Plafia

DISCLAIMER: We have not built the older kits from this line. Our information is based on reviews written by other people.

Overview

It’s very rare that we get to talk about a line that has effectively been bifurcated by time and the development of better technologies, but here we go.  

As a result of the 2008 economic crisis, plastics company PM Office A was forced to change tracks from relying entirely on producing plastic parts for automobiles and other uses due to revenue changes.

In 2010, PM Office A would announce its creation of PLUM (Pretty Lovely Unique Mechanism) to start producing toy and hobby products, producing a variety of model kit accessories and model kits of their own. Among them would be Plafia, the general term for their girlpla.

Interestingly, we can actually draw a divide between PM Office A’s Plafia output. The first part of their output hails from the 2010-2011 period, covering four model kits based on two games:

• PangYa, a casual golf MMO hailing from South Korean developer Ntreev Soft, released in 2004. The premise revolves around, I shit you not, playing golf in a world where golf was used to defeat the Dark Lord, for which the game was called Pangya.  
  
  Initially released in North America as Albatross18, PangYa spawned a small franchise around itself, including its own spin-off series Super Swing Golf for the Wii, and PangYa spinoffs for the PlayStation Portable and mobile platforms. PangYa would eventually wind down, disappearing from the public in 2017, though persisting in Thailand until 2024, though fan servers exist to this day.
• ToHeart2, an eroge produced by Leaf (probably known to wider audiences for Utawarerumono, the White Album series and Tears to Tiara) in 2004 as a sequel to To Heart, and launching to massive success and basically its own franchise separate from the original To Heart.
  
  No, seriously, it ended up producing no less than six separate anime adaptations (one series released between 2005 and 2006 and five separate OVAs), four whole manga series, fifteen anthologies, six novels, three Internet radio shows and two drama CDs as well as a slew of spinoffs, the last of which, Dungeon Travelers 2, even got a world wide release for Windows in 2023, almost 20 years after the release of the original.

The second period of their output begins around 2024, with the Tohoku Zunko kits (covered in their own section here), as well as kits of Doala of the Chunichi Dragons and Chino from Is the Order a Rabbit?. PM Office A also has sci-fi scale model kits both original (5-inch Mechanism and Pla-Act) and of other properties (such as retro shooters Raiden and R-Type). These will not be covered in this guide.

Construction and Engineering

Given the fact that Plafia is effectively divided into two halves, this (and subsequent sections) will be divided into two.

The 2010-2011 kits are pretty typical of pre-2015 era girlpla, with pinned hinges more typical of action figures as well as heavy reliance on polycaps. The plastic is also not great quality, being fairly easy to stress and having bad tolerances. These kits were definitely made assuming the builder would need to be skilled enough to compensate for manufacturing shortcomings; reviews make unfavorable comparisons to Kotobukiya’s HoiHoi-san kits. These kits are also non-scale, again similar to the aforementioned HoiHoi-san kits.

The 2024 kits, on the other hand, are reasonably well-made and simple, with decent tolerances and fitting, with ease of building roughly comparable to that of 30 Minutes Label, and advances in building that reflect PM Office A having adopted techniques in toymaking in the intervening decade. These kits are closer to the 1:12 scale favored by that of Sisters or Megami Device.

Aesthetics

The early 2010s kits can roughly be compared to HoiHoi-san as super-deformed girls (and one guy) with big feet, big hands and big weapons. However, as mentioned prior, HoiHoi-san was by far the better set, with complaints of requiring heavy amounts of painting to match descriptions and no included decals for the Plafia kits.

The 2020s kits, on the other hand, are reasonably faithful replications of the characters they adapt, which makes them great for fans of the properties they are of, even moreso than the early 2010s kits (which, while faithful to the design aesthetic of PangYa, was not so much to the designs of ToHeart2), in large part due to the advances in toymaking tech since. 

Ease of Acquisition

Plum’s early output is sadly no longer available or being produced. If you do want to try these kits out for yourself, Mandarake, Mercari and Suruga-ya are your first ports of call, with prices varying depending on quality and seller.  

Plum’s later output is a bit easier to get your hands on, being regularly restocked; the Zunko kits start at ¥4840 (£23/$30) for Zundamon, ¥6050 (£28/$38) for Zunko herself, with Doala and Chino hovering around those values alongside the other Zunko kits.

Official Site: https://www.pmoa.co.jp/index.html (in Japanese)