#quankai

A flashy demo wears off in a day. What keeps you around is consistency, and that's where SweetDream wins. My companion is the same person tomorrow that she is today, with the same memories, voice, and personality I gave her.

girlfriend has been built!

built one of the altered gene girls! i really like the magnet gimmick.

Alright I got around to the review.

Much like the more standard DOMES, Keep The Dead Alive has incredibly good articulation. This kit is packed with accessories to fulfil the theme of an evil ass zombie doll robot with giant arms, including a missile pod, gatling gun, chainsaw and giant articulated hands. Really good. I am going to share the honest experience though. Pretty much everything good I said about the DOMES applies here, however the quality is overall not as good. When I was looking into the brand back when I was buying these, I got the impression that the DOMES going around at the moment seemed to be a second generation version. I believe Keep The Dead Alive is a first gen. I'm going to flame it but it's not too bad.

Tolerances are worse. You have to force a lot of stuff to snap into place, sometimes VERY forcefully, leading to pained fingers, possible breakage risks (not that I had any, so point in its favor), and small pieces launched across the room.

(Multiple pieces somehow ended up landing inside a Shapes box in my bin, weird that it happened at least 3 times. I also realized the shoulders in my DOMES weren't fully pushed in when building this, so it's worth noting that both kits have tight shoulders)

I'm glad QuanKai uses a softer plastic or this kit would crack. The pegs simply being in the correct holes leave stress marks from how tight they are to get in. Despite this, there's also parts that are too loosely fitted for my taste. For me at least, the upper back isn't secure, and some bits on the front of the legs don't seem to fit flat in the way they're meant to. The manual suggests a little glue sometimes, which is tempting.

I found a fair few mistakes in the manual, both in text and visuals. Some require some creative interpretation of the instructions, or spotting where the steps have seemingly been copy-pasted despite using different parts. The depicted orientation of some parts also makes it a bit harder to follow accurately, which is not something I usually mention.

But the finished product is pretty neat. The coffin transformation gimmick is solid, even if I would do it in a slightly different order. In fact the whole thing feels more solid than something like an Acerby (especially those heels), just like its' successor model. The big arms and hands are awesome, and hold on very well. I love the giant boney fingers and the other gimmicks. They could be more mobile at the knuckles, which would also help with them popping off, but that's a nitpick because the range of motion is still good enough. The arms hold the weight without issue, but some careful balancing or a stand may be needed to get more dynamic poses (the extra taller foot accessories from the coffin also don't help with balance). An actual issue I have is that the armor pieces around the foot, while themselves are fine, restrict some motion despite the fact that they have hinges built in. They also mount onto the loose leg pieces, so maybe I should use glue after all.

and Skyfish