Beach Queens Baka to Test 1/10 Scale PVC Figure: Himeji Mizuki Review

Beach Queens are a series of PVC figures from Wave Corporation, focusing on female anime characters in swimwear (hence the beach in the title). They've done some popular characters like Saber (Fate Stay/Night), Taiga Aisaka (Toradora!) and even the entire cast of K-On! One of the latest additions to the series is Himeji Mizuki, one of the main characters from the light novel/manga/anime Baka to Test to Shokanju, which I won't go into detail here. Needless to say she's the pink-haired, bookish princess of the series, captured swimmingly (hee!) in this Beach Queens figure I'm reviewing today.

Mizuki here comes in a Beach Queens box. The huge clear plastic window lets you see all of her details, and peeps who might like to display Mizuki inside her box can do so without any trouble.

Mizuki is sandwiched between two molded plastic trays, preventing her from being jostled around during transit or when your little brother wants to play catch-the-expensive-figurine with her.

Once taken out of her plastic prison, Mizuki is one cute figure. She's roughly six inches tall, and she fills out her bikini nicely with her voluptuous curves (weird considering her anime is set in some sort of high school Hogwarts, which makes her a teenager, but hey, Japan!). The paint on her is crisp and surprisingly without slop. She might look pretty plain, but whatever details she has definitely pop, like her huge anime eyes or the flyaways in her hair. I especially like her happy expression gazing at something from a distance. Heart-melting!

And I was surprised to learn that she has a ball-jointed head! She can only turn her head as far as her huge hair allows, but the fact that an otherwise static figure has that sort of articulation is pretty cool.

Her feet peg onto the pentagonal display base included with her. The base mimics a grainy slice of beach, completing Mizuki's beach-clad look.

Another sort-of accessory she comes with is the small pink towel wrapped around her waist. It's made of very soft plastic, and according to the box art (which shows her without the towel) it's removable. It didn't tab into anything at closer inspection, and I can't just slip it off her since it fit pretty snugly around her waist, so I looked for the instructions included in the box on how to remove it.

Except there weren't any instructions included in the box.

Wait, what?

Yes, there were no instructions on how to remove that blasted towel from her waist. Other Japanese figurines like Figma and Revoltech had instructions for even the most rudimentary of things like removing their shoes or swapping faces, but Beach Queens apparently let you figure it out for yourself. After minutes of puzzling it over, I found out that she pulls apart by the waist, allowing you to gingerly slide off the towel.

I don't mind not having instructions, but I would definitely feel sorry for the people who might unwittingly break their figure the first time they try to remove that towel. Be very careful when putting on or removing the towel, since it's kept in one piece by literally one micrometer of plastic...pull too hard and might make you end up with one broken towel!

Without the towel, Mizuki looks hot. The tiny pink bikini is simply sugar-coated eye candy, and the juxtaposition of her cute face and awfully curvaceous body will mess with your head in a good way.

My only beef is that two halves of her body don't snap together as snugly as you might like, and it's cringing-ly evident when viewed from behind, where she might have a pretty big gap for a waistline, depending on how hard you pushed her upper and lower body together.

But even with all my nitpicky complaints, I have to say it's money well spent. This is my first PVC figure and the cutest figure I have ever owned. I knew nothing of this character when I first saw her, buying her solely on the basis of how cute her design is, which is a pretty big vote of confidence for Wave Corporation.

Bottom line, if you're looking for an anime figurine that looks good without breaking your budget, and if you love your busty pink-haired girls in bikinis, then Wave's Beach Queens Himeji Mizuki figure is for you.

Thanks to Wasabi Toys for hooking me up with this figure! Thanks for reading!