did a LOT more behind the scenes … a lot more of the ‘ecchi’ nature ^_^

Anyways, I better actually get to what this post is about, and that is the Figma ^_^;; This time the box has a blue, white and black colour-scheme. I really do the like the designs of the Nanoha series boxes, probably the best designs of all the Figmas out there in my opinion.

As usual, the back of the box has some examples of various poses you can put her in.

Accessories. She doesn’t come with more than Fate, but it’s still a lot more than what Nanoha came with (You can tell I’m still cut up about what little they gave Nanoha -_-).

1. Wings
2. Stand (as usual)
3. Instructions
4. Hands – and not just the same old figma ones, she comes with some custom ones to help hold her book and staff
5. Intelligent Device (AKA Staff)
6. Angry Face
7. Hat (that looks like a marshmallow, yummy!)
8. Extra Hair piece with a knob on it (to attach hat)
9. Open book
10. Closed book

And here is Hayate straight out of the box. Her barrier jacket is mostly white and navy blue with metallic gold highlights that match the staff. The vest part of the jacket and the long skirt are made of soft PVC. Build quality is decent, though there are a few minor issues I have that I will go into later. Paint job and articulation are well done, as always. And I didn’t see any problems with paint smearing or loose joints.

As you can see, this hair piece is the one that doesn’t have the knob on it. So you can display her without the silly hat if you like.

I don’t know if it’s just mine, or it’s for all of the new Figmas out there, but I like how the hands are not so hard to replace that you feel that you are breaking them each time you change them. Anyway, Hayate comes with a few non-standard figma hands that allow her to hold the book like so. The black angel wings are a softish, but brittle feeling type of clear plastic that has been painted black on the actual wings. They seem really fragile and breakable, so I’ll have to watch out with them I suppose. Anyway the wings come with a plug thing so you can attack it to Hayate (or any other figma’s) back without having to use the stand. Similar in nature to Fate’s cloak.

 

And here is Yagami Hayate fully assembled in all her office lady glory. I do really like her character design with all the bits sticking out. However I must say I am not a fan of the hat ^_^;;. It looks like she is wearing the same type of hat that the Stay Puft Marshmallow man wore in Ghostbusters.

See? Their hats are like totally the same! It makes me laugh everytime I see it.

Anyways, I disgress yet again. Gomen. The hand that is holding her staff is actually slightly different than standard Figma hands. This one actually has the grip tilted so that it looks natural when she is holding it up high. Looks cool imo. Also you can see the hand holding the book in action.

One thing. The way the wings attached at the same time as the stand (when you remove the back plug) – it’s very very loose. This is because when you stick the wings on the stand, the actual peg bit is not long enough to fit through the wings and into her back, so that it fits secure. So a strong gust of wind could probably knock Hayate off her stand. Which might be a nightmare if she lands on her wings, because like I said, they don’t look or feel too durable.

Here’s another pose you can get her in with the special staff holding hand. I think I’m going to have to use this hand on Nanoha and Fate as well ^_^;;. Oh yeah, the hand holding the book works best when gravity isn’t working against it. So in this pose the book can easily fall off.

The book is defying gravity here ^_^;;

I think I like Hayate’s angwy face more than the smiling one. Similar to my opinion on Nanoha, but not with Fate. I like Fate’s smiling face more than the angwy one.

Here I got fed up with fiddling with the book that kept falling off, so I just put her in a double-handed grip pose ^_^;;

In terms of the staff, you can remove both the head end and the bottom end. I found it easier to insert the staff by removing the bottom end. It’s a very very tight fit when the hand goes over the white bandage things.

I forgot to mention that the Hat inserts into the knob on the end of the special hair piece so that it sits secure. The hat will never fall off when attached in this fashion.

About the hand that is meant to be holding the closed version of the book. It doesn’t have any attachments or anything so that the book can sit secure. So I had to use bluetack to make it stick. I looked at the photos on the back of the box, and I wonder how they made their book stick to her hand? I hope they didn’t use boogers!

See, you can see the blob of bluetack on her hand.

A bit sad about that, but oh well.

I stuck the wings on Fate to see what she would look like. They don’t really stand out with black against the navy jacket. Looks kinda cute though ^_^

Sorry Hayate, but Feito-chan is still my favourite figure ^_^;;

But now I have the set (of the three main girls at least .. though arguable with Office Lady Hayate). In terms of what I would want next … I would really like Loli A’s versions of the Fate and Nanoha, but I won’t hold my breath on that one. Instead if I want to be realistic, I’ll hope for Vita ^_^

Anyways, in conclusion, I’ll give Hayate an 8.5 out of 10. In terms of quality, she is probably a little bit less than Fate (which is just perfect), and both of those are a lot better than Nanoha who has permanant bluetack stuck on her hair piece. You already saw my review of Nanoha probably saw I won’t go into its problems here.

Do I recommend this figure? Yes, if you are a Nanoha series fan. You do need 3 of them for it to feel complete, and they do look absolutely awesome when displayed next to each other.

And before I go, here’s the actual picture I used for the photo backgrounds. Enjoy!

Sayanara for now ~Ace