Towa is here! I’ve continued my plan to acquire all of the new DD standard model heads by setting up splits on the dollfiedreams.com forum. I’ve kept Towa’s wig too, but changed her eyes for home-made ones and put her head on a first gen Smart Doll M-bust body.
Initially I wasn’t too impressed with Towa’s look, but after changing eyes and dressing her up I found her really cute. Her faceup colors are a bit too saturated for my taste but in natural light they look alright.
One of my concerns about Towa was that the Volks promo photos show a mouth design totally unlike the actual product. These photos show the Volks promo vs. Y! auctions product shot of Towa, which is pretty consistent with my Towa’s mouth too. Volks also did this with Sheryl Nome – do they just have a hard time turning their prototypes into workable airbrush masks? It makes me nervous about future releases like Kaede which I predict will continue to have issues with mouth painting.
It took seeing Towa in person to finally understand what they painted for her mouth design. The opaque peach paint is both inside of the mouth and the lower lip. There are thin black smiling lines/mouth corners that partially frame the open mouth. Those lines are often washed out by the gloss over the lower lip. She’d look less derpy if the design was more clear- from some angles she looks adorable, but sometimes she has a very goofy ‘mlem’ tongue out expression.
From the side, Towa’s profile is pretty simple. Her proportions remind me a bit of Smart Doll heads, but with more sculpted/rounded cheeks and jawline. She doesn’t have the hard-edged ‘3D modeled only looking at front and side viewports’ effect of Mirai’s jawline.
Overall I’m really happy with Towa- I gripe about Volks’s poor decisions/cheapness on the faceup but she’s still very sweet-looking in person, and hopefully I have a chance to repaint her soon so all my gripes are moot :D
