Mental Model Takao by Ques Q Review

The Japanese seem to love making moe-characters out of anything, and so they did for the anime series Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova where the hostile force has AI of their battleships recreated in physical form called Mental Models. Takao here is one of the first our protagonist happens to fight, and also the AI I come to like the most in the series. I didn’t exactly think that I needed to buy a figure of her, but seeing this one I spontaneously pre-ordered it even though I haven’t heard of the manufacturer Q Ques before.

Packaging

I know talking about the packaging for figures seems rather pointless cause it’s the figure that’s interesting, but sometimes we get some cool and interesting looking boxes as well like this one. I can’t say I’ve seen such a clear box for figure before, which is great cause you can clearly see the figure from all sides before buying it in a store. (Makes little difference to me as I buy all my figures online.) The clear box is styled well within the theme of the series/figure.

Sculpting

The reason I fell for this figure is the dynamic pose and motion it has, the blue colors/hair together with being a character I like, of course. The ladylike yet arrogant pose of quickly turning to perhaps face her new captain making her hair and skirt fling around her.

The hair and details like her ribbons and frills on her dress are all made from soft plastics. I think this is great, especially for her hair, as it lowers the risk of them breaking as easily if she were to fall over. On the other hand it might suffer from sagging as my Nyaruko-san’s ahoge (hair strand) has. Time will tell, unfortunately.
Her body is smooth and her dress well detailed. There are no apparent mold lines anywhere on her. Fingers look a bit chubby up close but fine from a normal viewing distance.

At first it didn’t bother me much, but once I looked closely I though it didn’t look so good. Her hair in front of her face connects to her bang and makes it look like a helmet of sorts.

Sexy and shapely legs!
A pretty fitting baseplate. The pink is a good contrast to her otherwise blue color palette.

Like usually the baseplate has two pegs that you stick  Takao onto. I had to use quite some force to get her all the way down.

Painting

Painting on this figure isn’t something extra ordinary but just enough for what the character design needs except for the now trending translucent hair tops. I’d say it’s a nice addition.

Painted details like her nails, lips and collar are perfectly positioned, which I feel is pretty rare, so that’s a big plus.

Sadly, my sample seems to have a defect. Some paint has been scraped off most likely during manufacturing. Fortunately it’s located where it isn’t easily noticeable, so I can live with it.

Conclusion

Sculpting
Painting
Packaging
Enjoyment
Average

This is my first Ques Q figure I own, so I don’t have other figures from them to compare quality with, but it’s easy to say it’s not in quality with Good Smile Company’s. That doesn’t mean it is bad, but it might be a bit too expensive for the quality we get. To me the pose makes up for it and overall I think it’s a good rendition of the character.

Overall, 3,6 stars out of 5