Throwback Thursday review: Shibajuku Girls Shizuka

Once upon a time, once when you were mine, there were these dolls called Shibajuku Girls.  They looked a lot like a poor woman's Pullip doll, with small bodies, big noggins, inset eyes, and brightly colored hair.  One minute they were here, and the next minute they disappeared from shelves.  As with the Rainbow High dolls (and indeed, most modern-day doll lines), these girls have/had their own personalities.

Yoko appears to be the goth of the group.  She enjoys tinkering around with hair colors, playing guitar, wearing "edgy" clothes, and wearing black.  She also mentions a fondness for spooky novels and spiders (yikes!).  Her guitar (which sadly was not included with her) even has spiders on it.  Yoko aspires to be a writer.
Koe is the animal nut of the bunch.  She loves nature documentaries and taking selfies (random, much?), and her dream is to run her own...habitat???  Must be the same thing as a wildlife sanctuary.  Koe also states that if she could be any animal in the world, she'd be a falcon.  Well, I wanted to be an albatross once, so I can understand Koe there.  Birds are nifty!
Suki loves colors and hair clips, though that's not saying much since all of these dolls appear to love colors and hair clips.  On the other hand, Suki is the only one who claims to have a collection of hair clips, plus bracelets and necklaces of varying colors.  This suggests to me that she leans towards the decora spectrum of harajuku fashion.  Suki also loves food, especially baked goods like donuts and cupcakes.
Shizuka likes to play with hair colors, just as Yoko does.  She's the quiet one of the bunch (fitting, since "shizuka" means "quiet" in Japanese), hopes to be a fashion designer (sigh, I always get the fashion lover), and is obviously fond of the color pink.
Namika is the reader of the bunch and loves science as well.  She claims never to get bored and loves to help out her friends at school.  Namika is unusual in that she appeared in both light and dark skintones.  Miss Emily had the dark one, for example, while Rachael had the light one.  Namika disappeared from the line in later waves.
Miki was a latecomer to the party, and she appears to have been Namika's replacement.  Miki is another stinkin' athlete (barf) AND a fashionista (double barf), who dreams of both being in the Olympics and traveling the world.  Good way to kill two birds with one stone, since going to the Olympics requires traveling to somewhere (usually abroad).  Her sport of choice is soccer, which I can get behind since soccer players don't get a lot of attention here in the U.S.  One of Miki's hair accessories is/was a ghost, so I wonder if she didn't also share Yoko's fondness for the spooky and the off-beat.

All of the names are Japanese names or words, and Rachael noted that the dolls' bios are pretty random.  While I commend Namika's love for science and Koe's passion for animals I have to say that I agree with the random bit.  Miki's strange sports-meets-fashion story and Koe's love for selfie-taking seem particularly hodge-podge.  And seriously, how self-centered can you get, loving to take selfies???  I can count the number of selfies I've taken on one hand, but then again I'm not exactly easy on the eyes.  Regarding the dolls themselves, Shizuka was actually my least favorite in the first wave.  She was blonde and pale, and her light pink outfit washed her out even further.  She did have mismatched eyes, but that didn't even the balance enough for me.  When the second wave rolled around, though...oh my!  Shizuka stood out!

Truthfully, if all five characters had been available at the time I wouldn't have bought Wave 2 Shizuka either; Koe was my favorite with her blue hair and her purple romper.  But Koe and Miki were not available at Dexter's Wal-Mart at the time, while Shizuka, Yoko, and Suki were.  Even though I have often complained about the overuse of pink in the dolly world, I grabbed Shizuka.  

It was August of 2017 when I first saw the Shibajuku Girls (I stole the above picture from that post, LOL), and at the time I noted that they were a lot like Blythe and Pullip.  Indeed, Shizuka bears some resemblance to both Blythe and to Pullip, as well as to the Cutie Pops, but she also has some differences too.

Jaylin, my factory Blythe, is shorter than Shizuka and has a smaller body, but she can move her eyes.

Candi also has a smaller body than Shizuka does, and her eyes pop in and out and her hair can be switched around.

Too bad Candi didn't come with any cute hair barrettes.  She could've shared them with both Shizuka and Jaylin.

Shizuka's hair is rooted and very long, falling clean down to her knees.  Most of the fibers are about fifty percent hot pink and fifty percent pale pink.

The styling is minimal, just a center part without bangs.  The root job is...not the greatest.  Along the hairline and the part the rooting is fine...

...but try doing pigtails and/or multiple braids.  The part doesn't look good in the back.

Shizuka's stock jacket has a hood and thus covers most (but not all) gaps, but there are times when I'd prefer that she NOT wear the hood.  When she's without her jacket the only hairstyles possible are all down or a single ponytail or braid in the back, like so.

Since Shizuka has so much hair I usually tie it back.  The cute pink hairbands that I used for this job came with a future doll, and they do their job very well.

Below the hair is the face, of course, and these dolls are a little moon faced!

Ha!  Maybe a more than a little!  Having a moon face is a common problem for dolls with large heads, so I'll let it go.  Shizuka's dominant feature are her eyes, which are large and inset with rooted eyelashes, silver and mint eyeshadow, and black eyeliner.  Her simply-painted eyebrows betray her real hair color (LOL).

Shizuka has complete heterochromia, sporting one green eye and one blue eye.  I thought that at one point another of the Shibajuku Girls had heterochromia too, but a quick perusal of the stock photos revealed that my memory was mistaken.  Dolls with heterochromia appear to be more common than people with heterochromia...unless I haven't looked close enough at the people around me!  The eyes are opaque, glossy plastic, though in certain lights they can look metallic or translucent.

I'm not in love with Shizuka's lip color.  It's a nice shape, but the shade of pink fades into her already-pale vinyl.

At the same time I appreciate the subtle blush on Shizuka's cheeks.  It's so light that it's hard to detect, but it's there.

Let's take a gander at ears right quick, since I look at a doll funny if she doesn't have any.  Shizuka's ears are big and simply molded like her head is, and they have no piercings.  Pierced ears would've been cute on this doll line, but long hair tends to get caught in earrings so Hunter Products made a good call here.

Body talk now!  Shizuka's body is interesting.  She's got a mature bust but almost no curves otherwise, and she's got multiple joints.

Here's what Shizuka's skinny little arms look like; they're jointed at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist.

The joints here look delicate, and they ARE delicate.  I definitely would NOT subject Shizuka to my "throw her across the yard and see what happens" test.   The joints have decent rotational and hinged movement, though; Shizuka can reach across her torso, like so, and she can rotate her arms outwards as well.

Her elbows can also bend the wrong way to some degree, though I'd prefer that she not do this.  It looks like a serious dislocation.

Her mostly curveless torso has no joints, and neither do her teeny-weeny ankles.

Seriously, these are some of the dinkiest doll feet I've ever seen!

As small as Shizuka's ankles are it shouldn't be surprising that there are no joints there.  Her knees are jointed though, with hinged and rotational movement.  Her knees are flexible enough that she can sit cross-legged, for example. 

She can also sit like this.  Cassandra and my rebodied Takara dolls are my only other dolls that can sit like this.

Shizuka's hips are ball-and-peg jointed, and they're the only joints that feel pretty robust.  Shizuka can perform almost full side-splits, like so.

She can accomplish front-back splits too...

...but I have to move her back-pointing leg aside due to the cut of her hips.  A front-back split thus looks awkward for Shizuka, especially when viewed from above.

As I've said before, I almost never pose my dolls like this anyway, so who cares?  LOL

As I noted above, Shizuka's ensemble is almost all pink.

The front of the jacket has a skinny zipper that actually works, though the bottom is sewn together so the whole thing doesn't come undone.

Here's the aforementioned hood.  It has a large slit in the back to accommodate Shizuka's ample hair, plus a pair of rabbit ears.  

No bunny tail in back, though (bummer).  Here it's possible to see the sparkles on the fabric, the kind that rubs off if the fabric is handled too much.

The jacket is not lined, but all the hems are finished and look nice.  The bottom hem is even trimmed with white knitted fabric that looks like the bottom part of another shirt.

Shizuka's skirt is also pink and sparkly, though the sparkles are real glitter rather than printed stuff.

Two tulle layers with scalloped edges, plus an opaque bottom layer that preserves Shizuka's modesty.  She also has a ribbon "thong" thing to keep the skirt from riding up.  It reminds a little of Sunflower Burst Cyanne's skirt, both in style and in construction. 

The waistband is made of sateen and Velcros shut in back.  Oh, Velcro...not a smart thing to use with tulle.

As I noted above Shizuka's jacket zips, but who wants to go around with their jacket zipped all the time?  And for that matter, who likes it when their chest gets rubbed by the backside of a zipper?  Never fear, for Shizuka is wearing a white crop top underneath.  It's just your simple little crop top, not high and not low.  The hems are short, but they don't fold out when Shizuka is wearing it.

Shizuka's knee-length socks are made out of the same material as the top, and they along with the shoes are the weakest part of her outfit because they don't fit the greatest.  The socks are fairly well-constructed, with seams along the back...

...but they bag around Shizuka's dinky little feet.

Shizuka's shoes are simple pink vinyl mary-janes with thick soles.  They have slits in the heels, which in this case was unnecessary. 

I understand why these shoes are big, as they likely wouldn't have fit over the socks otherwise, but they like to randomly fall off.  This has led to great amusement for my cats on at least one occasion. 

Normally this is where I'd segue into clothes sharing, but I finished this blog in a rush last night so I didn't get to that part.  Shizuka has a thicker torso than those of Monster High, Ever After High, Blythe/Licca-chan, Cutie Pops, La Dee Da, and Bratz, so all of them are out.  But her body is smaller than Barbie's so I doubt that would work either, except for maybe the odd petite piece.  I'll have to readdress that and get back to y'all.  Anyway, part of the fun of a fashion doll is dressing and redressing them, and since I haven't seen much yet on Etsy for these dolls I turned to eBay instead.  They delivered with these.

Based on the artwork on the packaging I'll guess that these outfits were intended for Yoko (left) and Suki, but beggars definitely cannot be choosers with this line.  Yes, I foolishly stuck to character-specific clothes during the days of Monster High and thus missed out on some cute clothes as a result.  Won't make that mistake with the Shibajuku Girls, though!  Here's how Shizuka looks in Yoko's outfit (left) and in Suki's.  I kinda wish Yoko's ensemble came with some new shoes, but since Shizuka has pink hair her shoes don't clash too terribly.

I like how these two ensembles contrast, by the way.  Harajuku fashion is all about mixing, matching, and having fun with one's clothes, and with Yoko's all-black ensemble and Suki's sparkles-and-rainbows set I'll be able to do that easy-peasy.  Indeed, pairing Yoko's jacket with Suki's skirt is like an outfit I'd have thrown together during high school.

I wouldn't have gotten away with showing that much boobage, though.  Good thing Shizuka has that white blouse.

That's better!  I'd have layered on a couple of necklaces and some goofy earrings, and then I'd have been good to go.  Alas, earrings are a no-go for Shizuka since her head is too hard for ear piercing, but I can still make a couple'a necklaces!

Oh yes, how could I forget the clips???  Shizuka came with four clips (the star, the cat, the bow, and the pink flower-thing), and the other two (the planet and the ice pop) came with the extra outfits.  They come in enough colors and shapes to make Suki's heart sing (remember that Suki loves hair clips).

Heck, they make my heart sing too, as I'll top my hair with goofy clips if I'm not in the mood for a goofy bow.  Regarding quality these are okay.  They're mostly made of stiffened felt and other fabrics, though the first wave dolls were all accompanied with at least one metal clip.  I kinda wish some of Shizuka's clips were metal, as these softer ones are prone to bending (the cat and the ice pop are the main culprits there).  The metal ones also slide easier into the dolls' hair easier...I think.  Metal clips slide into my hair more easily than clips built like this do...

...so I figure the same is true with doll hair.  Seriously, I hate it when clips and bows have blunt attachments like this, as they make a mess of the ponytail they're being shoved into.  But these are super-cute, so I just go slow when I'm shoving them into Shizuka's hair...or I just clip them to her hood.  That works too.

I think that wraps it up.

BAD
*I didn't discuss this above, but Shizuka's joints are very loose.  Her knees are particularly prone to collapsing.  This doll could've done with a stand, but Hunter Products didn't give her one.
*Hair could potentially become a nightmare if it gets tangled, and the roots don't allow for many styles.
*Face is very pale.  This is true of almost all of the Shibajuku Girls.
*Shoes (and socks) come off a little too easy for my taste.
*My particular doll has a LOT of pink, though I have no one to blame but myself for that.

GOOD
*Can't beat inset eyes, especially mismatched ones!
*Hair is a fun color and handles well during styling.
*Stock ensemble is well-made and has BUNNY EARS!!!  You can't beat bunny ears!
*Jointed.  The joints are loose, but they ARE joints. 
*Clothes are well-made and can be mixed and matched if one has multiple dolls or multiple outfits.
*HAIR CLIPS!!!

LOL, I like the hair clips just a little, even though they're sometimes hard to place.  Overall the Shibajuku Girls were a cute line with a cute, simple idea, but I think they may have fallen victim to what I like to call "Blythe syndrome."  Blythe was alienating to children and their parents with her large head and staring eyes, and I think the Shibajuku Girls may have been the same way.  I THINK, now.  I don't know that for a fact, but that's the best explanation I can hypothesize for the line's failure.  Collectors of Blythe and Pullip might like these dolls though, since they have the same aesthetic as Blythe and Pullip.  Indeed, that's why I picked Shizuka up, as I saw her as a sort of poor woman's Pullip.  If you're a fan of the big-headed, big-eyed types then Shizuka is worth owning, but I'd recommend getting a stand for her so she doesn't go falling off the shelf!  I'll have to follow my own advice for both Shizuka and Candi, as they're too big to store in my doll box!  Anyway, I urge my followers to pay close attention to the next few posts, as the dolls I'll be addressing bear some important similarities (and a few differences) to Shizuka.  Stay tuned!

Much love,

RagingMoon1987

lll