Ayu (Yujin - Freshwater Fishes Series 1, second release)

[sbell]

This walk around is part of my series of the Yujin Freshwater Fish series. Part of this will be repeating this same introductory and concluding info because copy-and-paste is easy, and it keeps things consistent.  So feel free to only read this once (or never...) as well as the stuff at the end. My main motivation is that Yujin does not have many walk arounds on this site, which is a shame because they make some great models. It is also an attempt to flood (!) the site with some fishes, because there simply have not been enough lately.

One other thing--when I give the lengths of the living species, I will be using the TL from Fishbase.org for consistency. Some of them seemed high, but I'll assume Fishbase knows what they are doing. And the scales will be rounded and approximate!

EDIT--Or not. Fishbase has had some strange, unrepeatable numbers, so I will be using the length given on the figure's paper for consistency. Unless the FB one is more interesting. When there are more than one, I will use the higher values.

So now, the fish!

This figure is the Ayu, apparently also called the Sweetfish, Pleccoglossus altivelus, number 01 from the first series. This is a fish found in East Asia, in Japan, Korea and eastern China. They are seasonally anadromous, heading to sea upon hatching, wintering there, and then heading back up stream. Given the name 'sweetfish' it's probably not surprising that they are a food fish, with a sweet aroma to their meat. TL of the Ayu is 30cm.

This model is about 5.5cm long, making the figure roughly 1:5 (EDITED). It is in a straight-but-curving pose, as expected from a quick-swimming species. On the base, the rod goes in at a slight angle, giving a bit of rise to the fish (although it could just as easily be descending if it were turned). I have the figure on the tree-stump base.

The figure is a pretty lively one, with fairly bright eyes and distinct colours. Ayu have shown up from several Japanese makers including Kaiyodo and Colorata. Unlike some, this figure is a single piece model.

Pictures:







I refer to this one as the bowhunting tournament pose--a hole in it, tossed on its back...but it's easy to see the detail that Yujin puts into every side of the models (and can often see the numbers in the photos).


For those not familiar, the Yujin Freshwater fishes were released as two series of fish, for a total of 32 fish figures. This number includes at least 3 secret figures (whose numbers remain in sequence--all figures are marked somewhere with the number) but does not incorporate a number of re-issues and repaints; there was at least one complete reissue (from which mine all come so far). The original releases, from what I can find, had yellow papers; the second release used light blue for the Series I and black for Series II. The entire set, with all variants and secrets, is actually available as a boxed set on YAJ (for around $300!), but individual figures can be found there or even on eBay for a variety of prices (the secrets & specials are of course the most expensive). Myself, there are still two or three species I don't have, but I haven't put a lot of effort into changing that...

Another nice thing about these Yujin fish model is that, like most Yujin releases, almost all of them come with a natural base and acrylic stem to display them (the Series II has a few exceptions). There are 4 or 5 bases used, plus a few unique ones for some specials. When I received mine several years ago, the fish+acrylic stems were not directly associated with the bases, so I just went with whatever worked (so if you have one or two, and the base is different, now you know why--I couldn't find a way to be sure if the bases were specific). All of the bases are based on environment--wood stems, gravel, river rocks, silt+plants, that sort of thing. Most are monochromatic, but a few are painted differently (again, often for the specials). In fact, if I wanted to get really pedantic, the bases themselves are labelled with letters based on the style, but I won't.