The series of plastic mini-statues featuring Kia Asamiya's art concepts for Batman have been around several years now - so why Dymock's, a local bookshop chain, suddenly got a whole load of them on their shelves this week is anyone's guess. Regardless of the unpredictable vagaries of stockrooms, this gave me the chance to add Poison Ivy, a character I so far haven't found an appealing representation of, to my collection. First things first, this is a statue, not an action figure. Her left arm is a separate piece attached via a peg, and can be turned, but the sculpt only lines up properly in one position, and with the bare skin of her shoulder so visible, it looks awful if you try to turn the arm at all. This is both a positive and a negative - aside from that one seam, Ivy is entirely free of aesthetically-unpleasing articulation, and is thus a solid, unbroken form from head to toe. As much as articulation can be fun, and can provide cool-looking poses, there's no question that an articulated figure doesn't look as good as a statue, all other things being equal. On the down side, with no articulation there's no way to fine-tune Ivy, which means she doesn't quite line up perfectly with her considerable base. She's sculpted to be holding - or rather, caressing - the giant flower curving over her shoulder, but neither hand is making contact quite as firmly as the sculpt suggests was the idea. It still looks okay - fingers brushing the plant, rather than solidly holding it - but a bit of fine-tuning would have been a real help. Still, not to complain. Ivy is sculpted in a semi-anime style, with the traditional triangular jawline, delicate nose and mouth, and large-ish, expressive eyes - I've been watching Robotech on DVD lately, so I recognise the hallmarks. That said, the stylisation is fairly subtle, and for a comic book character, the statue is relatively realistic - there's no mistaking her for a real person, but neither is she so stylised that it'd be a turn-off to anyone who wasn't a fan of anime - aside from the face, this could easily be a western-style comic book sculpt. The quality of sculpt is high, with plenty of detail in Ivy's flowing hair and on detail areas like the leaves on her costume, and smooth, aesthetically-pleasing forms everywhere else. Or to put it in simpler terms, the costume looks great, and she's got a pin-up body inside it. The base is equally well-sculpted, with a fibrous, plantlike texture on the stem of her massive flower, a variety of textures on the flower itself - the sculptor clearly had reference material of real plants to work from, and used it well - and really very good work on the giant leaves at her feet. The paint is fairly restrained, but very appealing nonetheless. Ivy is basically flesh and hair, contrasted against various greens - her skin stands out almost luminously, while her red hair is a fairly subdued auburn/red, perhaps not as red as it could have been, to play into the plant theme, but a good contrast with her skin. The greens are very well-conceived, with several different shades on her costume and the base, all selected with care and painted to be distinct from one another, in both tone and texture - there's no risk of all the greens blending together and losing the detail of the figure. My only observation is that the dark green areas of her costume - the leaves - could perhaps have used a heavier, darker wash, to bring out the individual leaves - they tend to blur together a bit. And that's about it - no articulation, no accessories (she can't stand without the base, so that hardly counts), nothing much to do with her than stand her on a shelf looking sexy. Like the Catwoman from the same line I bought years ago, Ivy is a good mini-statue, and an attractive, if stylised, rendition of the character, true to her in appearance and theme.