Overview
Bootleg model kits and even kits that are based on copied technology can be controversial. Without getting too into it, there are arguments for and against the practice specifically for toys like this and whole flame wars have raged across this community and adjacent communities like Transformer and the Gunpla community about whether or not bootlegs are valid. That is all that we will say in this guide on the matter.
That said, we do try to judge an imitator by its own merits; the likes of Nuke Matrix is proof that, at least in girlpla, there’s no rule that says an imitation cannot beat the original.
Made by an unknown company1, Pretty Armor has the dubious distinction of A) being a direct rip-off of Kotobukiya’s molds, having been made from leaked CAD files as opposed to whatever other similar competitors did, and B) ripping off the designs of modeler fortresshums for their own designs. With a grand total of 4 kits to their name between 2016 and 2019 before disappearing into the ether, Pretty Armor has definitely had the least staying power among Kotobukiya’s imitators.
I hear you thinking that these aren’t good omens for a quality kit, but surely there’s room to surprise you, right? After all, we’ve just said an imitation can beat the original, right?
If you want to play at being the girlpla equivalent of everyone’s favorite high jump athlete, you should probably come equipped with an imitation that can actually beat the original.
Pretty Armor, suffice to say, is no Nuke Matrix.
Construction and Engineering
We had the dubious honor of getting to build these from scratch. The sole saving grace of these kits is that Kotobukiya unwillingly lent its competence in engineering to Pretty Armor, so assuming you get past everything else, these kits are surprisingly solid.
Sadly, you may not get past everything else.
The plastic is bottom barrel cheap-feeling; not the absolute worst, but that is damning with faint praise. The plastic’s absolutely horrible quality also indirectly affects the tolerances and thus the engineering; some parts will be loose, some will be too tight, and this may even be entirely inconsistent across kits. There have even been reports (thankfully for us, not ones we can corroborate) of knee joints shattering.
You may even find that the plastic hasn’t fully molded into parts, which is a first for us. We have saved kits for finishing later and we have rage-quit when a kit has proven itself more trouble than it was worth, but we have never found ourselves in a situation where we found a part to have simply half-formed, and thus having made it physically impossible for us to finish a model kit.
Aesthetics
What good these kits have in looks – again, largely a result of Kotobukiya’s work – is squandered by their incredibly cheap quality. They have a bit of charm in that way all their own, and they do have quality about equivalent to the earliest Frame Arms Girls or Megami Device kits if you squint and tilt your head sideways. And don’t touch them. Or try to build them.
Ease of Acquisition
We found ours in the darkest, dankest corners of Mandarake. With their unknown producer having long since gone out of business, and most of the kits having been consigned to the abyss or having been built, you’re better off looking for an actual Frame Arms Girl kit now. Such is their rarity we can’t even give you a price estimate. Theoretically, you might – might – be able to find some lurking about on Taobao. Last we looked, there were some kits lurking about in the depths of Rakuma, JDirect and Mercari. Caveat emptor.
Personal Verdict
Again, we stress that just copying someone else isn’t enough to be condemned, but you have to either maintain the same standard or be better to be worth buying over the original. Nuke Matrix chose to be better, ATK Girl chose to mostly maintain the same standard, and both stand alongside their Japanese peers with a fair level of deserved pride. Pretty Armor is what happens when you pick none of those options and try to coast on laurels you haven’t earned; like their knee joints, their dreams of big girlpla shatter into a million pieces.
Now, to give Pretty Armor some credit, there was room for having bought these before the great girlpla boom of the mid-2020s. After all, back in those days, Kotobukiya was the only real game in town, so bootlegs and the like might’ve been what you needed as cheap alternatives that weren’t insanely difficult to get your hands on. Maybe, you just didn’t even know these were bootlegs; after all, this guide didn’t even exist back then.
Back then, you only really had the iffy Figure-rise Standards and some of the HGBF kits as alternatives (with memories of the demon that is Loheng-Rinko pretty fresh in the minds of those in the hobby), so Kotobukiya’s lines were the first, best and pricey option. Someone wanting to get into the hobby might’ve wanted these, and they were definitely fun for the people who bought them. And we did have a perverse sense of enjoyment building them.
However, living as we do post-girlpla boom, there are just better options for someone wanting to cheaply get into the hobby that are higher quality, way cheaper (for context, we got ours for roughly £20; Sisters kits are available for closer to £10) and, more importantly, not complete ripoffs. We choose to catalog these kits for posterity and because we believe that, ultimately, every kit has its value. It’s just that this toyline’s value is not in being good models.
Personal Recommendations:
Just get the Frame Arms Girls equivalents. They’ll be more costly, but you can at least get them.
Official Site: As we don’t even know who truly made these kits, we got nothing to give you here. If, indeed, as the community suspects, it was Momoling’s work, we’d still have nothing to show.
- It is suspected that Momoling (Tale of Shinto) was the company that produced Pretty Armor based on similar plastic quality and techniques. However, we are unable to independently verify this, so we will leave it at speculation. Some Amazon listings list them as made by i8 Toys, but i8 appears to be a legitimate producer of action figures and dolls with no dealings with model kits, so it is not likely to be them. ↩︎
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