ソフィーのアトリエ「プラフタ」

Gust Co. Ltd. are a Japanese games developer, known for the critically acclaimed Atelier series.

***Atelier Marie, The Alchemist of Salburg - 1997***

These games always contain a few common elements and themes, namely: alchemy/item crafting, a more "old school" graphical style and. . . cute girls wearing frilly outfits.

Today's cute girl is from 2015's Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book! Except she technically isn't actually a girl. . .

That's right, Plachta is a talking book that becomes Sophie's alchemy teacher. Suffering from amnesia, she slowly recovers her memories as Sophie discovers more recipes throughout the game. Only in Japan right?

Today, we'll be looking at none other than Alter's amorous scale figure of her.

Sitting at around 13cm and a scale of 1/7, Alter have once again ensured to capture the intriciate details with their scale, such as the gilding all over her clothes or the gemstone on the end of her tail(?). The pose used in this figure does an excellent job of accentuating her curves—even though Plachta herself is quite small! Most notable are the skindentation from her leggings amongst other things, but I'll get into that as we examine further.

These details continue as we take a closer look at Plachta's face. Her innocent expression is greatly encapsulated by well executed eyes! Different shades of green alongside complex highlights add a lot of life to her face, and you really do feel like Plachta is staring deeply into the distance (or you, depending on the angle). If I had to levy one criticism however, it would be the paint job on her hair. While the metallic-lilac coat does well to maintain source material accuracy, I feel like more could have been done to add a bit of texture and it is probably the one and only area where detail is lacking. It's still better than many other figures though, so we'll leave the complaining here.

Moving downwards, we can also see that Alter used both glossy and metallic paint for Plachta's armlets. This alongisde the realistically sculpted creases in her clothes do well to further maintain the level of detail and quality Alter are known for!

Of course, we can't forget the exposed shoulder and chest area in Plachta's outfit, because Alter certainly didnt. A brown-leather belt wraps around her upper abdomen—Alter making sure to emphasise the sculpt on her armpit and side-profile of her breast as Plachta's right-arm extends outwards.

Talking about her arm, let us take a closer look at this book—wait a minute. I thought Plachta was already a book, does this mean that this book is actually a girl? I don't know anymore. Anyways, let's continue.

Featuring the same gilding throughout the rest of her outfit, this "book" has been painted green with some lighter splotches to show wear. Excellent detail! We can also see several book marks in a complementary colour scheme jutting out of different pages, with darker filled in creases to show the different pages within.

I have to wonder if the context of this figure gave Alter an incentive to add much more detail to this prop than they would on another figure. Regardless, I'm glad that they did and this attention to detail really shows why Alter is one of the highest quality figure manufacturers in the market.

As we approach her lower half, we can once again see the gilding so prominently featured throughout the figure. Signature parts of Gust's character design can be observed here with the frills and crossed laces on her leggings, completely non-practical skirt, and a transparent window on her anterior for what reason I can only really think of being to expose her belly button. Thanks Gust.

As is tradition round these parts, I am obligated to provide a pantsu shot.

You've probably already gathered that I'm quite impressed with Alter's work here. Apart from the hair, I feel that they've spared no expense in ensuring that Plachta appears as closely as she does in the game—no easy feat might I add, as her design features many complex elements that would prove troublesome for many other manufacturers. The end result is a figure that is not only faithful to its source material, but also enhances my appreciation for Gust's character designs. Sasuga Alter!

As you might then expect, this figure has been highly demanded on the aftermarket. Thankfully, Alter have put her back up for pre-order in 2021! So what are you waiting for?