ClariS

Original MSRP: 1,429

Don’t know who ClariS is (or why they have two capitalized letters in their name)? They are a high school J-pop duo that consists of two girls, Clara and Alice. If you don’t recognize the name, you may recognize their work: ClariS is responsible for “Irony,“ the opening theme to “OreImo;” “Connect,“ the opening for “Madoka Magica;” and most recently, they’ve released “Naisho no Hanashi,” the ED for “Nisemonogatari.”

Yeah, they’re kind of everywhere.

Here’s the fun bit: these two girls want to preserve their anonymity, so they go by the pseudonyms Clara and Alice, and don’t do live performances. They are most commonly known from the way artists depict them; these petit Nendoroids are based off their “Irony” artwork.

Claris Petit Nenderoid are available at HobbyLink Japan!

claris irony

So let’s get started! They come in a small Nendoroid box. Everything is fairly standard here.

claris

And here they are in their plastic casing, with very few accessories, as you can see. They do have two stands; the pretty one is propped up in front of the box so you can see it. The other stands are small, circular, clear and plastic.

clari

claris

And here they are out of the box. They’re adorable! Alice is the one in the blue hat; Clara is the one in pink.

claris nendoroid

Lets look at Clara first. She has her crescent moon emblem on her wrist, and you can see her pony tail pretty well here.

claris

claris

claris

And now for Alice!

claris

claris nendoroid petit

You can see that the stand attaches directly into their hair, eliminating the obnoxious struggle to make the peg go under the hair and then make her stand with her head up. That’s nice that it’s so easy, but it also means there is a hole in the back of the girls’ hair.

claris

And here’s Clara’s sun emblem on her wrist.

claris

As you might imagine from the seam on the side of her hair, they come apart the same way most Nendoroids do. That’s not much of a problem, save for Clara; she falls apart from a stiff breeze. Her skirt/bottom half are the worst offender.

Here they are together again, this time showing their entire range of motion. That’s right, this is it. There are no extra arms, faces, legs, anything. Just a 90 degree lift in one of Alice’s arms and not even that in her other arm, or one of Clara’s arms.

claris

And here they are on the stand.

claris

There was only one thing really wrong with the figures so far as I could find. Clara has a scratch on her arm that’s pretty easy to see when looking at her. Otherwise, the paint job and sculpt are just fine.

claris nendoroid

The girls have one other feature that I’m not able to show you, so I’ll just use a picture off Mikatan’s Blog (for those of you who don’t know, it’s where Good Smile gives us a first glimpse of their upcoming products). The girls can be posed to sit on their “Irony” CD, if you’d like to display them that way (I can’t; I don’t have the CD). The figure set comes with two little attachments to hold the back of the case up. They look super cute like this, don’t they?

claris

All in all, cute figures but with very little versatility. You won’t play with these much, but they’re good for the “OreImo” or J-Pop collector. These lovely ladies come courtesy of HobbyLink Japan, who rock your figure-loving faces off.

Photographs by Heather Amaral