The arrival of Castiel, a Mirodoll Yaya

I can’t count how long I wanted to have one and it’s only now that I have graduated that I was finally able to afford it. This post is both a review and my experience regarding my newly arrived BJD from Mirodoll.

I got the Mirodoll New 1/4 Girl Body on a Mirodoll Yaya head with faceup. I also ordered their Macbook laptop prop, two boots, a set of clothes and a pair of 14mm eyes.

I ordered last September 4 via Paypal and contacted them through service@mirodoll.com indicated on their site. Surprisingly (no offense meant XD), their CSR has good English communication skills unlike what I was expecting, so I had no trouble talking to them.

September 7, they told me they’ll ship it in 15-20 days. With a time frame allotted, I started a mental countdown day after day. I started shopping for wigs, new clothes and etc. Even made my Pinterest account, All Things BJD, dedicated to ball-joint dolls. I bombarded them a lot of questions regarding my order to make sure I’m getting the right stuff for Castiel because their site’s lacking some info like exact head measurements. I e-mailed them roughly around 10 different times because I feel so new to the hobby and have so little knowledge of my arriving baby. Anyway, they were mostly patient enough to answer my every question and request. I followed up on them when I haven’t received any feedbacks after 22 days. They said it needs a bit more time due to the faceup I requested. Waiting some more time, they e-mailed me October 6 that my BJD was shipped through DHL and would arrive around 3 days. Of course, my heart was jumping with joy though it took some time. I am not fond of waiting. I used DHL’s tracking services in their site to see my parcel’s current situation. I really commend their tracking service, especially the SMS update I get everyday.

Oct 10, last Saturday, I received a call from a 3-digit number but couldn’t answer since I was at work, so I received a text after 2 unanswered calls. It informed me that my parcel was already in their custody and was taxed 1461php with a storage fee of 600+php (I forgot) if unconfirmed 3 days after arrival. I was scared since at first, I thought I was gonna pay 2000+php for Castiel’s ransom. So I immediately dialed DHL’s 24/7 hotline during my lunch break and asked a few questions with the kind CSR. After an exchange of question and answer, I had it delivered to my house since it has no extra charge when shipped to my door. I gave in to the thought that I was actually gonna shed off some more thousands for her.

My best friend has a relative that works in affiliation with customs so I was deeply in hopes I can easily get pass through them without shedding off some more thousands. But unfortunately, the package went directly to DHL’s receiving office in Pasay with a customs personnel doing the “computing” of tax. So I had no choice.

Here’s the package as it arrived.

One of my requests included having to undervalue my package to at least less than 50USD to hopefully avoid customs. The invoice says it’s 29USD, but sad to say, customs is now well aware of the value of these dolls so they can’t be fooled.

Here’s the bald box they used. The box was covered in what I assume is a sheet of brown paper before being severely taped.

and here it is when opened!!! I was literally giggling and all giddy when I opened the box. My mom was doing the how-can-i-have-a-weird-daughter-like-this stare. Haha.

here are the things inside. They sent a free random wig and free random pair of eyes worn by the doll when opened!!!!! Hooray for freebies!!

Apologies I didn’t take so much pics to emphasize the sculpt. I find it weird to be taking photos of a nude kid, much so my baby. So yeah.

It’s my first BJD so I have none to compare it with, but if I were to base it from the extensive research I’ve been doing for the past months, I noticed the following:

~The doll is loosely strung on the waist part, making it bend over front or back while it stands if you don’t put it in a certain position. The other parts are tightly strung, not too tight, but strung to the point that it can’t hold any other pose other than standing and with an arm awkwardly half bent.

~The sculpt is smooth outside, but some parts like knee edges and the inside part of the head needs more sanding. It’s not visible so it’s forgivable. But it would be nice if it has a neat finish.

~ I find her knees akward for bending, as you can see from the previous picture, the knees look weird, I don’t know if it looks like that on all dolls, but it was the first thing I noticed. it has double joints but connected to one another.

~ The hand has an unnatural look, unlike how it’s supposed to look when relaxed. I don’t know if that was intentional, but saying so anyway.

~ The dress looks loose on her, probably meant for another MSD size since it looks big especially on the bust part.

That’s more or less what I noticed. I have yet to find out at a later time some other information. I still have to restring her and all so yeah.

Of course, here are some pics I took. Not much pose yet due to its tightly strung joints but no worries, it can easily be restrung through a bunch of Google tutorials. 😀