Suigintou and Shinku Customa-p by Volks Review

The customa-p figure stands for Customize Play Painted PVC Figure. They are made by the Japanese company Volks and are sculpted by Misaki Serika. Both figures stand approximately 22 cm and were released in 2007. These are the boxes you will want to look for the anime stores in your area.

To do a search for these figures online, for Suiginto type “CUSTOMA-P CFP-04″ and for Shinku type “CUSTOMA-P CFP-03″. The Customa line is order by number so this is an easy way to see if there are any instock out there.

The Customa-p packaging is nice but there wasn’t a whole lot to secure. Each figure comes with the figure and one exchangeable “doll eye” face. There is no base or any weapons for either girl. I would prefer Shinku (left) had a cane and Suigintou had a sword. This is one of my complaints about these figures.

First we will look at Shinku with her default “anime face”. Her likeness to the anime Shinku is very good with only one better figure out there of her (Alter’s).

Looking at her full shot you can see that she has a lot of visible joints. This figure focuses on poseability but I found that even with all those joints both Shinku and Suigintou are quite limited on what you can do with them. This is because all of their body parts are interchangeable with all the other figures from the Customa-p line. Due to this, body parts will fall off very often. This is an issue with these figures.

I don’t like moving the figures to a pose and having their arm or hand fall off at least 3 times. I also don’t really see the appeal of swamping anime characters arms and hair around anyways. Maybe they had little kids in mind when they made them?

Those complaints said, these figures are sculpted beautifully. Just one look at Shinku’s hair or roses and you will just love having her in your collection. Paint work is also solid and the joints on these figures kind of fit in because they are portraying dolls from the Rozen Maiden anime.

Suigintou’s “anime face” is perfect for her and she has the expression that she usually has in the anime.

As you can see, Suigintou’s sculpt and paint job is nice and detailed. I have no complaints about how these figures look, just on the things I mentioned earlier and one more thing. Both Shinku and Suigintou do not come with stands. Suigintou can stand reasonably well without one but Shinku has more difficulty due to her long heavy hair. The standing issue becomes more of a problem with the twins which I will try and look at later.

I was actually more pleased with Suigintou then with Shinku in terms of their poseability. Unlike Shinku, Suigintou does not have large heavy hair to make her head movement difficult.

Now we will look at a few pics of how they look with their alternate doll faces.

This is where Volks does something very right. They look even more like dolls with these faces and their eyes are adjustable. When you change faces (same way as a figma), you can adjust how their eyes appear and then lock them in place. I only wish changing the eyes of a Dollfie Dream was this easy….

I actually didn't find out that you could adjust their eyes and lock them in place until I was playing with the twins. As a result, Shinku's eyes aren't quite lined up but are entirely fixable. ^^;

In closing, I am reasonably pleased with Volks’ Custima-p but they are not perfect. Their movement is hampered by their exchangeable parts falling out as well as their hair (Shinku). Also, they should come with a stand as they can fall over easy without it. Also, both Shinku and Suigintou are lacking in accessories. But, they do look really cool and are the best option at the moment with a limited number of figures produced. Punynari score: Shinku: 2.7 out of 5.0 Suigintou: 3.5 out of 5.0

You can buy Custima-p Shinku here.
http://www.hlj.com/product/VOL21226

Custima-p Suiginto will have to be hunted down in second hand anime stores or on Yahoo Japan Auctions/Ebay. She is quite rare and is discontinued. You can’t even find her in Volks stores in Japan anymore.