Across the other pond: Licca Castle dolls

Yeah, yeah, I know we talked about Licca-chan yesterday, but I've got another new pair to show y'all now.  Most of the "Licca" dolls I've got are actually friends or clones of Takara's ever-popular vinyl child, but today these dolls are honest-to-God Licca-chan dolls.  I'm trying to follow the example set by this YouTuber and put together a diverse collection of Licca dolls, and in this case I was quite successful.  These two came from Licca Castle, so they're a bit different from the Licca doll that I currently own.  Y'all may recognize one of them from Kururi's review.

What is Licca Castle, you ask?  Well...here's the link, though it will do y'all no good unless someone out there can read Japanese.  Licca Castle is a shop that specializes in...surprise, Licca-chan!  Jenny and a few of her cronies are also available, as are Licca's cronies Haruto, Sweets, Izumi, Aki, and Kira, but for the most part the focus is on Licca herself.  The shop panders to children and adults alike, with the only prerequisite being that one has to be a Licca lover...and a bit of a child at heart.  I think one also has to make reservations to get in ahead of time, which might be another stumbling block for those of us who don't live in the country.  Shops are located in areas as far flung as Tokyo, Ebina, Urawa, and Ono, the last of which is located in Fukushima Prefecture.  The Castle at Ono survived the 2011 earthquake relatively unscathed, but the owners voluntarily made some changes due to concerns about radiation from the severely damaged power plant.  The shop already was special to the locals, and the changes proved popular with those locals and with tourists as well.

Now that all that's out of the way, let's get this show on the road.  For my own puny little mind's sake I've renamed these dolls so I won't be referring to them all as "Licca," even though technically they are all Licca dolls.  Anyway, the green-haired doll's name is now Michiko, while the smiler is now Sachiko.  For some reason (I think I know why) dolls from most of the Castles come wrapped in plastic baggies like so.  Their fronts are covered with stickers, and their backsides are covered with little white drawers.  Michiko came in this manner, but Sachiko did not.

Both dolls have long, straight saran hair.  Michiko's lime hair falls to her knees, while Sachiko's blonde hair is waist-length.

Once again these Castle dolls can have variations in hairstyle, albeit slight variations.  Both Michiko and Sachiko have center parts with full sets of bangs up front.

Other Castle dolls sport a left side part with their bangs swept to one side, or a center part with no bangs at all, or short straight hair, or short curly hair, or a long crimped style.  Most but not all of the Castle dolls available at Found in Japan have long, straight hair like my two have (the others were already sold), and most of them have bangs.  I personally prefer the straight hair, as crimped hair can become frizzy with time like my Maxie doll's has.  Both Michiko and Sachiko have smooth, soft hair, by the way, as compared to my old Licca's hair.  Despite repeated washings, Licca's hair feels slightly sticky to the touch, and it's not as shiny.  I'm not sure if it's age or if some little kid ran their sticky hands over Licca's head, but either way it's not as pretty as that of her younger tomodachi.  See how it doesn't shine as much?

The root job is about the same for all three, though:  average-good.  Not great, not terrible, but on the good side of average.  Here's Licca's roots...

 ...and Michiko's...

 ...and Sachiko's.

Lovely hair, though Michiko's hair has the potential to get caught on her earrings when she wears them (she doesn't always).  With that statement it should be fairly obvious that both these dolls have pierced ears, as do most Licca dolls.

Spoiler alert:  Michiko has some earrings buried in her bag of stuff.  Now the face.  As I said above, Michiko has the fourth generation face just like my first Licca does.

Of course, there are a few things that set the two apart, mainly subtle differences in the paint scheme.  As a reminder, here's a closer look at Licca's face.

She's got light pink lips and blue-gray side-glancing eyes with two white dots and one red dot.  The eyes look lilac in this picture, but trust me, they're blue-gray.  Her eyelashes are long and brown, and her very thin eyebrows are light brown as well.  It's a cute face, very typical of mass-produced Licca dolls, though my enthusiasm for her lip color has cooled quite a bit.  In her original review I said I loved the color, but now I find it a little too bright and a little too matte.  Now here's Michiko's face.

First and foremost, Michiko's eyes are olive green.  Sometimes these Castle dolls have eyes that match their hair and sometimes they don't, but Michiko's eyes match..sort of.  The shades don't match, but no biggie.

Michiko's eyes are the same shape as Licca's, with the same long brown eyelashes, the same three dots (which I assume are supposed to represent light clusters), and the same innocent little eyebrows (these are obscured by Michiko's thick bangs).  Everything is the same but the color.  It always pleases me to see little differences like this, especially when the eyes are green.  I'm quite fond of green eyes, and I particularly like green Takara eyes (doll in the link is a vintage Flora, belonging to Kitties 'n' Dollcrafts).

Moving down, Michiko's lips are the same shape as a traditional Licca's lips, but they're thankfully a different shade of pink.

Michiko's lips appear to be melon pink rather than the bubblegum pink of her mass-produced comrade's lips.  They also appear to be more...well, I'm not sure how to describe it.  Michiko's lip paint just looks nicer than Licca's does, though that may be because Licca is the older doll.

Now to Sachiko, whose face is definitely NOT a traditional Licca face.  While Licca usually just looks cute, Sachiko's face is sublimely happy.

And yet the Licca aesthetic is there.  Sachiko has the slender eyebrows in a light shade of brown, and the long eyelashes in the same shade of brown.  But that's where the similarities end, as Sachiko's eyes are closed tightly, represented only with thick lines of black paint and some white spots for highlights.

Sachiko's eyes remind me a little of Saltine's eyes, in fact!

The mouth is a cupid's bow mouth and is wide open.  Most of the paint here is a convincing shade of pink, but there is also a line of teeth painted in.

The interior of this mouth appears to be a slightly lighter shade of pink, probably to suggest a tongue.  I love this expression, by the way; dolls with this big a smile are not particularly easy to do well, as the smiling dolls with open eyes will show.  Despite my allegiance to my old Licca doll, I like these two faces a smidge better.  Michiko's paint is more vibrant, and Sachiko's unbridled joy is contagious.  And wouldn't y'all know, I've noticed something that shouldn't be important but I deem worth noticing:  I think my older Licca's head is bigger than those of the two new ones, but with all of Michiko's hair I can't really tell.

Castle bodies are the same as the ones that Dulcie and Mami and Kohaku have so I'm only going to glance over these.  Michiko and Sachiko appear to have ever-so-slightly different skin tones, with Sachiko being the paler of the two.

As with the majority of Takara dolls, Michiko and Sachiko have wired arms and legs, meaning that they can bend their limbs at the knees and elbows.  I don't want to wear these wires out so I won't be bending their limbs much, but it CAN be done if need be.

Sachiko's arms are shorter than Michiko's for some reason.

Also, and why I'm noticing this I don't know, but Michiko's arms turn inward when they're bent while Sachiko's arms remain relatively straight.

Since both dolls are Licca-chan dolls they can wear clothes made for both Licca and her clone friend Elly, though Sachiko has better luck with this since her hair doesn't clash with everything I own.  Not that I have to worry much about clothes, since both of these dolls came with clothes of their own.  Indeed, it was the dress Michiko came with that led me to pick her over the other fantasy-haired Castle dolls.  When I went to buy Michiko there were three other dolls like her on Found in Japan's Licca page.  Some of them had brown or purple eyes, but otherwise they looked very alike.  The only differentiating factor between them all was the outfits that were included, and that was what led me to pick what the site called "Lime Green 2."  Lime Green 1 has an aqua dress, Lime Green 3 has a peach dress, and Lime Green 4 (now long gone) had a dress that was a deep rose color.  Michiko, formerly Lime Green 2, has this adorable yellow frock that will look fabulous with her hair, plus some accessories.  Here's what the dress looked like in the package; the majority of Licca Castle clothes are packaged like this, though some come in nice boxes instead.

I gave the rest of the Castle dolls a thorough look, and I found exactly two other dolls with yellow dresses.  One little stunner had black hair and green eyes while the other had light green hair and brown eyes, and they were both already sold.  Most of the others had rose or aqua dresses that are pretty in their own right, but for me the rose and aqua dresses are not as eye-catching as the yellow.  Yellow is not my favorite color (green is), but I'm intensely fond of it as it makes me think of my mother.  But let's review this sucker and see if it's worth the adulation that I've heaped on it.  The dress is typical of the clothing items I saw in the video shot at the Fukushima site, and indeed if one looks closely around the 8:49 mark it's possible to see the very dress that I have in my hands.  Some of the yellow dresses are made with a combination of fabrics, but mine is yellow sateen all over, with a skinny black sash tied and sewn around the waist.

There are also little sleeves, made of puffed yellow tulle and gathered with elastic.

The belt is...well, it's sewn in place, I can say that much.  I haven't touched it to get an idea of what fabric it might be, but the sheen of it is different from the yellow sateen. 

The very front of the dress has a panel with three tiers.  I wonder what the skirt would've looked like if the whole thing were tiered?

Most of the Licca and Elly dresses that I own open all the way down the back, but not this one!  The skirt is sewn together at the bottom, while the rest opens with Velcro.  Notice the dab of netting along the neckline, which I assume was added to keep the hem there from turning wrong-side out and looking sloppy.

Also notice the seams, which are done very neatly and will probably not be coming undone.  It's pretty obvious that even though this dress is a little nicer than the other things Licca usually wears it's still meant for play.

Oh yes, the tag.  Most of Licca's things are tagged, and they're usually tagged with the Takara logo or something like that, but not this dress.  It's tagged "Little Factory," which I think is the norm for Castle dresses.  Don't quote me on that, though!

The reverse side of the tag has the ever-popular "Made in China" label.

Not a bad little dress!  Definitely not like the Licca dresses that I bought on eBay.  The eBay dresses are delightful little frocks in their own right, but they're not quite as nice as Michiko's dress.

In addition to a dress most of the Castle dolls at Found in Japan come with a bag of accessories, including a goofy-looking sunhat, a pair of shoes, the pair of earrings that Michiko was wearing earlier, and a brush.

The hat is the most prominent accessory in the online pictures, and it was another reason why I chose Lime Green 2 over the other three.  Her hat is yellow, whereas the other three had black hats.  Here's the outside...

...and the inside.

A black hat wouldn't have bothered me terribly since the dress has a black bow, but I love this shade of yellow.  It's more of a butter yellow than the sunshine yellow of the dress, but they match well enough.  The hat is made out of semisoft vinyl and has an interesting texture.  It's not rough and not super smooth, and it has a vaguely fuzzy feel even though it's not flocked.  Found in Japan warned that some of these hats might have scratches, but as far as I can tell this one has none inside or out.  It has a molded ribbon with a rosette adorning the bow.

The hat's fit is a little loose, loose enough that if I wave Michiko around or drop her it'll go flying off, but still tight enough that it'll stay if I leave her standing or sitting.  If I get the angle of the camera just right (wrong?) then I can make Michiko look like Wendy Northcutt, better known as the creator of the Darwin Awards.

Wendy and her Darwin Awards have split my sides more than once, but she's also received her fair share of hate mail over this award-winning story or that one.  Thus Wendy is not a big fan of showing her full face in pictures.  That hasn't stopped other folks from catching her on camera, though...and sure enough, if one reads through the comments of the linked video, one will find plenty of vitriol directed at Wendy for committing no sin greater than having an extremely dark sense of humor.  Hey, someone's got to do it!  I know if I'd died in a ridiculously stupid way I'd want to win a Darwin Award!

Right then, where was I?  Oh yes, accessories.  In addition to her goofy hat Michiko comes with this cute hairbrush, which is made out of hard blue plastic and will likely never be used on doll hair.

It's a cute little hairbrush though.  It's got a bow molded around the handle, and a cat embossed on the back.

Michiko's shoes are your typical soft vinyl kitten-heeled shoes, the type that I often see included with Licca's dresses.  But strangely enough, they don't match anything else in the accessory package, being a pale blue rather than yellow.

Obviously they don't match the dress either, but that can't be helped.  I assume that it's the job of the person customizing the doll to pick matching shoes at the Castle, and even then there would be no guarantee that the hat or earrings would match.  Children are the target audience of these dolls, and I highly doubt that a small child would be bothered by a doll with a yellow dress and blue shoes, so I'm not going to gripe too loudly.  I'm including this information for y'all, though:  if you decide to jump on Found in Japan's site to find a doll of your own, be mindful that the included accessories don't always coordinate.  Sometimes NONE of the pieces coordinate; this sold doll came with a cranberry-colored dress, a lavender hat, a yellow pair of shoes, a turquoise pair of earrings, and a pink brush.  Or it may all match perfectly, like this young lady's things did.  So accessories are a gamble with these dolls...but I think that helps make them fun!  No one ever said these accessories had to be worn with this particular dress anyway, but in Michiko's case I have to stick with those blue shoes or have her go barefoot.  If it's one thing that drives me nuts it's an otherwise fully dressed and accessorized doll with bare feet.

Lastly, what but the earrings?  Most of my Japanese dolls that came with earrings wear flowers or studs in some sort of opaque color, but Michiko's earrings break that mold.  They are translucent yellow hearts.

These pop into Michiko's earlobes and stay, thanks to small knobs at the tips of the posts.  They're very cute, but as I had feared Michiko's long hair likes to catch in these earrings.

If any of y'all have ever owned a Barbie doll with long, dangly earrings, then you know what a pain in the butt it can be when hair gets caught in earrings.  Over time the hair tends to break or kink if not carefully separated from the offending jewelry, leading to flyaways.

Oh yes, for reasons I'll never know, there was a twist tie in the bag.  Y'know, one of those things that used to hold bread baggies closed?

If I were to hazard a guess at the use for this, I'd say that it's supposed to hold Michiko's hair back.  I did try this, but it didn't work too well so I'll probably use this for some part of my chinchilla's cage.  Some part where Bentley can't chew on the plastic...which she WILL do if given a chance.

Sachiko also with an outfit of her own, and unlike Michiko she came fully clothed (Castle dolls usually come very lightly clothed or completely nude).  And behold, this is the first, repeat, THE FIRST Licca doll I've ever seen in pants.

According to the seller this outfit is not original and is a little tight, and indeed it's tight enough that I have trouble fastening the Velcro of the blouse.  Too bad too, because the blouse is cute.  It's dark pink with white hearts printed on it.

The neckline is trimmed with lace...

...as are the sleeves.  Note the loose thread hanging out of this sleeve.

Unfortunately loose threads are the least of this outfit's concerns.  The back Velcros shut...but nothing lines up!!!  The waist doesn't line up and neither does the hem.  Repositioning the Velcro doesn't fix this, either.

The shorts are nothing special either, just little black stretch shorts that are too tight and don't fasten properly even when they're off the doll.  See?

These left some faint stains on Sachiko's upper legs.

Sachiko's shoes are a mold that I've never seen before.  They're pink bow flats and are very soft, good for any number of new outfits.  They are my favorite part of Sachiko's outfit.

I think that takes care of that.  Good stuff-bad stuff time.

BAD
*Most of the negativity I can conjure up is directed at Sachiko's outfit.  It's too tight, it's not as well made as Michiko's dress or the other Takara clothes I've got, and it stained Sachiko's thighs.  I may keep that cute little blouse, but those shorts have got to go.
*If I wanted to nitpick I could also gripe that Michiko's hair catches in her earrings.  That problem can be rectified with a rubber band or something like that.

GOOD
*It's Licca-chan!  There's not a lot of evil to be found about these cute little dolls...unless one of them is hiding a third leg somewhere!  They're well-made and brightly colored, and Sachiko's joyous face is to die for.

Unfortunately, owning Michiko and Sachiko has only strengthened my desire to go to Fukushima's Licca Castle and customize my own doll...and then to Tokyo's Licca Castle Small Shop and pick out a perfect new outfit.  If I ever get the chance I'll likely pick a doll with purple hair and a yellow dress...or one with scarlet hair and a purple dress...OR one with black hair.  Any of those would suit me.  For more information about Fukushima's candy-colored dolls, I recommend this post by Jane Cherie.  Jane Cherie provides a translation for the certificates that normally come with a doll like Michiko (Michiko had no certificate), and she corroborates some of the things I said about my dolls, particularly the hair.

This was originally where I planned on cutting this review off, but I have still another Licca-chan, a little fixer-upper that I got for eleven bucks off of Etsy.  Let's say a brief hello to Raimei-chan, so named because her eyes are colored like thunderclouds.

Raimei's poor feet have been chewed on, something that I've never encountered on one of these dolls before now.  She has a fourth-generation head with short red hair, and as mentioned above her eyes are gray instead of blue-gray.  They look almost lilac in some of these pictures, in fact.

I'm not sure if Raimei's hair has been cut or if it's supposed to be that short, but I kind of like having a short-haired Licca-chan.  The other three have fair to great hair, but I predict that constantly keeping Michiko's knee-length locks could get annoying if I don't braid it or something like that.  If someone did cut Raimei's hair deliberately they did a good job.

Alrighty, so I've established that I love Raimei's hair and eyes, but what sealed the deal for me was the description of the damage she has.  When I saw that her feet had been chewed I thought "Maybe no one else will want her because of that."  It annoys me to see damage like this on dolls since it suggests the presence of a destructive kid in the past, but I've seen worse bite marks than this.

The heart outfit came with red boots that conceal this damage, and Etsy is full of other types of shoe if I ever want to switch footwear, so life could be worse for Raimei.  At least she didn't have to have her foot Super Glued back together like my Longlocks doll did.  If any holes do develop Etsy and eBay have bodies, both real and phony, that can step in.

Given Raimei's nonstandard gray eyes and perfectly cut hair, I started to wonder if I was holding yet another Castle doll.  She's marked "Japan" like many other Castle dolls...

...but Licca's old body/Kohaku's new body is ALSO marked "Japan," and that body is definitely not a Castle doll's body.   I'd love to find out for certain in the future where Raimei came from, but for now I'll just love her for the cute little doll that she is.  Doesn't she look great with her new friends...er, I mean tomodachi?  They make a terribly photogenic lot.

Raimei photographs well on her own, too.

Raimei's heart dress is cute and she'll wear it again in the future, but it's mostly made out of pleather and it's already starting to age fairly badly, so I'll only use it for special occasions.

So in a very short period of time I went from owning one Licca-chan and several friends to owning four Liccas and several friends.  That almost wasn't the end of the story either, as I was sorely tempted by two other fixer-uppers on eBay.  One was a Licca-chan with very dark purple hair, and the other was a friend of hers with very dark green hair.  They weren't Castle dolls, but that didn't matter much.  I love a good fixer-upper and I love a doll with fantasy hair, but fifty bucks for the pair was more than I wanted to spend so I had to miss out.  Hopefully they've got good homes somewhere else.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987