So it’s officially Hatsune Miku’s birthday in Japan as I’m writing this post!! I was up early this morning watching the Magical Mirai evening concert stream on Nico; what a great way to kick things off!! In celebration of Miku’s birthday I’ll be making a lot of Miku related posts as I mentioned here. I thought I’d start off the slew of posts by unboxing Nendoroid Hatsune Miku: Cheerful Ver. by Good Smile Company!

This is the first time I’ve ordered figures from Mandarake and it definitely won’t be the last! I was able to snag the Cheerful and Hachune Miku nendoroids for 3000 yen a piece. I saved about 3500 yen between the two figures by ordering them from Mandarake.

The prices for figures on Mandarake are usually lower than other sites since there is often damage to the boxes. If you don’t really care how badly damaged the box is you can get some really great deals. I keep all of my boxes, so I care about damage to a certain degree. I’m fine with a little bit of damage to the box, but if the box looks like it’s been through hell I’ll pass on buying the figure. Mandarake listed both these figures as having minor box damage; the damage on my boxes is almost unnoticeable.

At this point, some of you might be wondering why the words “You are not alone” are on the box. I’m sure most of you remember the tragic earthquake that struck Japan in March of 2011. Well, in response to the disaster Good Smile released a whole line of Cheerful Japan products, making donations to the Japan Red Cross for each item they sold. In the case of this nendoroid, for each purchase Good Smile donated 1000 yen to the Japan Red Cross to support relief efforts in Eastern Japan. Here’s a commercial that Good Smile released for this nendoroid:

Orders for domestic customers began at the end of March 2011 and lasted for approximately two weeks. After domestic orders closed, orders for international buyers opened in April 2011 and closed two weeks later as well. She retailed for 3000 yen and shipped out to buyers in late June and late July of that year.

Alright, now let’s take a look at the contents of the box and what kind of pieces this nendoroid comes with!

As you can see she comes with:

Four faces instead of the regular three (that Hachune face is an awesome bonus!)

Two front hair pieces

A support flag

Pompons

A leek

Several hands pieces, which include ones for holding the flag and leek

One additional arm piece

One additional leg piece

And of course the stand

Like almost all of the Miku nendoroids, you don’t really need the stand that comes with her as she can stand perfectly fine via her twin tails. This is one of the things I love best about twin tail characters in nendoroid form since it makes displaying her look much nicer in my opinion, as well as figure photography much easier.

One of the biggest driving factors for me in getting this nendoroid (apart from my interest in anything Miku related) was this particular face. I absolutely love it; definitely one of my favorites.

Now let’s take a closer look at the support flag Miku comes with! According to Soul of Anime’s blog post, the phrase written on the flag roughly translates to, “Let’s try our best together!” Quite a fitting phrase that really reflects the main idea behind any support effort.

Wondering how you get her to hold it? Well, the flag is actually made up of two parts that push together. Simply pull them apart, slide the flag pole through the appropriate hand piece and voila! You can display it as a regular flag, or with the bottom piece attached so it looks like a music note; quite a clever idea.

At first I wasn’t sure why they gave me two hair pieces, but after swapping out her multiple faces I noticed why. The hair piece that comes with her Cheerful expression doesn’t fit together snuggly with the other three faces, hence the reason why they give you a second hair piece.

Something else to mention concerns her waist. Unlike other nendoroids, this Miku nendoroid’s waist is not connected to the body by a ball joint. This means that she cannot bend at the waist, though it isn’t really a problem (unless you are someone who displays Miku without her skirt O-o) since either way movement is restricted by her skirt.

Alright, now for the best part of the review: the photo shoot where you can see some of the various poses Cheerful Miku can make!!

To Buy of Not to Buy? That is the Question

Firstly, my standard spiel of course: “Buying a figure always depends on how much you like the character.” As some of you may know, I am a sucker for all things Miku, so of course I would end up buying her at some point.

While I do like the fact that she comes with four instead of three facial expressions, she does seem to be lacking on other parts. She doesn’t have many arm pieces compared to some of the other nendoroids I own, so you can’t make quite as many poses. For that reason, I would advise spending around 3000-4000 yen on the figure, no higher. She is a very nice nendoroid and I love the fact that some of the profits go to charity, but you can get more bang for your buck with other nendoroids.

Here are a few places you can buy her. The links on Mandarake are always changing so I’ll just link you to what shows up with the cheerful miku search term (always use the name in Japanese as you’ll get way more hits).

Mandarake Nippon Yasan Rakuten Global Market (There’s one up as I write this but it may be sold out when you check the link)

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