Figure Name: Nendoroid Petit ClariS Irony ver.
Figure Maker: Good Smile Company
Release date: January 2012
Retail/List Price: ¥1,500 
Available at: Amazon | Mandarake | Toylet

There's not much to the girls, so this will be a bit short of a review. And to that end, let's hit up the box. It's a pretty simple box, with a lightly colored motif featuring stripes and patterned circles. The front of the box has a big window showing off Clara and Alice on the inside (Clara on the left in pink, Alice on the right in green)

Out of the box, Clara and Alice (on the left and right, respectively) look adorable in their little dresses from the "Irony" music video. That's the basis for the designs, and even with such small figures, Good Smile has captured the look of these two pretty well while maintaining the petit size. Their hair sculpts have enough detail to prevent them from being blobs of plastic, but since they're so small, don't expect much else. 

Here's a closer look at the dresses. There's a decent amount of detail here, but you can also see a bit of a flaw. Can you spot it? If you noticed the paint doesn't quite overlap as it should on Clara's dress and creates a look of being outside the lines, you're right. That really boils down to a quality control thing, and given that Good Smile has had some recent QC issues, it seems that this is somewhere that there's room for improvement.

You also probably are wondering about articulation, and these Petits have the standard Petit articulation in the neck and shoulders, but nothing beyond that.

It's also worth noting that the hats are removable, as they're simply held in by a peg. There's a bit of paint issues on the edge lines of Alice's hat, but beyond that, they look alright.

The girls come with a tiny ClariS stand that's meant to work with a CD, so you can display them standing inside the case if you'd like. It also works on its own ... that would be, if I could force those tiny Petit stands inside without almost breaking them. The lack of photos with the girls on the stand is probably a hint that it didn't work and I gave up after 10 minutes of trying.

On the side here, you can see theyaren't really flush with the ground because of how their legs are posed, which makes it difficult to get them down on the stand. On the plus side, it gives you a nice view of their arms, and there's no real paint issues to speak of.

From the back, you can see that there's a simple ball-joint-style socket for the stand to plug into. Getting it in there is a massive pain in the butt and they tend to pop out quite easily, which leads to repeated sessions of fixing the stand while posing the girls and then cursing. You can also see some more of the hair sculpt work, especially on Clara, and as mentioned before, it's enough to add some texture to the figure.

If you remember all the way back to my review of the Street Fighter x Lucky Star Nendo Petits, you remember I raised a fuss about the stands being garbage. Those same stands are here, and yet again, they cause problems, such as Alice's hovering above. Ironically, this was the most stable pose of the bunch; keeping her upright on the regular stand sometimes caused Clara and Alice to lean a little bit, especially as their feet are not flush with the ground due to their posed sculpts. I'm still not a fan of these stands in the least.

For Nendoroid Petits, the ClariS Irony ver. set is decent, but I can't shake the feeling they could have been a bit better. The paint's a little uneven in spots, the sculpt isn't super-exciting and those horrible Petit stands have got to be redesigned, but they're not awful given how inexpensive the set is. It's really something for ClariS fans, Nendoroid collectors and tiny hat connoisseurs only, so if you're in any of those categories, feel free to pick these two up.