I felt it would be a dubious achievement to go a full year without a new review, so let’s pick up where we left off with the next girl in the Seven Deadly Sins series: Lucifer, the image of Pride, by Orchid Seed.
(This post contains artistic nudity. Reader discretion is advised.)
Gallery
Review
Lucifer is the third demon girl from Hobby Japan’s Seven Deadly Sins franchise to make the jump to PVC. Amakuni and Orchid Seed have been taking turns releasing 7-Sins figures, starting with Orchid Seed’s Asmodeus, then Amakuni’s Leviathan, and now Orchid Seed again with Lucifer. As was the case with Amakuni’s Leviathan, this figure didn’t immediately command my attention, but the brief Orchid Seed ban over at AmiAmi shortly after Lucifer opened for preorders helped add some urgency to the buy or skip decision. Fortunately, the design has only grown on me over time, so I was eagerly anticipating this figure by the time of its release.
As with all the 7-Sins girls, Lucifer is a demon princess; the very embodiment of one of the cardinal sins. Lucifer’s vice of choice would be pride, which is reflected in her regal bearing and self-satisfied smirk. I get the impression that Lucifer is supposed to be the ringleader for the other girls, as she appears front and center in many of the promotional materials released thus far.
I find it rather amusing that Niθ chose white as the primary color of Lucifer’s outfit, given the longstanding association of the color white with themes like purity, innocence, light, and elemental good; any of which would seem to run in direct opposition to the traits that come to mind when trying to envision demonic royalty.
Lucifer is a very well-crafted figure. I don’t have very many Orchid Seed figures, but I have been consistently pleased with those I do have. There’s some nice detail on display and the paint and sculpt work hold up well under close inspection. I was somewhat disappointed that Lucifer is only 1/8 scale given that Orchid Seed rarely goes smaller than 1/7 scale, but I suspect that Hobby Japan dictated the sizing for the 7-Sins series and Lucifer is on par with 1/8 scale figures from most other manufacturers.
It’s hard not to compare Lucifer to Leviathan given their common heritage. Leviathan’s biggest failing was a difficult cast-off implementation. Lucifer fares far better in this area, which shouldn’t surprise given Orchid Seed’s expertise in the area of cast-offs. The cups of Lucifer’s corset come off to reveal a healthy pair of breasts. The cups cleverly feature a small glob of tacky material inside that helps keep them in place, while still being easily removable. Lucifer’s skirt is also removable by disconnecting the torso from the lower body where it connects hidden underneath the corset. This feature gave me a bit of a scare during unboxing as the skirt fell out as soon as I lifted Lucifer out of the box, which led me to believe that I might have broken something. Lucifer’s corset and panties don’t come off, which will probably disappoint some potential buyers, but I think this is where Orchid Seed’s experience helps them strike a balance by revealing enough skin to titillate observers while not overly compromising the clothed design.
Another mark against Leviathan was her Hobby Japan exclusivity, which Lucifer also manages to correct by becoming the first standard issue figure from the franchise. (Orchid Seed’s Satan figure also recently opened for preorder as a standard release.)
The display base design for the 7-Sins figures stills gives me mixed impressions. I appreciate the attempt to do more than your standard flat base with some logo work and achieve something unique, but I also feel that the design comes up a little too impractical. The full base adds a good 30-40% to the standing height of the figure, making it too tall to fit inside my normal display shelf spacing. The full-height base is optional in that you can detach the top and use that as a more traditional base, but the full design is quite heavy and that weight affects shipping, which is no small part of why Lucifer earned the dubious distinction of having the most expensive SAL Small Packet shipping bill I’ve ever seen for a figure.
All in all, this is a very nice figure that I’m quite happy to have in my collection. Orchid Seed fixed the biggest complaints I had about Leviathan and didn’t really introduce any new ones. If you’re still on the fence, check out the reviews at Reflective Boundary and Bakayaro. The latter is all in German, but everyone should be able to enjoy the pretty, pretty pictures.
Looking ahead, I don’t see myself collecting all of the Seven Deadly Sins girls. I already skipped Asmodeus and some of the yet-to-be-released designs don’t look particularly appealing. This bugs me slightly in that the 7-Sins figures are more of a themed set than most, but I feel it wouldn’t be prudent to pick up figures I don’t really love just so I can say that I have a complete set.
Figyura (フィギュラ) 
Good that you found the time to post your nice pictures along with a review.
Even though I haven’t bought her I think that Lucifer is one of the prettier Deadly Sins,
her armor is super detailed and she is an attractive demon girl overall .
It was to be expected that Orchid Seed does a better job in sculpting and castoffability.
Leviathan is nice and and so, but some things can’t be ignored.
I like Lucifer’s translucent flower petal like shirt a lot, the semi nude mode is also sexy ^^
I won’t complete the set and Im not sure about ordering a third one after Mammon, Beelzebub looks quite nice.
I have more reviews planned for the near future. I tried to simply the format a bit with this review by removing a few things I usually include like the highs/lows bullet list and technical data. The goal is to return to start publishing reviews again somewhat regularly. We’ll see how that pans out.
Although most of the comparisons favor Lucifer, I’m still quite happy with my Leviathan figure and I don’t see myself parting with her anytime soon. The cast-off features are something I’m unlikely to use outside of photographing a figure to do a review, so I’m more forgiving of that as a problem point than something like poor detailing where I can see that every time I look at the figure.
I also have Mammon on order, but I might sell her after doing a review if I don’t love the final figure. I agree that Beelzebub looks nice, but Belphegor never looked very interesting and I’m quite disappointed with how the final Satan prototype looks, so I’ll probably skip those two.
Oh man, I want to collect the 7 sins.. though they’re really expensive, need some budgeting. XD
Great photos and review! Love em photos! 😀
The majority of the 7-Sins figures have been Hobby Japan exclusives, which all but guaranteed that they would go up in price after release. Even Lucifer is selling above retail now at places like Mandarake and she was a standard release. I find it kind of amusing that Hobby Japan can drum up this kind of demand based on little more than Niθ’s character designs.
But yeah, I feel your pain. Lucifer wasn’t too bad, but Leviathan set me back $175 and getting Asmodeus at this point would be price-prohibitive. I’m not entirely sold on Mammon either, but I ordered her because I figured she’ll only go up in price and I don’t want to regret not ordering later on.
Glad you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
No problem! I love your photos and posts! 🙂
This version of Lucifer is white, like you would expect from the first angel of God, the angel of light, in Christian mythology. Lucifer would be gorgeous in real life if the fictional angel was real instead of just a Christian idea of a demon/angel. They have also released her in black. I REALLY cannot decide which color is better for the figure. They’re both so good, I almost want BOTH of them. But that would be overkill. What do you fine folks think? White or black? And how do I tell the real Japanese ones from the fake Chinese ones?
At the time I ordered, the black version was nowhere in sight, so there wasn’t really a choice. I would still go white if I were doing it over again, though. The white/blonde pairing is Lucifer’s canonical look in Niθ’s original character designs and the colors just complement each other a bit better, in my opinion. The black variant does have a certain charm as well; I particularly like the translucent red petals that make up the skirt.
The best way to avoid bootleg figures is to purchase from reputable vendors. Lucifer is long sold out at this point, so you should be looking at the secondary (used) market. I’ve had good experiences with Mandarake and AmiAmi’s preowned section. MyFigureCollection.net has a classifieds section where you can find other collectors selling their copies and that can be a good resource, too. I would avoid eBay, though. While there are legitimate vendors and private party listings, it’s where you’re most likely to run into bootlegs, particularly if the price is too good.