This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 11:18 pm and is filed under About Eroges, Ayyo Writings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Haruka lay asleep on her side, head on the down pillow, face toward him. She breathed slow. Sweat covered her body, to which the thin white bed sheet draped over her clung to. It was hot for October, so the windows were open to let the wind blow in. This was different, he thought. By now he was usually alone. Haruka would be gone by now, leaving as soon as she was done to fight demons. They’d done it so many times before, but never before without reason. It was nice and he started to think of what he could do to keep this going.
A gust of wind shot through the room. It changed the course of his thoughts, pushed the soft veneer off the rainbow. What he really wanted was more. He wanted to flip Haruka face down into that pillow and plow her again. All of the other times were about her, even this last time together was really about her.
He wanted it rough. The kind where Haruka would be careful when she sat for the next three days. Nasty where Haruka would look at him and wonder who he was, but then maybe she’d like it that way and they’d become one of those couples with toys, scary custom-made toys, the kind that make most people say holy shit as they imagine the pain while they picture it in their head and think man that’s just a little too far and wish they never knew that about you. And really, how long could that last? He and Haruka would either burn out or be so screwed up that they’d be each others’ only option, stuck, rather than together. They’d become old dispassionate prunes with a fully stocked dungeon, strapped in and whipped bored, too far gone to even care how they wound up that way.
He got up and thought to himself, something that nasty is what The Internet is for — you don’t want someone that nasty to be the mother of your children. But, that was thinking too far ahead. He got dressed and decided to go to the store to get something to cook for dinner. He chose to ride out the romantic route for as long as he could. Be the shining knight. He even bought candles. He’d revisit this subject at another time, which he hoped wouldn’t be anytime soon.
Review of Alter’s Beat Blades Haruka
While the likeness of Haruka’s face really isn’t there the hotness of her body is all there in the sculpt. I love the torso twist, the arms raised, form fitting outfit with scarf fluttering from Haruka planting her foot and changing direction with blades in hand ready to strike. Her costume rocks, made to frame, accentuate, and direct the eye to all of her nice ample features, though with that black feature running through the middle of her torso, the belly button through the fabric Alter figures seem to be fond of is missing.
If anything the sculpt could have been a little more aggressive in describing the force of her motion. Her hair could be used to accent the motion a little more and her face seems a bit relaxed, but maybe that’s Haruka’s character to be calm. I don’t really know since I don’t play H games.
The pose leaves Haruka with a one-point mount. Her right foot connects with the base at an angle. The plastic pegs from the support mount that go into her foot are longer than the standard pegs. It looks like Alter is still experimenting with one-point mount options. Using ABS on the support legs makes warp less of a problem than mount breakage.
The finish on Haruka is very good, but not flawless. The paint on her lapel area isn’t crisp and there’s some mold debris there on my copy. There’s some artifacts in out of the way areas, but the rest looks very clean and sharp. Eye alignment could be a little better, but the bangs dropping in front of her right eye could be throwing that off.
All in all, I like this Haruka figure quite a bit. There’s a little bias in my view of the figure since I really like her character design. Haruka hits the sweet spot. She’s young, but not loli, filled out but not grotesque with her hips and breasts. Haruka as a physical character is built just right and the figure is well made.
Other Stuff
Alter put a character logo/graphic on the white diamond shaped base. This is fairly common, but I’m not a fan of it. I’d rather have a base that is easy to ignore than one with a logo or character name graphic. One with a decorative design is nice though, something like the one for Another Blood from Max Factory.
There’s a lot of body type shots in this set of photos. It may be a little much, but the figure holds highlights and shadows so well I just took a few more than normal. There is also this very good review from Kimagureman Studios, who also gives out the exposure data for each of the photos.
Slideshow
And here’s a link to the Beat Blades Haruka Slideshow, but you need a Flickr account to view it and have your view filter on at least moderate to see anything.
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Released early this year was eroge Beat Blades Haruka (or Chouko Sennin Haruka) which is widely known as the successor of Alicesoft’s famous eroge Beat Angel Escalayer and presumably due to its popularity, the main character of the eroge, Haruka gets modelled in the form of 3D figurine now. Haruka, which is made by Alter is a “standard” scaled figure at 1/8 and comes in an attractive packaging shown below.
Omake
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Beat Blades Haruka OP [Alicesoft]
Well I haven’t spent a weekend like that in a long time.
[Note: Contains mild spoilers to Beat Blades Haruka]
Where to start - well Beat Blades Haruka is the spiritual successor to Beat Angel Escalayer. If you have played it before then you’re one step ahead of the rest, if not oh well.
But I don’t want to talk about that, what I do want to talk about is what I think so far. In terms of progress, I finished 11 of the 13 endings not including non heroine related game overs. This means I have essentially seen about 85% if not more of what the game has to offer, high enough to know what I’m saying but not high enough for a formal write-up.
First up let me say this: this game is beautiful. The art is gorgeous, the coloring is colorful, and the CGs are detailed and good.
Pretty? Pretty damn pretty is what this is
Second, to quote one of the staff, this game is “E-roeroeroeroero!” A big thing of Beat Angel Escalayer was the sex scenes after losing to a boss and the degenerate ‘devil’ scenes. The former is back and multiplied itself to a total of 24 scenes with two levels each to a total of 58 mid boss losing scenes, not counting the game over ones. The latter shrunk to a pitiful three scenes each for the two main heroines with three levels each for a total of 18 ‘devil’ scenes but by gods what 18 scenes they are.
Haruka, one of the main heroines
But enough of that, time for some criticism; First the game is easy. Way too easy. If you know what you’re doing the game bends over for you. Of course the same could be said for any Alicesoft games but the Alice games of the past would break your balls and happily do it again without asking right after you reload. There’s that certain difficulty curve that you encounter that either you climb over or it never goes away and sticks by you like a hound. In this one, you have to put effort in to lose. Thankfully there is a lose button for you to use so you don’t have to get creative like in Beat Angel Escalayer when you just want to sit back and lose instead of winning all the time.
Minazuki, one of the mid bosses, and the lose button
It was still fun, but it could’ve been funnier still if the game wasn’t a 2 oz pushover. Next is the story and characters. As per Alicesoft standards, it is just right there. Disappointing or not, that’s your call. My call? Kind of disappointed.
Narika, the other main heroine and her transforming weapon, Pero
Back to the positives: the music is also of Alicesoft standards, which in this case is much higher. The music doesn’t get boring and certain ones are memorable, particularly the main theme, ‘旋風’. The voice actors were all around good to great, with note worthy stars including: Hitomi, one of the most talented in the industry, who played a short role as one of the mid bosses, Minazuki; and Kentarou Itou, known to some as Kurou Daijuuji and known to more as Abarai Renji, who played as one of the four bosses, Orochimaru.
Orochimaru, the first of the four bosses
The graphics and ero also deserves a second mention.
All in all, the first real Alicesoft game since their last standard setter, Sengoku Rance after a long year and two months. Unfortunately Beat Blades Haruka doesn’t raise the bar but it does a good job of swinging around it in a very stripper like manner.
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