One Piece needs no introduction. This is probably the only weekly Shounen Jump series that still hasn't lost its charm after 15 years of continuous publication and broadcasting. It was too bad that when the anime series first made it to North America, 4Kids got their hands on it and brutally butchered it and tarnished its reputation. Despite Funimation's effort in trying to salvage the series from dying before people witness its true glory, the ridiculous licensing fees requested by TOEI Japan significantly slowed down the progress of localization.
Regardless, One Piece is a name that is well recognized worldwide. And when a series is this popular, there is little reason for figure-making companies to skip over such golden opportunities of money grabbing goodness. Out of all the manufacturers that dedicate their efforts into creating One Piece figurines and other merchandises, Mega House is probably the best of the bunch.
Its infamous Portrait of Pirate (P.O.P.) Excellent Model series of One Piece scaled PVC figures are so hot nowadays that preordering them from online retailers like AmiAmi and Hobby Search has become the new mission impossible in the hobby world. Anyway, ranting too much about the hectic preordering campaign of P.O.P. isn't the goal of this post, so let's get back to topic.
Nami is no stranger to One Piece fans. She's the navigator of the Straw Hats Pirates and she loves money. She acts cunning and shrewd most of the time, but she does care deeply for her crew. Two years after the events at Sabaody Archipelagos, Nami reunites with everyone, and sets sail again for the New World.
The anime has yet to reach the "2 years later" arc, hence, it's kind of hard to evaluate whether or not the painting on her clothes are faithful to the original. Fortunately, this figure won't be released until late December, so there's plenty of time to make adjustments if required.
Nami's beautiful pale skin is "almost" completely exposed here (we'll get into the "almost" issue in a minute). In the previously released P.O.P. figures (not counting the horrendous swimsuit limited edition), Nami usually exposes her legs more than her upper body. Here, it's the reverse.
Her jeans are doing quite the fan service, revealing half of her nice round butt enough to stimulate healthy reactions from males. The crevices and folds, as well as the shadings on her jeans are very well done; they give the immediate impression that the jeans are very tight, probably too tight for her ripened body.
If you paid close attention to her bikini/bra, you could find junctions near the top strings, suggesting that the bra is probably removable. Mega House never seem to include such information in their descriptions, it's up to you to explore the prohibited regions.
Her face looks pretty much the same as the Strong Edition ones, nothing special. It appears that the sculptor decided to play safe and skip out on creating alternative expressions for Nami.
One disappointing point about this figure is that there is no accessories. Mega House might throw in an extra bra or something, but I can't see anything else being added based on her pose. To be fair, her improved Clima-Tact was only revealed recently, which is probably too late to include it with this figure.
As someone who collects P.O.P., I already placed my preorder. However, you can clearly see that I have a bias which heavily favors the Excellent Model series. If you're a casual collector and are not obsessed with One Piece, I don't recommend getting her. The lack of accessories just doesn't justify the price (which is around $75 now).
There is a Figuarts Zero version of Nami (New World Ver.), which is smaller, looks pretty much the same as this one, but costs 1/3 the price. In case you don't want to shed out that much money for a girl wearing a bikini, this would be the figure to get:
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