Shan Shan Xu, jokingly: So, who's the most jealous between you and Lu Guang?
Cheng Xiaoshi, without hesitation: Lu Guang.
Shan Shan Xu, serious: Wait, really?
Cheng Xiaoshi: Yeah, just yesterday a woman was talking to me and Lu Guang stood right behind me during the whole conversation. He stared at her without blinking for 5 minutes straight. He freaked her and, frankly, me too out. Like, how can you stay this long without blinking?
Shan Shan Xu: What the fuck?
At long last, I'm posting about the final set in this amazing series! It's been a long time coming.
This is one set in a collaborative series of six among five fig makers that were designed for the Lunar New Year 2022. This project launched on February 22, 2022, and included 4 Wenzhou sets and 2 Junzhe sets:
If you ordered during the early bird period, you would get a piece of a magnet which formed part of a larger piece of art. If you got all 6 magnets, you could complete the whole art piece.
My first post in this series was back on October 6, 2022, with the Armory set. I received this final set in the warehouse right around December 2022, but I had some delays of my own sending it out from the warehouse, and then I've been holding off on posting it until I had enough time, since this is gonna be a long post.
This was the fig set I was most excited about all of them (and I was very excited about them!), because the Episode 6 lake raft scene is 1) epic, and 2) so active it seemed incredible we could get a fig of them in motion.
This was not an easy set for the fig maker to make, either. She was displeased (to say the least, her text messages berating the factory boss for changing the specs without asking her were hilarious) with the factory's initial run of the lake water, as they modified it significantly from the sample. She had it re-run, and then had the factory include the version she rejected since it had already been made. After seeing the two versions, I really appreciated her care and thoughtfulness as to detail, because she was right - her original IS way better.
You can see all the pieces here. There's a lot of them! The fig maker helpfully posted a step by step guide to putting it together. The lighter plastic lake base on top is the one the factory initially made - it's just a light clear water colored plastic. The one on the left side is a much, much heavier, thicker piece of solid resin (? I think it's resin?) that not only looks way better but is much more stable. The figs are there in their sealed foil bags, and the lake raft together with it's bottom logs are in pieces around them. I usually have the warehouse toss the glue (it's restricted) for mailing, but this appears to have accidentally slipped on through.
Here's the logs attached to the bottom. I tried museum putty first...and then museum wax...but neither was strong enough for the weight of the figs. I had to end up cleaning all of it out and just using my glue. Funny I didn't even think to use the glue that was sent - I just pulled out my trusty industrial strength glue. You can see where the thin rectangular slot at the bottom fits into the lake base. I just flipped it over and glued it in.
A better comparison of the lake bases. You can see even more clearly here how much better the top one is in every respect. I'd make a horrible pun that the bottom one should be called Badema Lake, but we're all better than that.
We're gonna forget that pale imitation lake ever existed. Here we are with the real deal! You can see the peg up there on top for Lao Wen, and it's a bit hard to see, but there's an indent down at the base for our temporarily-still-Hobo-Xu.
By the way, I never knew this lake even had a name before this fig set, much less that it was called Bedema Lake. I feel like we're all better prepared for SHL quiz trivia now.
Here's Lao Wen with his balancing foot ready, and A-Xu with a very sturdy wide stance. No one told him when he was practicing martial arts that one day he'd be doing horse stance on a raft, fighting off weapons-grade flirtation.
Lao Wen would be delighted over this picture, since it looks like A-Xu is chasing him! I love the expressions on their faces - A-Xu looks wary, and Lao Wen looks absolutely, delightfully incorrigible.
Here we go with A-Xu getting fitted out for his pose...
...and Lao Wen landing as light as feather on the raft end!
Here's the best angle to see how both of them attach to the base.
Alright, we're going to go for a spin around the lake raft. This was a bit of a hard set to photograph, with the phone focusing on some areas and leaving others blurry, but please don't mind the amateur work. Here we go!
Looks like I'm going to use up all 30 of the allowable pictures per post for this one! Let me get one last angle...
And last but not least, the box cards and box:
Absolutely delightful, isn't it? I like the dog on the raft, and the cat just peeping out of the bushes. Too cute.
Comparable to: Go and Domain Your Game (cdrama); Unique Lady (cdrama); Love 020 (cdrama)
Probably top tier of storyline being so messed not making a lick of sense, especially in the beginning episodes. It takes a handful of episodes at least to episode eight where the storyline takes a bit of form, but nothing really still connects with lots of plot holes. What draws you in though is the phenomenal chemistry between the main leads, for me especially Liu Yichang is a huge highlight in this. The rest of the cast is amazing as well. I love the whole dynamic of all of them together.