I hope you guys are as excited as I am! Let's open up the box and take a look at her! My review is after the cut.
Before we get to the review, here's the pertinent details. I actually placed an order for Anna in early January of this year (from my favorite figure retailer, Big Bad Toy Store) and took advantage of their "Pile of Loot" feature where you can pay upfront and then arrange to have purchases delivered at a later date. It's very handy if you know that you will be ordering several items within, say, a six-month period, since you can save on shipping and have them delivered together. Anna was $49.99, which was $5 more than her sister, which I'm not too thrilled about. Not too clear on why that's so.
P.S. I've noticed, as well, that although many figures are "supposed" to be Japan-only, a lot of figure retailers will manage to get their hands on them anyway to import. And then sometimes the figure is approved for release in the NA market later. Isn't business weird?
P.P.S. I got her delivered at the same time as Pluto, so yes, I took pictures of these at work. I really love the digital camera my office has, it's so good!
Anyway, here we have the front of the box. The window has adorable snowflakes decorating the corners! The box is ombre shaded from white to pink to purple. I guess they wanted to keep the blue theme for Elsa's box to easily distinguish them. (Why not a more magenta shade to pick up on Anna's cape? The world will never know.)
The back of the box shows Anna in all of her glory, along with several poses. There's even a special accessory being shown off, but we will get to that in a minute. I really like the pink snowflakes. Don't see too many of those!
More posing the dolls (Anna doesn't show up on Elsa's box, I think because she didn't have a prototype at the time. I'm also wondering if Elsa was more popular in Japan than her sister?), plus a side window with Anna's name.
And the same on the other side. By the way, Anna's box is much slimmer than Elsa's.
The background of Anna's box is the same as her sister's; it's a view of Arendelle with the North Mountain looming overhead. I really like it, it's a very nice touch.
I have to say that I love how easy Nendoroid packaging is to open. A major plus in my book. But anyway, here is Anna with her accessories. You have Anna herself at the top, with a smirky, mischievous face, an extra pair of arms (these are curved, as opposed to the straight arms on the figure), extra hands (you'll see why in a minute), special arm parts, an Olaf figure, a hat and a stand for Olaf, a stand for Anna, and an extra neck joint.
Before I continue, I want to go over the special arm parts. I'm going to be really busy in the next few weeks, so I wanted to get this review out ASAP. So I am not going to have time to pull out my Elsa figure and show you the two figures using the arm parts. Not until later, anyway. Thus, I want to quick explain that these are parts that you clip into both dolls so they are clasping hands. It's a bit odd, but I guess they are running on the assumption that if you bought one, you will buy the other.
Included is a list of all of the parts and pieces.
Anna comes wrapped in TONS of small pieces of plastic, per usual. Good Smile is very conscientious about making sure that there were no scratching or paint transfers. Awesome! Getting her unwrapped takes quite a bit of time, though...
Anna, by default, comes wearing her famous adventuring outfit purchased from Wandering Oaken's Trading Post (And Sauna!) ...I'm sorry, that never gets old. This includes the cape and hat, which you can see to the side. In this photo, the lighting makes her hair look brown, but it's actually a gingery color (which you'll be able to see better further down.) In the movie, though, her hair is more of an orange shade, close to strawberry blonde. Maybe her hair shade was hard to replicate? Her aqua eyes and wee freckles made it over okay, though.
You can see the hole on her back here. The cape is actually a separate piece, and both the figure and the cape have holes in them. It's so you can put the stand in her while wearing the cape, I would presume. What you can't tell from the photo is that the main cape is hinged right under that fringed edge, so you can flap it around a bit. Kind of fun!
And here's her cap, which slides on pretty easily. It's snug, but not too snug.
Her hands are detachable, so you can choose to have her bare-handed or wearing mittens. I like that you have options on how to dress her; you can either pretend she's out looking for Elsa, or is wandering around inside the palace.
While I'm showing you all of these fun accessories, I'm also trying to figure out how I'm supposed to assemble this stand. ARGH.
Here's another image of Anna, this time with the cape pulled out a bit.
I pulled off her head to test how well you can disassemble her and, I...did not notice this before. The neck joint has the company logo on it. A way to reassure the customer that they're buying authentic merchandise, perhaps?
Okay, so I think I've got it! Is this how you do it? Maybe not, this looks dumb.
I think this is right. I really don't like this stand, though. It is so difficult to get this stand plugged into Anna and to get everything to balance nicely. You have to jiggle the cape around if you want to put Anna into the stand while wearing her signature cape. I think that the reason that she's not paired with a normal stand is because Elsa can stand up on her own. So if you want to join the figures together with the special arm pieces, Anna would need to be standing on the ground as well. And given that Nendoroid figures are normally a platform, that wouldn't work. Hence this wonky stand.
My one possibly unreasonable gripe is that the blonde streak in Anna's hair is depicted as golden blonde here, when it should really be a platinum blonde streak. But given how GSC colored Elsa's hair, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
The rosemaling designs on her clothes are very detailed and accurate to the movie design, which really pleases me.
Oh, Anna. I love your little quirky face with the raised eyebrows and freckled cheeks. I just wanna hug her. Anna has the standard range of motion as other Nendoroids, and is just as sturdy. Sometimes I worry about breaking my Figuarts, but Nendoroids are very solid and well-made.
Last but not least is Olaf, who is apparently in the middle of singing "In Summer," since he's got his cane and boater hat. He also comes with a stand, which is in the jumble of plastic wrap behind me somewhere.
So okay, the accessories confuse me. Elsa got two faces, the snowflake hand piece, Olaf, and the big base. Anna gets one face, an extra set of arms and hands, a stand, and Olaf, plus the special arm pieces. So I'm presuming by the inclusion of the arms with Anna that they're trying to entice purchasers of Elsa to get her as well. But what's with two Olafs? That would only make sense if you're buying them separately. It would make sense to include one of the trolls with Anna (Sven would be cool, but he would be too big), or maybe another accessory like a lantern or something.
Overall, I feel that if you like Frozen, and you like figure collecting, that this would be great to add to your collection. It's on the expensive side, but it's also way better quality than a lot of the mini-figure toys I've seen at Target or Wal-Mart. And if you got Elsa, wouldn't it be kind to reunite her with her beloved sister?
Miss Scarlett suggests: Frozen fans, and those who collect figures, should take a look at Anna with an eye towards adding her to a collection.
