Soffiera says Trick or Treat!

WIP

I’m not sure what exactly her motif is—is she a bat, scorpion, a devil, or a succubus?

Either way, I joined the hype train for Arcanadea Soffiera—she was a girlpla that I wasn’t fixated on getting until reviews of her started to come out, which my interest would spike up crazy as it would be cool to build a Halloween-themed gal during spooky season, but goddammit, she was either sold out or was still on pre-order, which I doubt she’d get released by Halloween, so I actually took the risk and got her from Aliexpress out of all places, paying a hefty $78 for her, but she did arrive at my doorstep before the month ended.

Soffiera certainly deviates from most Girlpla I’ve built—like the Arcanadea line is marketed (I think), she’s form over function, trying to be as humanly sculpted as possible, and instead of being mecha-like, she is a lot more fantasy themed. She builds a bit similar to FA:Girl kits, namely how the joints are built, but it quickly becomes different as the skirt section is very involved, and then statically connects to the torso with two square pegs, which unfortunately means that it can pop off from time to time when handling her. The limbs are simple to build and the accessories are great, especially her very involved scythe, just be careful when handling her armored form, because sheesh, she is a sharp ass kit. For being primarily ABS, I didn’t need to do much sanding to her joints, which is always a plus for me. To top it all off, the stand that comes with the box is actually usable, and all they did was doing this one simple trick: making the arm ball jointed, which helps so much more than I thought it would. Overall, the kit is very enjoyable to build—it’s a very seamless process without much hiccups, and it makes all the better for the fact that she 1. looks really good and 2. she poses really well.

I love how Soffiera looks out of the box. Well, I did paint the gold because that’s never gonna look good unless it’s plated, but outside of that, she is full of detail and color. I love how she is proportioned compared to FA:Girl and MD kits, she’s ever so thicker than others. People really like her underboob over her Wilize chest, but I do prefer the latter, I just like her overall torso being more dark than white. Her faceplates are amazing, she comes with 4, and they all have a lot of character, which I definitely prefer her stone cold stare the most. Her Wilize form adds a lot, it’s really impressive what Koto did with her Scythe, the scrollwork parts of her rear skirt and the backpack swords which can be used as weapons. With the amount of surface detail she already has, I don’t know if I’m gonna do anything extra other than topcoating her, but there might be a place or two where I might detail her. 

Finally, she poses really freakin’ well. Her kicks may not be impressive, but it’s real easy to move her otherwise. There’s quite a bit to do in her normal form, but wow, is there a lot you can do in her Wilize form. Yes, her scythe is heavy for shit, but she has no problem holding it when propped to the ground, holding it with two hands, or using the included arm specifically to hold the weapon. It does get pretty dicey when the scythe is held by both the hand and the stand, but you can get creative on how that scythe can be used. That said, there are two little problems when posing her—for whatever reason, the tolerance on the armored leg pegs are much looser than her normal legs that the thigh piece right before the knee doesn’t rotate with the rest of the leg, and yes, the legs do tend to pop off, and her scorpion tail, while being very articulate, the joint strength is quite poor, so if it falls, get ready for trouble reattaching it. 

So yeah, Soffiera’s been an awesome kit so far. I’ll do a little touch ups here and there, but it won’t be as much as I usually do; she’s already detailed as it is. Anyway, I’ll see you soon!

Completed

This kit has certainly been a trick and treat. A treat in a very pleasant OOB build experience… and a trick for the finished product being the most aggravating thing I’ve handled in a while, and it’s not in the way you expect. 

Following up from her completed snap up, this is probably the least amount of detailing I’ve done in a long time—I basically copied the extra details that were in the manual, and the only additional painting was making her belt and her upper arm rings silver. The only panel lining I did was on the skirt, the hilts of the swords and her scythe. That’s it. All that was left was the flat topcoat, and oh boy was I not prepared for how much trouble the topcoat out of all things would cause me.

The weather was perfect, humidity was finally under 50% for once on a day I was actually topcoating, but oh god the coating was so inconsistent no matter what I did—one area would be flat as fuck, the other, uh, looked like it got barely coated even after applying, uh, a bit too many coats. The scythe had one side that was completely matte, while the other part stayed ever so satin no matter what I did. I tried coating at different angles, heated up the bottle with warm water, even tried to coat the matte side, but nothing was fucking working, I already used half of a new can, and then I had the bright idea of using alcohol to erase the coat from both sides, and then give each side a coat one last time, and, it worked! Though, it did leave some pretty bad residue from the old coat, but I was past my patience at that point.

Little did I know that that frustrating topcoat job would aggravate me throughout the entire photoshoot that night. Everything became stubbornly tight. Not tight to a point that something could potentially snap, but that moving it was tedious, and if handled incorrectly the part would just pop off because it didn’t like you specifically. The ball jointed stand arm I once revered now became my worst nightmare. The tail that was loosey goosey was somehow a worse nightmare even though it TIGHTER than it was before!!! Something about physics was not working and put myself through pain for 2 hours trying to recreate the poses I did before as I thought I cooked with them, which added to the frustration when they were not 1/1. The backpack connection randomly decides if it will pop out the main body or will disconnect from the stand. The shoulder joints can sometimes be impossible to put back on for whatever reason. And oh my god, this kit is so fucking sharp it annoyed the fuck out of me every time I tried to move it, get poked in several different areas, and somehow not pierce myself. I’m telling you, I lost it so bad, that I screamed from the top of my lungs as I was doing my last pose and something failed on me right before I was about to take the picture. It’s wild. There’s nothing terribly wrong with the kit—it has good balance, strong joints, nothing broke on me—it just has all these little annoyances everywhere that it was somehow more excruciating posing than the Regalias, Yefuna or fully loaded Tama. All of the goddamn problems came in because my topcoat job messed with the kit’s tolerance.

That being said, with the minimal additions I did to Soffiera, without a doubt, she still looks very frickin’ good, which is why I tortured myself getting as many dynamic poses I could get. Now that I calmed down, I even want to do more, but that definitely won’t end well. It’s surprising to think that she does look a bit simplified with the topcoat, but she looks great regardless. Even after finishing the horrid photoshoot, I placed her on the table, and I couldn’t even be mad anymore considering after all of that, she still rocks visually. She’s cute, sexy and hot all at the same time. 10/10 would definitely go through all this troubling pain again But yeah, if you’re thinking of getting her, by all means I do recommend it, just be on the lookout if you’re topcoating her, and keep your marbles intact. 

That being said, Happy Halloween everybody, and I hope you treat yourself with some sinful goodies tonight!