Today we have Armory figs, from episode 36. These cute chonks commemorate this moment:

We've seen this armory scene before in fig form - quite a long time ago here and much more recently, in a building block version.

I remember watching this scene in shock - I had no idea what was coming. What a gut-wrenching, gorgeous scene. I love every bit of it.

These figs arrived safe and sound in their protective polystyrene box. I have to say I've had (crossing fingers, knock on wood) very good luck with this packing so far. Most figs I've gotten have arrived perfectly intact.

The figs came with the platform base and the figs themselves.

The paper cover peeled off from what turned out to be a sticker. I had thought it was going to be a magnet or something, so I was a bit surprised. The sticker ended up VERY securely sticking to the metal disk - I tried pulling it off to better reposition the top part, but no luck. It was on to stay for good.

As you can see, the metal disk makes it spin. The resin disk isn't perfectly round - it's a little more handmade than precision made, and I didn't stick the sticker on in the most optimal position, so it doesn't spin quite as easily or freely as it might. Which is fine! I'm not going to be playing with it, it's just in my display case.

Here they are! These two little cuties are just finished performing the ritual, and Zhou Zishu has just opened his eyes to see that something very strange has happened to his zhiji's hair...

This is a pretty good angle to see Lao Wen's face - these figs are so tiny and they are so close to each other that it's difficult to actually get their faces in the picture.

We see A-Xu's hair bun here, minus the hairpin of course. I must say I really hoped they managed to pull it out of the door when they left the armory, assuming the avalanche didn't shatter it into a hundred pieces.

This is a nice shot of Lao Wen's guan - very stylized as you can see.

I like how they included the Yin Yang book under their hands.

A-Xu's little shocked face is just too cute. Sorry A-Xu, I know this is a heartbreaking moment for you!

All that white hair. I think everyone will agree with me that no other show has managed to have a white wig quite as beautiful as post-ritual Wen Kexing. They did a gorgeous job of layering a slightly darker grey at the roots and pale grey/white in the rest of it, to give it the most natural looking effect. All the stark white wigs I've been seeing (yes, particularly as I've been watching Blood of Youth) tend to look pretty fake.

You can see the grey disk the figs are on isn't quite perfectly circular. It's not as off-balance as it looks here, some of this is the angle and the shadows, but it's definitely different from the perfect circle of the base.

And we're back around to the front again. These are really tiny figures - I think the fig maker decided to make them a bit smaller so that when you add the podium the entire thing isn't too big.

Here's a comparison between a normal sized fig - our poor A-Xu after he's been rescued from the Tianchuang prison (have I posted about this one? I'll have to check). As you can see, even the combined podium + figs is quite a bit smaller height wise from a regular fig.

Here's the closest I could get my camera to Lao Wen's face - not much of a close-up, but it's the best I could do! You can see his rosy little cheeks. You can also see Gong Jun's beauty mark there right under his eye.

Sheesh it was hard to get a close up of A-Xu's little face. I think the shot we got earlier as I rotated the fig around was better than this one. You can barely see one of Zhang Zhehan's beauty marks - the other one is definitely there, just blurred out due to my phone's inability to focus in.

There's no text on the Yin Yang Book, but it does have some nice fold lines to show where it would fold back up.

Ah, here's the best angle to show the almost-a-perfect-circle-but-not-quite of the top disk.

No fig card or box art for this one, which is too bad, it would have been awfully cute!

Material: Resin

Fig Count: (+2) 523

Scene Count: (+1) 37

Rating: It's ok guys, it's all going to be alright!!!

[link to the Master Post Index]

*I have been enjoying the Tales of Dark River donghua quite a bit. After I post this, I'm going to watch the Tuesday night drop of episode 26, tantalizingly tension-titled Trouble Brewing. Bring it on!

**I mean, you can totally understand why I got distracted from my blog posts:

I like this pic a lot, I've definitely seen this sword formation in the donghua many times!

The fig maker spent a lot of care and time on this set. These are not easy figs to make - there's a ton of detail on the costumes, and the pose is incredibly dynamic. The fans in China seemed really happy with how these turned out, and once these arrived on my doorstep, I could see why!

I'm really happy these figs arrived unscathed - there's so much going on with these I was worried something might get snapped off.

The only two assembly pieces were Baiyi and Lao Wen's fan, which were fairly easy to tuck into their respective hands.

Alright, time to get into the fig pictures! Here's the full poster again for reference purposes:

Dynamic indeed - just their hair alone!

These figs are a bit larger than the usual - a typical fig is about 8 cm. To the top of Lao Wen's hair bun is 12 cm, and then add on even more for Baiyi.

These figs actually stand up great. I was really worried about having them standing by themselves, just given the delicacy of the flowing hair, but the wide stance helps support them. The flowing robes do too, so even if they toppled back a bit the robe edges would catch them.

This is not my favorite hairstyle of Lao Wen's - I like his wispies around his face! But I will say I did appreciate he had a few different hairstyles throughout the show.

This is my favorite costume of Lao Wen's though!

Look at those robes and hair flying. Amazing.

I really appreciate how much detail the fig maker put into Lao Wen's red robe, with all the golden embroidery work even on the back. So nice.

The red and blue contrast is just gorgeous. The costumes for this show were just brilliant all the way around.

The detailing work on A-Xu's blue costume is rendered very well here too.

The fig maker did a beautiful job on A-Xu's hair and face here. Really nice.

Here's a pic of how they interlock a bit. I could have pushed them a little bit closer together, there's still a little bit of room in there before the flow of their costumes stop them. It actually helps make them more stable when they're interlocked together.

Here's all the details on the underside. They're all completely modeled out, with their black pants tucked into their black boots. I like the extra effort of the white underlayer for Lao Wen's robes, especially given that you can't really see it when the fig is standing.

The top front view of our two fighters. You can see A-Xu's sword mudra really well from this angle, and Lao Wen's blade hand as well.

And the same view, from the back. I really like A-Xu's married bun with hairpin style!

We also have a nice box card with the art here. I have the figs displayed just like this on my shelf, with the poster art behind them. They look wonderful!

Material: Resin

Fig Count: 492

Scene Count: 31

Rating: A dashing (and deadly) duo

We have a playful Gong Jun here making Zhehan laugh during the rehearsal for the poison sucking scene:

I laughed when I first saw this set! The exaggerated facial features are so silly and fun.

The seller originally designed the figs and planned to sell it with the rock they're sitting on:

However, when it came down to it in production, the seller cancelled the rock due to cost and told all the buyers to just make it ourselves out of ultra light clay. This plan didn't sound great to me, just given my lack of time and ability, but you get what you get.

Sure enough, these two figs arrived with no rock at all.

These arrived...and sat. For a long time! I've had these hanging out in my tray of "needs serious help" figs for, well, quite some time. This weekend, though, I decided it was time to start tackling that tray, and this seemed like the easiest one to start with. How difficult could a rock be? Famous last words, I know.

I downloaded a coupon for one of my local craft stores and headed out. Michaels had quite the array of Sculpey and Fimo clay packets. I ended up buying "grey granite" Sculpey clay, since I liked the idea of not having to paint the rock.

I probably spent 20-30 minutes putting a rock together - I made it too small at first, and then realized pretty quickly that not only did I need to make it bigger, but I needed a higher area in the back for Gong Jun to rest his hand on. I started gently arranging the figs on the rock as I worked, so that I'd have indents in the clay to go off on as I modeled.

Here's the finished rock. You can see the indents there for A-Xu's robe to slot into.

Gosh, I was happy with it when I finished it, but in the harsh light of my camera I have to admit it doesn't look as good as I thought it did.

Here's the top view. Looks a little better there, right?

I baked the rock for about 40 minutes. I'm not entirely sure if that was enough, but it seemed to be pretty well cooked.

Happily, all the little marks the figs made when I pressed them into the clay made them very easy to assemble on the rock. A little bit of glue, and they sat pretty solidly.

Not looking too bad, actually!

Oh no, I take it all back. I worked so hard at getting Gong Jun's hand to rest right on the rock...what happened??? I must have glued him a little bit too far up on the rock. Ugh.

UGH. It really is not resting on the rock! The crazy thing is, when I look at it just in my hand, it really looks like it's resting right on top.

I'd say it shrank during baking, but it didn't. I think this is just some poor eyesight. Well, you can see how I did design it to be a perfect resting place.

All I can see is the hand not touching the rock, but I will say the modeling the fig maker did on their hair is really nice. This whole set is really quite cute, if a little ridiculous! Which I'm enjoying, of course.

Here's a close up of the drugman bite.

This is a very small set - all the figs I have in this style run fairly small. You can see the size compared to a "regular" fig in most common style.

This clay actually has the faintest sparkle to it, just like actual granite. It's really hard to photograph it - I brought it out in the sunlight to try to capture it, but all you can see is some light spots that look like dust. It's actually quite subtle and pretty though.

I took some bottoms-up pics before I glued them to the rock. You can see their boots and pants quite well from this angle.

With how difficult a rock was to make, I can't even imagine modeling these. It's all computer driven I imagine, but still.

...not sure why I cut off the bottom of this pic when photographing! My goodness.

Well, at least from one angle I'm glad to see the hand looks firmly on the rock!

The fig maker included box card art and an even more exaggerated rendition of the art on a pin? Mirror? I can't recall now, it's been so long. You'll notice the fig maker even included the little kissy lips that were on the video as well.

Well, I get a good chuckle out of this fig set - Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan had so much fun on set, and it's nice to see how lighthearted and happy this is!

Material: Resin

Fig Count: (+2) 531

Scene Count: 38

Rating: Mwah! 💋

The artist works in ultralight clay, which has been a new medium to me, and so far I've been impressed. It is very light (as the name suggests!) and appears to be extremely flexible. I was initially very worried about her figures breaking in transport, as they all have very delicate thin little details, but everything seems surprisingly sturdy. It bends, but doesn't deform, and doesn't seem to break with careful treatment. I do baby my figs, but shipping / customs is always a wild card.

For something like this, I would normally absolutely air column wrap it to protect it from crushing damage. I don't worry about the fig breaking parts off - I worry about it getting squished! If this fig got crushed it would certainly destroy it, given all the thin, flat loops of clay making up most of this figure.

But, I didn't have to, because the artist packed it in a rigid styrofoam cooler box. This is of course deadly on the shipping fees, especially since my warehouse flags the wooden base as air freight only. But, the only thing worse than paying volumetric air freight charges is getting a crushed figure, so what can you do?

I too am deeply disappointed by my lack of quality unboxing photos. Why did I not remove this top layer of bubble wrap? NOBODY KNOWS.

This is an extremely tall figure, by far my largest figure by a wide margin. The full size, including base, is 27 cm, of which 2cm is the base. This makes the figure itself about 10 inches high for us Americans.

The fan is not clay but paper, which was a nice surprise. I would have been fine either way, but I like the paper. I'm also very appreciative that the artist included it in this rigid plastic box so keep it from getting squished inside the protective cooler. Box. Protective box.

Here he is without the fan. He's gorgeous! You can really see the detail on his belt and his long, elegant fingers.

In fact, here's a closeup of those hands and the beautiful detail on the belt. His fingers may look even a bit longer than you might expect, but that's because they need to hold the fan. You can even see the slight indent for the fingernails. This artist is just amazing. She says she puts her whole heart into crafting these figures, and you can tell.

Holding the fan as so. If you don't think I wasn't a little stressed out carefully wedging the fan in between those beautiful fingers, you have somehow (incredibly) missed all the other cases of my fig related anxiety on this blog. I'm not even a high stress person! Normally.

Alright, let's spin this beauty around, shall we?

My camera decided to focus on many things, but Wen Kexing's perfect face was not always one of them. So we'll get some closeups. But first, let's do our bottoms-up and top-down pics:

Please do note the beauty mark on the middle finger of his right hand!

For size comparison, here's Wen Kexing with his OG official fig counterpart:

You can definitely see what I mean by how big this fig is! Maybe I should call it a statue instead of a fig.

Alright, time for our close ups.

Just beautiful. I'll need to commission a matching A-Xu in the Taolin forest costume so I can have them heading off to Siji Manor.

This figure was an incredible price - less than $50 USD. An absolute bargain. I can't even imagine the time that went into this. This was less expensive than other individual figures or pairs of this size, so perhaps I just got lucky with the artist clearing space.

I had really wanted semi-realistic figures like this when Word of Honor was released and I watched it for the first time, so getting this now makes me really happy. The artist also had a snowy mountain set that I picked up around the same time, which should be arriving here relatively shortly. Please look forward to it! I can't wait myself.

Material: Ultra-light clay

Fig Count: 386

Scene Count: 26

Rating: Pure artistry

These two were sold as a set, ready made. I was very excited to get them, since I didn't have a Zhou Zishu in this size and style yet.

I will tell you though, I messed up with this set. These were shipped in a very large box, so I figured I'd have them wrapped up in air column wrap to given them extra protection.

I did NOT think this decision through. It did not occur to me that the force of the air columns would press down too harshly on the figures. So, a couple things happened.

First, Wen Kexing's beautiful head (and please do take a minute to admire this gorgeous paint job) got broken - you can see how under his jaw there is a big crack. As I've said with these ultralight clay figures before, they're actually pretty flexible and tough - they just can't take crushing damage very well. In this case, though, it was an easy fix - I just pulled open the crack a little bit more (yes, that's as unpleasant as it sounds), ran a thin line of glue, and pressed it back shut until the glue bonded. Good as new!

The other issue, however, was that the force of the air columns squeezing up against the figures pressed all the beautiful drapery against itself. As you saw in the Taolin Wen Kexing, the artist very carefully molds all these wonderful curved folds and drapes everything against the figure in layers and layers of clay. She did on this set too, before some of those curves all got compressed together for a month, in the heat of early summer shipping. So, those folds arrived all flat and stuck to themselves. I tried running the rounded curved handle of a powder brush under the folds to loosen them up, which actually did separate them from each other nicely. But the sheets of ultralight clay are so thin, that I was afraid of ripping them if I was more aggressive. What I need to do is run the clothing under warm water and see if I can make the sheets a bit more pliable to re-bend back into place, but I have to work up the intestinal fortitude to do that first. Maybe later this fall.

Alright! I'll do the normal photographic circle around the two of them, and then do a bunch of closeups of each of them so you can see all the beautiful detail.

Beautiful! Even a bit squished, they're still incredibly lovely. The camera had a hard time focusing on both of them at the same time, so here's some detailed photos, starting with A-Xu:

Just amazing. The way she does the lips on these figures alone is incredible. Not to mention how we get this beautiful modeling on the neck, so when the light hits it we get the Adam's apple and the shadows of the muscles.

If this was me, I'd still be paralyzed in the initial stages of picking out the right colors...not anywhere vaguely close to starting in on the first drapery fold of the first figure.

Alright, on to Lao Wen:

Ridiculous. If I was this talented, I'd literally never shut up about it. I'd be insufferable. Luckily for everyone, that's in no way a problem.

The shine on the lips. I can't get over it, it looks so perfect.

It's easy for me to forget when I'm staring at Wen Kexing's immaculate face, but I can't forget he's holding A-Xu's drinking gourd for him!

Here's a picture of all three statues that I have so far. If you missed my post about Taolin Wen Kexing, it's here.

I'm out of picture slots, or I'd just keep posting pictures of these two, I love them.

Are there more posts coming about figures I've bought from this artist? Absolutely! I love her work. There's a couple Crown Prince figs, among others, that I'm really excited about (yes, I have been obsessed with watching Legend of Anle)!

Material: Ultra-light clay

Fig Count: 443

Scene Count: 30

Rating: Forever beautiful

So what's in store for the next year for Four Seasons Figthusiast? Well, I need to post as much as I can because my backlog of figs (and dioramas) continues to rise! I also have a lot more doll posts coming due to an influx of new doll outfits. Speaking of which, I'm about to head out on vacation in the next few days. I can't take figs due to fragility concerns, but ... I can take dolls. So, stay tuned for the international adventures of Junbaobao and Hanbao!

I'm also scheduled to start taking a formal Chinese class starting in the new year. It's mostly geared towards conversational Chinese, which is fine since I really want to be able to understand the interviews and various variety show appearances. I do also hope it will help me with interpreting some of these fig names. I'm historically really bad at languages (I dropped out of French 101 like 3 times in college), but I've really enjoyed what little I've managed to learn of Chinese so far in my basic combo of Duolingo/Hello Chinese. I'll probably throw a few update posts on how that's going next year as well.

I also have been meaning to post my Word of Honor costume pictures - that'll happen sooner rather than later! The costumes were my gateway into merch madness, and they're incredible. I can't wait to share them!

This fandom continues to be, despite everything, a deep source of joy and happiness for me. Sometimes it feels like the world is short on both, so I love and appreciate Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan for the gifts they have given us: this wonderful show and their own bright selves. I love and appreciate all the fan makers in China, who have poured their own love and care into these figs and dolls and merch of all kinds. This fandom makes me happy, and has helped me get through some tough times in the last few years. I also love and appreciate my readers - thank you for taking the time out of your day to read these posts. My hope is that this blog can be a small spot of joy in the day to you as well.

The inspiration for these figs is of course the photoshoot with Zhehan in his Fendi outfit:

The beautiful rose. Zhehan posted all the shots from the photoshoot on his Weibo account:

And then later deleted it, because some of his fans were fussing about Gong Jun being in his picture, but other fans saved it! The translation (MTL) says,

Goodnight Hengdian It's him, the boy wearing the flower

Of course, in this photoshoot, Gong Jun is not wearing a matching Fendi outfit, he's wearing this black outfit.

However, we do have a picture of him wearing the same type of Fendi outfit, which is what the fig maker used to model his fig:

In order to celebrate the anniversary, lets also have a video from the fanmeet:

They look so happy - I love their smiles.

I got lucky with these figs sailing through their voyage from China to the US - you'll see later how delicate Zhehan's rose is.

Since the boys are wearing white, I decided to take pictures on a tan background for the best contrast.

So cute. This is a nice shot of the similarities and differences in their Fendi outfits. I like that they're not wearing the exact same outfit, but the same style.

You can see here how delicate Zhehan's rose stem here! I was so glad this arrived intact. I didn't even bother trying to see if these two would stand on their own - as soon as I saw that rose I immediately glued Zhehan to the base. No falling down and damaging the rose!

The fig maker did a nice subtle job modeling the different head shapes of the two of them - we get Zhehan's more rounded head and the slight slope of Junjun's. You can see it a little more clearly in this photo of them:

Gong Jun's head is actually not quite this sloped, his hair cut and styling is exaggerating it here, but they definitely have different physiognomy. As two different people would! Interestingly enough, this head shaping is not actually uncommon to see in figs of the two of them together. I don't think I've mentioned it in my posts before, but you'll certainly see this head modeling on Junjun fairly frequently.

Of course, Zhehan's often longer hair tends towards all kinds of different (and fun) fig stylings!

Yeesh that flower stem. Still a miracle it made it through.

Their heads look great! The fig maker really brought out the long shaggy look of Zhehan's hair. I wish we had gotten his little tiny ponytail, only because his ponytails are a favorite of mine, but honestly his ponytail is really only visible for a few seconds in the videos from the fanmeet.

Junjun's pose here is so cute!

I really love their brown and amber eyes, they look beautiful and warm.

Well, you know I was so nervous about Zhehan's delicate rose (keep in mind, I photographed this set right after I accidentally snapped off Gong Jun's feather quill from yesterday's Breaking Dawn fig), that I immediately rushed to glue them to their stands. I completely forgot to take my regular bottoms-up pic before the glue. So, you're unfortunately getting the pics through the prism of China's finest acrylic rounds.

Gosh. Better late and poor quality than never (no one ever said)!

The quality on these figs is stellar - sharp details on the clothing, the beautiful rose, really nice posing, and well rendered faces.

So much care taken, even on the parts of their hair!

So nice to get box cards! We have Zhehan and Gong Jun's name on each of their cards, respectively, and the name of the figs, Summer Together.

Material: Resin and a rose

Fig Count: (+2) 527

Scene Count: 38

Rating: Happy 4th Anniversary!

You'll recall this striking scene:

Here we have Zhou Zishu before he was A-Xu, painting his last fallen brother out of his generation's picture.

This scene is so visually stunning. We have the immaculate profile of the jianghu's most jaded civil servant, dressed in a gorgeously rich, weighty imperial uniform, painting what is quite literally one step away from the last nail for his coffin.

The almost tangible aura of heartsick despair in this scene as he drops his brush is so well done.

I missed this fig entirely. It wasn't even that my hand speed was too slow to snatch it up on release day - I had no idea this figure even existed. I saw it one day when browsing Xianyu and was like, what the what is going on here. The fig maker apparently released this and another one, Flying Aspara Wen, at the same time:

PRETTY cute, don't you think (she says, not bitterly at all)? I have not managed to track this one down yet, but I'm gonna, mark my words.

Right. Anyway, I did manage to find this Painting Plum Blossoms one on Xianyu, and I was really happy about it.

This little man is letting the weight of the world drag him down - his boots were a bit uneven and made him tilt quite a bit to the back.

The brush fit beautifully in his hand - I literally just slid it between his fingers. I didn't even have to glue it or anything, and it didn't move around at all as I moved the fig around to take pics. I was quite surprised.

You can see he's leaning quite a bit to the back. This is a nice angle to see some of the detailing on his Tianchuang uniform, which really is a gorgeous costume. It's actually my second favorite Zhou Zishu costume, after his pale lavender Four Seasons Manor one.

My goodness, what a backwards lean! It makes me laugh. Sorry Zhehan, your gorgeously regal perfect posture is not being well represented in resin here!

I love the detailing on the back of his leather guan here, as well as the strings of his hair tie. I know it looks in the picture like the hair tie is part of his head, but it's actually a totally separate piece. It can move a little back and forth.

I like that the fig maker did some pleating on the back of the outfit. It's a very nice touch. I also like how they did his painting arm, with the wider blue sleeves, the detailing on his bracer, and the modeling on the hand. Look at that delicate blushing on the fingers! Proportions can easily get skewed on the limbs for these figs, but this works beautifully.

Oops, this isn't quite the full side view, I over-rotated him a bit. Anyway, this is a great view of that delicately modeled hand.

Even the brush is well done. This is a good angle to see all the pleating on the front of his uniform and the detail on his belt. I'm really happy with this fig.

I love the detail on the bracers, it looks so good. The guan is rendered well too.

The shadows are a little too thick here, but you can barely see he has blue pants tucked into his black boots. This is a great angle to see all the pleating around the entire outfit.

You'll notice the brush is still being held in his hand! It slid back a bit, but it's still hanging in there.

Similarly, the brush slid out a bit to park against the paper, but it didn't fall right out when I turned him over. You can see a little more (blurry though) of the texture in his hair ties.

The modeling is quite nice on the guan here. I'll also just take a moment to say how grateful I am that the paintbrush was so easy and painless to slide into his hand. I know I always call back to my travails with Han Ye with Sword, but that fig is always in my mind when I see a small piece that needs assembly!

More of the lacing on the guan. So nice! You can see a little bit of the groove in his hair on the bottom right of his head there, where the hair tie piece rests in.

I'm always happy when I get a box card, especially when I have to buy a fig on the secondary market. It got a little bent in shipping but otherwise is in great shape.

Material: Resin and a whole lot of despair

Fig Count: (+1) 524

Scene Count: 38

Rating: Only 35.5 more episodes to go until happiness!