Aoshima / Funny Knights

A century-old model kit giant’s charming foray into anime figures

At a glance

Status: Active.
Based in: Shizuoka City in Shizuoka Japan.
Known for: Funny Knights scale figures; niche franchise coverage; model kit informed base engineering and optional parts.
Good fit: collectors looking for a character or franchise that larger makers have skipped.
Before buying: research the exact release and compare owner photos because faces and shading can vary.
Research coverage: Extensive

TL;DR

Funny Knights is the anime figure brand of Aoshima Bunka Kyozai, a heritage Japanese model kit company with roots tracing back to 1924 in Shizuoka.
Known for covering niche franchises that collectors are eager to see represented, including Haganai, Ah! My Goddess, and Azur Lane.
Quality is variable across releases; collectors recommend researching specific figures before buying the brand on reputation alone (roughly $54-$170 USD).
The aesthetic leans stylish and character-true over provocative, with model-kit heritage showing in thoughtful base engineering and optional parts.

A Century of Models, a Decade of Figures

Aoshima Bunka Kyozai has been building scale models since 1924, when it started as the Airplane Research Institute in Shizuoka, the same city as Tamiya, Hasegawa, and Bandai’s model kit division. For decades, the company’s identity was plastic model kits of cars, ships, aircraft, and military equipment. Anime figures were nowhere in the picture.

That changed in 2007 when Aoshima launched Funny Knights, an anime heroine label with a playful name that hinted at its personality. Aoshima already had plastic-molding and painting expertise from decades of vehicle kits, so applying it to anime character figures was a natural move. Its Shizuoka facilities gave Funny Knights a production foundation that newer figure-only companies had to build from scratch.

Niche Franchises, Model-Kit Experience

Funny Knights focuses primarily on anime heroine figures at 1/7 scale, about one-seventh of a character’s full height. Sculpting is often handled by veteran garage-kit artists who usually create small-batch models for buyers to assemble and paint. The brand emphasizes dynamic action poses and careful painting, and Aoshima’s model-kit experience shows up in the engineering of bases and optional parts.

What really sets Funny Knights apart is its willingness to take on unusual or niche licensed properties that more mainstream figure manufacturers won’t touch. Its Haganai figures became definitive versions of those characters. Its Ah! My Goddess releases covered an older franchise with solid quality over years when few other makers were focusing on it. Misaka Mikoto from A Certain Scientific Railgun and various Azur Lane heroines round out a catalog that rewards the dedicated fan over the trend-chaser.

The brand has also collaborated with Vertex on the Elf Village series and occasionally crossed over with Bandai for robot model kits, reflecting the parent company’s deep roots in model building. Since the early 2020s, Funny Knights has expanded into small collectible figures and larger proportionally sized figures for properties like Blue Lock, Tokyo Revengers, and Kantai Collection.

Compared with other mildly provocative lines, Funny Knights avoids overtly erotic designs. The aesthetic leans toward stylish and faithful to the character rather than provocative, making the figures comfortable on a shared display shelf.

Why the Lower Price Helps

Funny Knights quality is variable, and it helps collectors to go in with clear expectations. The higher-end releases are fine additions to any collection: sharp sculpts, decent paint, good stability, and a physical presence that comes from a company with decades of experience understanding scale and proportion. Their best work, like the Satellizer el Bridget from Freezing, gets cited as a quality high-water mark.

But the weaker releases show the limitations of a company for whom figure manufacturing is secondary to its core business. Faces can sometimes stray from the source design, shading can run heavy, and the inconsistency is real enough that experienced collectors check reviews carefully before committing. The lower pricing helps balance these variations; Funny Knights figures tend to be competitively priced in the ¥8,000-¥25,000 range (approximately $54-$170 USD).

Collectors treat Aoshima/Funny Knights with cautious appreciation. They cover properties that collectors care about, and they do it with evident enthusiasm.

Funny Knights operates as an in-house brand of Aoshima Bunka Kyozai, housed within the parent company itself. Aoshima also runs the Skynet brand for diecast models and Miracle House for additional diecast lines, giving the parent company a diversified hobby portfolio.

Production uses both domestic facilities in Shizuoka and Chinese factories. That split is unusual at this tier, where most companies rely exclusively on Chinese production. The Shizuoka domestic presence reflects Aoshima’s deep roots in the city’s model-making infrastructure. Aoshima remains independent with no parent conglomerate.

Buy the Release, Not the Brand

The cardinal rule with Aoshima/Funny Knights: buy specific releases, not the brand. When Funny Knights produces a figure from a niche property you love and few other makers have covered, consider it. It may be the only quality version of that character available. When they’re competing in mainstream territories against better-resourced manufacturers, look carefully at pre-release photos and wait for user reviews before committing.

Resale trends mirror the brand’s inconsistency. Strong releases from dedicated niche fan bases become highly sought-after because the figure is often the only quality version of that character available. The Yozora Mikazuki and Sena Kashiwazaki from Haganai remain sought-after because Funny Knights effectively owned that franchise in figure form.

If you value clean designs that stay true to the character and don’t need every figure to be a showpiece, Funny Knights is a solid option.

Recent and Upcoming Releases

Blue Lock trading mini figures vol. 2 are shipping now. A 1/7-scale Kantai Collection KAGA and a 1/8-scale Sword Art Online Silica figure are available, while Patlabor-related kits and figures are upcoming. A company making things since 1924 still shows up at the Wonder Festival figure event with new products.