Thoughts on The lunarlake's new Asai 27.5cm body
The resin and casting work seem to be impeccable. The doll is weighty and solid, about as heavy as my Volks Yo-SD's, and perceptibly heavier than my Miyadoll Baby Mocha. The resin feels very dense, but is smoother and more shiny than, say, Volks pureskin, though not off-puttingly so. There is hardly any flashing (excess resin) that I notice, just a little bit on the hand parts. The colour is described as light tan, and was supposedly matched to a Soom The Gem tan release. It has the tiniest touch of translucency. It's a bit hard to photograph accurately with my smartphone, but that's entirely not an issue with the doll. I don't see any discolouration or seam lines whatsoever, which is supposedly a common concern with tan dolls (of which this is my first). Overall, thumbs up for resin quality and casting work!
The doll posed well right out of the box, but was strung super tight. I've never had such a tightly strung doll before, and it kinda terrified me. I was worried it would warp the metal parts or chip the resin (or even warp the resin, as had previously happened to the resin donut I purchased for my MiniFee head). As soon as I had the time, I took the body apart and restrung it with slightly looser tension. To my relief, there was no resin damage at all, even on the comparatively thinner parts such as the notch for the hook in the head. The resin is evidently quite durable.
When I took out the first joint S-hook, I was worried that the tightness of the elastic had stretched it out of shape. As you can see from the photo above, one end of each hook is more curved than the other. However, when I put the four wrist and ankle hooks together, I realised that they were identical, so I concluded that the asymmetric shape of the S-hooks was intentional and not due to warping. The ball joints in the wrists and ankles are in one piece with the hands/ feet, the more open end of the S-hook goes into the ball joint and the tighter end of the S-hook has to be wrestled over the elastic loop. It’s not the most elegant system, joint mobility is slightly limited and there’s no convenient place to rest the S-hook if you want to change the hand/ foot parts, but it works well enough otherwise.
My main comments on the sculpting: The default hands and slightly-closed option hands are beautifully, sensitively sculpted, but they are a little on the small side for the body, in my opinion. This is probably my biggest complaint. The second would be the slightly thick ankles (specifically, the bottom end of the calf piece). *shrug* Maybe this wouldn’t even be an issue to some, but it looks indelicate to me. It’s chunkier there than on Volks Yo-SD or Miyadoll Baby Mocha, similar to the SpiritDoll 1/6 body. As for the feet, they are substantially smaller than Volks Yo-SD (3.5cm vs 4cm), and have a lovely, realistic arch to the sole. As with the Chibi Unoa feet, this looks better without shoes on than flat feet, but slightly complicates standing and shoe-making. The peanut joints in the elbows and knees - well, they work, although it takes a little jostling. I mostly find the arms plenty poseable without having to bother with the double joint. The legs seem designed specifically to take on the cutesy, angled-inwards standing pose typical of anime girls, which they do very well.
The body is officially designed to be genderless, but, to my mind, the gentle curves of the chest and the back, and the delicacy of the hands, make it lean towards feminine. If one were not trying specifically to colour-match a LAKE head, I imagine that the main reasons why one might order this body are the expressively-sculpted torso piece, or the extra 1 or so cm of height it has on the Volks Yo-SD and similar bodies. I have to admit I miss the waist joint already, beautiful though the solid torso piece is. I never realised how much I use that joint before; time and again, I find myself instinctively pushing at the torso with a free finger whilst posing Murphy, and hitting unyielding hardness instead of a moving joint. ^^;
Random quirks: I'm used to stringing a doll such that the knot sits in the head. The slot in the Murphy head is too narrow to easily pull a knot through, so I ended up having to push the knot into the torso. Not a big deal. The body/legs take 3mm elastic, and the arms, 2mm. I think it’s the first time I’ve had a doll that uses two different widths of elastic for its various parts.
Since I really like this size range, I’ll probably amass more bodies of this kind in future. I already have a 25.8cm Pettimal body on the way, and I hope to give the new-ish ShouShou 29cm body a try at some point, too. As information on these independently-sculpted bodies seems quite scarce in the English-speaking world, I’ll try to bring more reviews as I get more bodies~
