kittypawloveI'm sure someone has made an article about this already but I just can not get over the lack of male figures!!
I love my ladies, don't get me wrong, but I would absolutely adore it if more male figures were made.
When you go to look at the original characters, it really takes a hot minute to find some male figures (at least for me anyhow). I get that it's probably because they won't sell as good or something,,, but a lad can dream
cat-maid boy when hmmmm
I love my ladies, don't get me wrong, but I would absolutely adore it if more male figures were made.
When you go to look at the original characters, it really takes a hot minute to find some male figures (at least for me anyhow). I get that it's probably because they won't sell as good or something,,, but a lad can dream
cat-maid boy when hmmmm
Comments53
Here's the male side on amiami currently excluding nendoroids and unforunately it's just more lackluster and barren and you have the same pose on 3 different characters just on 1 page alone View spoilerHide spoiler
Here are some other examples of aforementioned male characters that lack inspiring design
ITEM #225122
ITEM #225121
(as much as it pains me to say it since I have these 2 but at least did they something interesting with Izaya's alt form):
ITEM #50598
ITEM #50597
(this is a prize figure of a popular MC but even if they make a scale of him unless they change his design the sculptors doesn't have much to work with)
ITEM #475848
I think some of the fault lies in the creator and their approach because it is a self insert fantasy at the end of the day and the targeted demograph is for the male gaze so they dont give the mc design much thought.
On the bright side we have these amazing designs coming up that I'm looking forward to: ITEM #1224484
ITEM #1224486
ITEM #1414580You misunderstood what I was trying to say. It was not a competition between male and female figures. What I was saying was that there is not nearly as much variety in female designs as people claim. Female anime designs are just as tropey as males, just in other ways. The vast majority of the figure market consists of bunny/swimsuit and cutesy (dress girls, Miku etc.). Where are the cool warrior women in armor, figures without t&a poses that aren't kawaii school girls, female figs that aren't teenagers? They exist, but in a similar way to needles existing in haystacks. There is less variety in males, definitely, but the variety of female figures mostly falls in two or three categories, and if you're not into those, there's not much there for you.
If you take two bunnies, one with red hair, the other blue. One with stockings, one without. Yes, they're "different", but they still share the same aesthetic.
edit: Here's an example. The Xenoblade games have several figures now. I would love a figure of Elma. She's a great character & design. She has no figure. Why? Bc her design doesn't fall into the tropes that get made into figures:
I'm glad they made ITEM #993392, but they still gave her a tropey cutesy pose that doesn't fit her personality at all.
TLDR: male & female designs are both tropey and could use more variety :)
It's either bunnies in the same 3 poses or cutesy figures in dresses. This is what 95% of the figures look like when you browse these stores. When people talk about this amazing variety of female designs I'm like "where?". The bunnies companies like Freeing keep pumping out look 90% the same. Generic designs are not holding sculptors of female figures back. I'm actually not very excited about the prospect of male bunnies for that reason, nothing says more creatively bankrupt than a bunny in the figure industry :). We'd get 100 men in speedos and bunny ears that look 90% the same. Of course, that would be an improvement in male figure quantity. In quality I'm not so sure.
I agree about Genshin and Touken Ranbo having nice designs. Video games in general have more interesting designs than anime. Hopefully companies will make more game figs, male or female.
Don't get me wrong I love male figure as much as the next thirsty collector and have quite a few myself and I'm so happy to see a upward trend of more creativity approaching male figures/designs. However in comparison to your screenshot I can see a great variety of poses, design, hair colour and facial expression with all the girls but I'm guessing you find it boring and looking alike?
Here's the male side on amiami currently excluding nendoroids and unforunately it's just more lackluster and barren and you have the same pose on 3 different characters just on 1 page alone View spoilerHide spoiler
Here are some other examples of aforementioned male characters that lack inspiring design
ITEM #225122
ITEM #225121
(as much as it pains me to say it since I have these 2 but at least did they something interesting with Izaya's alt form):
ITEM #50598
ITEM #50597
(this is a prize figure of a popular MC but even if they make a scale of him unless they change his design the sculptors doesn't have much to work with)
ITEM #475848
I think some of the fault lies in the creator and their approach because it is a self insert fantasy at the end of the day and the targeted demograph is for the male gaze so they dont give the mc design much thought.
On the bright side we have these amazing designs coming up that I'm looking forward to: ITEM #1224484
ITEM #1224486
ITEM #1414580
those characters from the slice of life/comedy shows. Sure, the target demographic is predominantly young men, but the character design for "best boys" just isn't there. They rarely have any appeal [in figure form]. I'll reiterate: sculptors can't utilize cleavage because men don't have breasts; pantsu is out of the question because men don't wear skirts/dresses; and even if the character is super popular, their attire is, more often than not, unexciting (look at the great male lead from 86 -eighty six- as a recent example). The only design techniques left are weapons/armor and nudity, which is exactly what the market primarily consists of.
I think if sculptors we're able to successfully do what you say can be done, which is that males enjoy all the same character design techniques that females possess (lingerie, variety of attire, sex/suave appeal) there would be more male leads in figure form, heck even more original male characters...but, that just isn't reality.
If we're going to be using male protagonists from male-targeting media as an example of male character design then we're never going to get anywhere because they're purposely designed to be plain to facilitate self projection. How about male designs from otome games instead? One example from the top of my head is Ensemble Stars, some of their costumes (as well as the CG art) rival that of Love Live.
To further use these two idol games as an example, if you compare them side by side you would find (aside from gender differences of course) that they play up different types of cuteness and sex appeal. It's apples to oranges... which was my original point - that it doesn't make sense to judge the appeal of male figures based on female figure standards; the "average" audience for them are looking for different things.
I only made the reference to lewd male figures to say that these qualities you mentioned are also being looked for in male figures, if we were going to compare point for point. Granted it's not for everyone, but based on how well ITEM #293234 sold it's not a rare thing.
I think the issue actually is that companies, who are used to targeting the male gaze, aren't quite sure how to target the female market figure wise, as well as a lot of things like societal stereotypes about female sexuality that other commenters have mentioned. I've seen figure companies struggling with quality and pricing over female-targeted male figures for years. It's a tricky demographic that has high buying potential but can be extremely particular, unlike female figures where being attractive and having assets and maybe show some skin is typically good enough to get past most hurdles.
Sure a lot of popular anime mcs look boring, but that's both male and female. Asuna is as generic as Kirito. The "male designs are too generic" argument doesn't make sense to me. Here's a screenshot from amiami:
It's either bunnies in the same 3 poses or cutesy figures in dresses. This is what 95% of the figures look like when you browse these stores. When people talk about this amazing variety of female designs I'm like "where?". The bunnies companies like Freeing keep pumping out look 90% the same. Generic designs are not holding sculptors of female figures back. I'm actually not very excited about the prospect of male bunnies for that reason, nothing says more creatively bankrupt than a bunny in the figure industry :). We'd get 100 men in speedos and bunny ears that look 90% the same. Of course, that would be an improvement in male figure quantity. In quality I'm not so sure.
I agree about Genshin and Touken Ranbo having nice designs. Video games in general have more interesting designs than anime. Hopefully companies will make more game figs, male or female.
This plus the increased cost of production means companies might need to take a gamble and invest time/effort/money into these aforementioned generic male protag that people may or may not like (usually dark hair, average face + school uniform) and the end cost would probably be around 12-18k yen vs a lot of female designs with barely any effort in a school uniform that retails around 15-20k and would potentially sell more. Unfortunately the companies model being for-profit would choose the latter to be safe especially in these turbulent times.
I would love to collect more male figures with interesting designs: Touken Ranbu hit gold due to their beautiful designs blending historical/fantasy and made companies realise that there is a market but sadly it's not quite there yet. However I think we're heading to a good direction if Genshin would ever release their male figs (I think we'll see remnenants of the good 'ol days of PO wars if they ever make Zhongli) and I'm hoping Chinese figure makers will step up and stir the pot a bit more too.
As for some sexy male figs catering to the female gaze: Megahouse actually had something good going there for a while with their POP SOC line but alas they haven't made anything new recently ENTRY #98716
1/7 male nude figures when??? T_T ...I mean...Native is starting veeeeeery slowly with "Dramatical Murder" (Aoba) figures.
Looking at Alter's Merlin / Arthur / Gawain...at least Merlin and Arthur are STILL available although they have been released ages ago. In contrast, the millionth version of Saber Alter is already sold out. It indeed might be the demand?
BUT!!!! Even if demand is lower...a company could easily grab this up as niche market.