Paradise Fish (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 length given on the figure's paper for consistency. Some of them seemed off, but they seem close—often better than my original usage of the Fishbase TL (unless the FB one is more interesting...). When there are more than one, I will use the higher values. And the scales will be rounded and approximate!

So now, the fish!

This figure is the Paradise Fish (or Paradise Gourami), Macropodus chinensis , number 10 from the first series. This is the first and only anabantid figure in the set. The Paradise Fish is a generalist species that is found, like many of the fish in the series, in waterways throughout eastern Asia from Korea to Vietnam. Although highly adaptable and overall common in their range, they are apparently considered threated in Thailand due to pollution (which has allowed mosquitoes and their associated diseases to increase—lousy ecological cycles); and then, in Japan, they were deliberately introduced (for pest control!) and are considered invasive. As with the few previous entries, the Paradise Fish is common in aquariums—in fact, it was one of the first 'exotic' aquarium fish available to the 'western' world. They remain popular, despite being quite aggressive, mainly because they are also very attractive. The Yujin model (and other sources) states that the normal size is around 7cm.

This model is about 5 cm long, making the figure roughly 1:1 (rounding—and also, most Paradise Fish do not reach 7cm). The figure is a bright, colorful one, highlighting the bright blues and reds of the species (and still not fully doing the real fish justice). The bright green cheek patch, though, is a little too exaggerated. The scales and fin rays are distinct; the pose is more of a hunting or searching pose, as the figure's fins are fairly relaxed. The base for this one is the grey gravel. I cannot actually recall another figure of this species, but could easily be wrong—on the other hand, it is not a true Japanese fish, so those companies may be less inclined to make one; and non-Japanese companies simply don't make enough small freshwater fish, so it's doubtful (though I would be happy to be wrong).

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.

[Jetoar]

This line of figures is really spectacular  .