Arale Norimaki (則巻アラレ, Norimaki Arare) is an android built by Senbei Norimaki, known for her naïvety, energetic personality, lack of common sense and unbelievable superhuman strength but ironically she is nearsighted and needs to wear glasses. Senbei's mission is to convince the other citizens of Penguin Village that she is no more than a typical girl, which they appear to believe in spite of them taking notice to numerous displays of her superhuman capabilities.
I vaguely remember watching this show as IQ博士 when I was a young kid. I don't remember much from the show except for the incredibly hilarious main character known as Arale and her friend Gatchan (the flying-metal-eating fairy). She also lives in a village with animal neighbours lol. I actually recently picked up a Dr. Slump movie from the local chinese mall and it was quite hilarious and entertaining, it was certainly nostalgic. The best part was the opening song, I mean who wouldn't just love this tune?!
Anyways, let's get on with the toy!
Initial impressions with the packaging leaves me thinking this is a cheaply made toy. I don't know if it's the pink and white stripes or what, but it almost screams knock-off to me LOL
As you can see, this figure of Arale-chan is of her in her pilot helmet outfit, not the regular classic one with winged-cap.
Upon opening the package, I was introduce to the smell of...stinky plastic. I don't know what type of plastic has this smell, but I don't like it. Turns out it is just the flame attack part that was smelly. It's one of those soft-rubbery type plastic.
The accessories include 3 faces, 3 pair of hands, her NCHA flame cannon attack and the saying in Japanese, a stick, a pink caca, and some clear stands for the figure and accessories.
First look at the figure shows it has some decent paint apps. She is very top heavy because of her head so she does not stand very well by herself. One little detail that I was somewhat disappointed with was that her glasses sits lower on her face than what was on the box art.
She looks soooo cute!
There was a little bit of rough paint area on the back of her helmet, no biggie though.
Articulation-wise, her knees and elbows are single jointed, shoulders and hips are ball-jointed although their movement are severally hindered by the little straps on the side of her helmet and her shorts. Wrists are ball-jointed, but the balls are not very round so it's quite hard to rotate her hands without ripping out her whole arm. The head is mounted to the torso with a ball joint and to the face with a rachet type joint (more on that below).
When I tried to rotate her hands, the whole shoulder joint detached from the torso. I couldn't get it to go back in properly because of the way the joint goes into the torso. I've never seen it done this way, it is sort of an awkward design. It was very hard to apply force on the joint to get it into place because the hole is inside the shoulder.
To change her face, you first have to remove the earmuff pieces, then the back half of her helmet. The face piece slides into the front part of the helmet. Here you can see how the head is connected to the "neck" shown above. The outer ball piece that attaches to the neck piece needs to be moved remove and attached to the exchanged face as well. This piece feels really flimsy and I was scared to handle it a lot when changing her expressions.
Here are all the pieces required to change her expressions.
Another example of why I keep thinking this figure is poorly made. They couldn't even get the holes drilled correctly for the earmuffs!
Even with all the drawbacks in quality of this figure, it is still a good representation of Arale-chan. Did you know her favourite hobby is poking poo? LOL
This is with one of the extra hands she comes with which was basically same as the stock fists but with a tiny hole drilled in the center to hold the stick.
One of Arale-chan's special abilities is her NCHA mouth cannon attack (see video below).
And recreated here with the figure and supplied accessories.
Overall, I give this figure a 7/10. It is a good representation of the Arale-chan character in the Dr. Slump cartoon. Quality-wise, it is just not up-to-par with figures from lines such as Revoltech and Figma. The joints are a pain to configure with, specifically the shoulder and the wrists. Although it does come with quite some accessories to recreate some funny moments in the show. Do I recommend it? Yes if you are a fan of the show and wants a figure of Arale-chan since I think this one if the only action figure available for the character. No if you are not familiar with the character as you might be slightly disappointed by the quality. I admit I am a bit stumped by the quality of this figure, but I am just as happy to finally have an action figure of this lovable character.
