Living Dead Dolls Roundup 9

This roundup was meant to be completed much much earlier, well within January, but one of the dolls got caught in limbo and then completely fell through thanks to a bafflingly unresponsive seller who ultimately just refunded after I pulled teeth to establish any communication in good faith and got a confusing response of the item not being shipped and the seller being new to this? I don't know if they were somebody truly in over their head who crumbled and got cold feet on it for some reason (were they a minor?) or if they were a scammer who fell apart in the face of my persistence.  Honestly, whatever. That was agonizing regardless. So it happens that that doll is not in this group and will probably not be acquired anytime soon now that another one fell perfectly into place to complete the group. The doll I picked first wasn't notable enough to give a solo post, nor precious enough to demand immediate closure after the collapse of the purchase, and I don't want to work on building further assorted roundups when the second uncomfortable roundup and some February/March projects need to get sorted. 

Ugh. May I never be screwed over in my planning like this again. But the final trio actually worked out far better than I could have hoped.

Warning for bloody and scary imagery.

Spirit of the Frozen Mountain: Yuki-Onna

I bought this doll almost solely on principle once I saw a sealed copy going for about $40 plus shipping. That's a deal that seemed unthinkable for this LDD even if she had been loose sans box, since all previous aftermarket indication made her seem of a much higher price tier--I think $80 was the lowest I'd spotted for her prior. I always liked Yuki-Onna, but not for the amount she went for, so she was never a top priority. However, this particular listing made her immediately a priority thanks to how uncommonly low her price was, sealed! I knew not to pass up this chance to get her more easily. So I guess we're talking about her now! (Hey, it's winter. It makes sense!)

Yuki-Onna is my first doll from Series 24, themed around demons, though I don't think she quite fits. The yuki-onna (snow woman) is a Japanese folkloric spirit, with monsters and spirits being known as yōkai in Japanese. Since yōkai is a distinctive word in the Anglosphere, it's a useful label for English speakers, which in English context, refers to supernatural non-deity entities specifically to the Japanese folkloric canon. (yokai.com is a fantastic free resource to learn more, with awesome illustrations that pay tribute to traditional art.) While certain yōkai can be considered demons in the sense of "malicious supernatural creatures", the overall LDD Series 24 is far more themed on demonology, mixing entities from Abrahamic and Middle Eastern religion and the Ars Goetia book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, also based upon Abrahamic religion. The yuki-onna is a typically-malicious spirit preying on people in the cold mountains, but the story isn't tied to religion or greater lore. It's more akin to a ghost story or urban legend, making the character feel far more apt for the later Series 27, which was themed on world folklore...and which included bargaining demon Mephistopheles from Faust, who would fit easily into Series 24. Yuki-Onna trading with Mephistopheles would have also made Series 27 more culturally even, with two Asian characters, two European characters, and one Pacific Islander. As it is, it's Euro-weighted with three Europeans. Oh, well. 

The yuki-onna is not a singular character like Baba Yaga, but is moreso a type of spirit one might fear encountering. These snow women are beautiful but deadly, with dark hair and snow-white skin that's cold as ice, and have the ability to chill people to death by touch or to use frozen breath to kill or inhale one's life force. I've been fascinated by yōkai since I was a teenager, and used research and traditional imagery to try rendering my own character designs for certain yōkai types. Here's my take on a yuki-onna from several years ago.

I went more in on the winter iconography as a stylistic touch, while the Living Dead Doll feels a more authentic and traditional by just looking like a pale Japanese ghost lady in intimidating makeup and a white outfit.  

I appreciated the way LDD did the design in a way that felt like a sincere and plausible take on Japanese folklore. LDD has a significant Japanese fan audience judging by the exclusive variants the country received of certain dolls, so I'm not given to believe LDD Yuki-onna caused any significant backlash or alienation by her portrayal. I certainly understand why she's become so hard to snag on the aftermarket, since Japanese culture and folklore has a devoted Western following, for better or worse.

Yuki-onna is the only explicitly Japanese Living Dead Doll, but Maggot and her Resurrection dolls are non-explicitly very likely to be Japanese thanks to Maggot's consistent anime theming and art style.

Series 11.

Resurrection.

Resurrection variant.

I think the hairstyle, costume, and paper fan accessory of Series 19's Sanguis read Japanese to me personally.

While I could see Sanguis in a horror manga or Japanese horror movie easily, there's no solid indication the LDD team intended this association, and Sanguis could merely be influenced by Victorian and punk-goth styles with no Asian theming, but again, it's an easy read and I grasp at straws for diversity in this brand. And I suppose you could apply the same markers to claim Sanguis is Chinese or Korean, too. I just don't think those cultures would have been as likely as influences on the LDD team. 

Series 25's Luna could also be read as Japan-doing-Victorian in aesthetic given her hairstyle, though it's an even more shallow association and even less likely to be intentional. If she is taken as Japanese in style, she's not necessarily Japanese herself, just rendered in a Japanese lens, and is much more fantasy-anime and Ghibli-adjacent in look. At least, that's where I like to see her. She feels like a Hayao Miyazaki character of a young witch in a European-style manor house. I love her.

Sabbatha Blood in Series 19 has potential Japanese influence, including her black-haired  variant being compared to a character from Japanese animated film Blood: The Last Vampire.

Sabbatha pairs really well with the later Luna, too, potentially strenghtening a headcanon of Luna being borne of fantasy anime.

At the end of it all, even though, c'mon, Maggot is definitely Japanese, Yuki-Onna is the only LDD character explicitly with that background.

Like I said, my Yuki-Onna was sealed! For Yuki-Onna, that's ludicrous for the price I got. The $40 range would be considered a steal for her even if she was a loose doll with no box, chipboard, or certificate. Thank you, reseller, for being so fair!

I'm treating the LDD's name as a proper given name rather than as an epithet, though properly, it would be a descriptor. The way LDD capitalized it on their archive makes it seem like they're treating it as a character name rather than an epithet.

Yuki-Onna's name is blatantly misspelled as "Yuki Onno" on the chipboard, and are you kidding me, Mezco? Way to show care for cultural adaptation. It's an embarrassing look, but fortunately, this is an honest error that all copies share and it's a legit product. My debacle with the Resurrection Lilith mess got me paranoid that this was somehow a forgery and that the outstandingly low price for Yuki-Onna meant another scam!

The Series 24 chipboards are clearly personalized imagery, since Yuki-Onna's face appears in the back, as do snowflakes and icy fog. I wonder if Beelzebub's board is swarming with flies! There's also a skull and candle on a book, which feels very Western-demonology in a way that highlights how misplaced this character feels in S24.

The poem here says:

She'll appear to you on a snowy night

Her eyes will fill any lost soul with fright

Her icy breath will leave your corpse a frozen frame

If you encounter her and live, never speak her name

I guess the last line here means invoking her after you survive an encounter will doom you to her revenge? Like "you were lucky; best not tempt fate by mentioning her ever afterward?" That's not part of any legends for the spirit as far as I know. Here's a rewrite.

Gliding through the snowy night

With icy eyes of purest white

Her frozen breath will freeze you still

A victim of the winter's will

The Series 24 certificates aren't mortician's papers--they're legend scrolls similar to Series 17's and Series 27's, and don't list death dates because this series' cast aren't and never were human people. Fittingly, Series 17 and 27 also lack proper death dates--the former with no dates at all because the legends aren't defined individuals, and the latter instead providing dates when the figures emerged in folklore. Yuki-Onna's scroll quotes an old Japanese artwork of the ghost, which is a nice touch, but again, the demonology design of the scroll does not fit...and she's spelled "Yuki Onno" again, indicating the typesetter sincerely thought this was correct. It's not.

Here's a closeup of the art and the original.

From Sawaki Suushi's Hyakkai-Zukan, 1737.

I always like when LDD brings in historical documents to converse with the dolls. I've also seen it with LDD Captain Bonney's chipboard quoting an illustration of the real Anne Bonny, the Series 7 dolls quoting from a medieval illustration series depicting their requisite deadly sins being punished in Hell, and the Series 27 chipboards featuring antiquated maps of the regions the dolls are from. It shows some research and effort...but Yuki-Onna's name typos and series context undermine the sense that Mezco understood their source material. I'm not saying they didn't--the lore in the poems is pretty proper and the design is nice. This doll just feels a little...loosey-goosey.

The certificate poem says:

When the snow falls on a darkened night

Beware this demon who blends in with the white

Her gaze will send fear down your spine

Her frozen breath will make you slowly decline

But should she decide not to cause you pain

Make sure you never whisper her name

So both poems mention a taboo about the name of the spirit telling you not to invoke her if you've escaped an encounter, but I couldn't find any source of this being accurate to any yuki-onna folklore. Where was Mezco getting their information?

And a very loose rewrite.

A blackened night against the snow

Hides caves where one should never go

A pretty spirit living there

With powder skin and raven hair

May take you in, but do beware

She may just vanish in thin air

Like snowflakes scattered by the breeze

And shredded by the swaying trees

There are legends of yuki-onna being wives or guests but vanishing into the air like snow or ice under mysterious circumstances proving they're not human, so I wanted to try at one of those. The two poems she got are pretty repetitive in content. I do have to give it to LDD for not writing haiku, though. I think that could be very corny if not outright stereotypical. I can't be sure they wouldn't have given her a haiku if they'd thought of it, though.

If we really must, then:

Wind tears through the trees/Near the beauty's frozen den/Screaming from beyond

Here's the doll unboxed.

She came with packaging elastics holding her hair in back, and a red paint mark on her left heel. I've never heard of this being a deliberate paint mark on the doll as a design feature, nor does it scan for anything regarding Japanese dolls or cultural imagery, so I took the liberty of wiping it off later.

Yuki-Onna's hair is very simple and classically Japanese, being long and black with bangs across the forehead. She has no hair decorations, which I think is something of a missed opportunity for more detail, though there's nothing in the folklore making a hair accessory a requirement. The hair is rooted with full scalp coverage, and is silky and tangle-free. The bangs lie well with zero gel, but the long hair needs a boil to straighten it.

Yuki-Onna is stark white in accordance with her snowy background, and her face paint has some slight departures that show an aim to stylistically invoke Japanese art aesthetics.

She has two straight angry eyebrows, and her eyes are fully-outlined with thick black makeup that wings outward, while her irises are stark white and outlined, with small pupils. The makeup borders overdraw the shape of her eyes a bit on the sides, so up close, the sculpt contour can be distracting as it often is with paint designs that break from the sculpt. Her rendering style isn't really like traditional Japanese portraiture, but I think it does a good job leaning into a sense of Japanese art while working with the design standards set by the LDD face sculpt, which looks best with full irises and pupils. I don't think Yuki-Onna is attempting to look like a traditional Japanese doll with a meta element, but she is taking the Living Dead Dolls style into some Japanese tones. I know the Hopping Vampire in Series 27 does feature a meta element with a gloss finish that evidently aims to mimic traditional dolls from China.

Yuki-Onna's eyes are slightly wonky, with her right iris and pupil being lower than her left, but it doesn't distract me enough to break the doll, and if this was why her price was low, then more for me, I say.

Her lower lip has a stripe of red down the middle, while the rest of her lips are bare, and under her left eye, she has a small LDD sulfur symbol. 

The lip paint or presence of an eye symbol don't appear to be historically-sourced makeup styles, but it does successfully read as "artistic Japanese" and possibly invokes some traits associated with kabuki theater or geisha. Red and white contrast are iconic to Japanese art and traditional makeup, down to the colors forming the national flag. Because Yuki-Onna is clearly not conflating with geisha otherwise (that would have made her feel quite ignorant), I think this faceup is just a grasp at visual stylization to make the doll's art aesthetic feel more dramatic, spooky, and artsy traditional, and I hazard to say it's successful. I don't get bad vibes from it.

(Funny that I've also seen a very similar lip paint accent for G3 Monster High Cleo de Nile, used to signify an abstract flair from an entirely different culture--Ancient Egypt!)

Yuki-Onna is wearing a white kimono with a black obi, which is quite proper and expected per the folklore--yuki-onna are almost always described as wearing a white kimono that blends into the snowy scenery, while the black obi around the waist adds contrast and balance with her hair and makeup. The color-blocking on this doll is very strong and perfectly achieves the desired aesthetic.

Kimono are wrapped around the body with the left side over the right unless the wearer is deceased, and I think it would have been really cool if LDD knew that and layered the robe like she was dead. It still looks nice. I'm also not aware of any Japanese folkore where spirit yōkai are identifiable by wearing kimono like a corpse, so it's not like that touch would have made this doll more accurate. The kimono is entirely white satin of good flexible smooth quality, and is undecorated. I think the fabric choice makes sense here, and the simplicity works. The sleeves are long enough to cover the hands, which is a fun effect, though it can sometimes make her look like she has no hands and her arms are too short.

The kimono is long enough to hide her feet from most angles, which is appropriate for kimono and for a yuki-onna, who I like to imagine would look mostly human, but glide across the floor as if they had no legs whatsoever.

I was wondering if the kimono and obi were one piece or two. It would make the most sense for the obi to velcro in back and the kimono to open in front and come off just like the human-sized pieces, but it was theoretically possible for the kimono and obi to be sewn together in one spot, or, most distastefully, for the kimono be sewn closed in front and open down the back like I saw with Alistair Wonderland's shirt and jacket.

If the kimono had no closure of its own, then it would be possible to wrap it corpse-style by putting the right over left.

The obi has a big bow on the back, but it is a separate velcro'd piece with a closure that has nothing to do with the bow.

Unfortunately, there is a velcro closure on the kimono front to keep it tidy for the sash, so while this is a very good user-friendly feature, I'm not swapping the fold of the robe to "dead style" without the velcro showing.

I could get a fake flower bloom and stick velcro to the back to make an attachment to hide the velcro, but I don't really need to.

I tried it with Ella Von Terra's velcro flower hair decoration, and it kind of works, but the velcro attachment is so close to the obi when the robe swaps its fold over.

Yuki-Onna's body is all white but has a separate white tone painted on for underwear. Her feet are not very flat and stable for standing regardless of how I pose her hips, which is disappointing. 

I took her down to clean her up and boil her hair, and with her tidied, she's fantastic. I really liked the look of some hair pulled in front of her shoulders:

And it can look good dramatically fanned around her body.

Here's Yuki-Onna with the Banshee, the other cultural-folkloric spirit LDD made.

Beginning art photos, I took a couple of portraits against a white backdrop.

In lieu of real snow at the moment, I took a white backdrop and shut her in a chilly window and fogged up the glass to create pictures of her in the haze of a blizzard--I think this worked really really well!

I also took her outside in the afternoon to photograph her against the grey winter sky and bare trees.

And I edited a wider frame of the last one for more of an artsy design with a stylized red sun and black border.

I got some snow that night, but it was a thin fall and frozen crunchy. Not enough for full scenery. Still, I photographed her on the patio tiles like she's haunting some town or court.

More snow gave me a few more pictures. I edited the leaves to look red to match her in the second.

Having nothing of a cave or mountainside around me, this was the scenery I could feasibly use for her. For proper setting, I edited her into pictures from elsewhere.

And because Yuki-Onna is associated with a special aesthetic, I wanted to recreate that with an art piece, here, striving for an emulation of the ukiyo-e art form many traditional Japanese paintings and woodblock prints emerged from.

I'm not trained in Japanese art at all, nor do I love printmaking, so my nod to the art form was painting, eyeballed and executed with the facilities I have. I used a brown "natural" pulpy construction paper sheet for the background and pen to outline the design, then used acrylic paint to fill it in. I outlined the frame as a coffin using an LDD box lid so I could cut it out and mat it on a white background framed like an older Japanese hanging banner piece. It was difficult stylizing LDD Yuki-Onna into the proportions and linework of old Japanese figure art, especially because this long loose hairstyle doesn't seem to feature in portraits that follow this specific facial rendering style--all the ladies in this traditional art style seem to have updos. I think it worked out, though. The hair and red sulfur symbol and the transcribed kanji of the yōkai's name are brushwork, while the face and outlines are pen. The clouds are dabbed on.

Of all my dealings with yōkai artwork, this is the closest I've come to matching actual Japanese traditional art, though I won't claim it's especially strong. The intent comes across, and that satisfies me for now.

I then endeavored to mat and present this piece in a style close to traditional Japanese art hangings I've seen, and ended up evoking designs I've seen for pieces placed on scrolls, though this is a rigid material that cannot actually roll up the way it was made. 

Yuki-Onna should have been in a series of ghosts or traded spots with Mephistopheles in the later Series 27, and her name should have been rendered correctly on her packaging copy, but she's an extremely striking dramatic doll interpreting Japanese art and folklore in a way that looks earnest and successful without feeling blatantly cliché or ignorant or disrespectful *cough* Milu *cough*. 

Extra, Extra, Bleed All About It: Isaiah

Isaiah was a doll in Series 11 who depicted a retro newsboy killed by a head trauma from being hit by a car. The eeriest aspect of his story, however, was that his newspapers told stories of the immediate future, including his own manslaughter printed in ink just before it happened--"tomorrow's news today", as his chipboard poem put it. Isaiah thus takes his name from the Biblical prophet.

I had no immediate plans to get this doll, and this was actually the replacement for the doll caught in the holdup, making this my first roundup where I've reordered any entries counter to how I received them chronologically. It just makes sense here. A Tumblr mutual, angelgoatduck, tipped me off to someone selling some LDDs, including a complete Isaiah for a lowish price! He was the perfect completion to this batch.

Isaiah is my first doll from Series 11, which is an unthemed assortment. I definitely intend to get one other S11 doll soon and might get a third or fourth, but there's something to appreciate about all five. Only Killbaby isn't really my style, but I understand her appeal. My Isaiah came completely unboxed, but complete in contents, with everything in the front of the tray and with some damage to the tissue which the seller alerted me to. It's not too bad, and I said that I was happy with the tissue as long as it was original. My showcase of LDD is part documentation, part archival, so having factory S11 tissue was more important to me than its condition.

Series 11 has a green tissue color in a shade that might not have been repeated. I know the Toy Soldier and S7's Envy had green tissue, but it seems like a more vibrant "default" green while S11's is a muted forest tone. Green used to be my favorite color (I don't play favorites at all anymore) and I still love to see it. I appreciate the LDD tissue colors that stand out.

The Series 11 chipboard design wasn't something I ever paid attention to before. The board has an irregular edge and a rectangular shape, and features a very yellow-green three-quarters closeup of the doll's head.

His chipboard poem says:

Delivering his papers

This one's a little prophet

With tomorrow's news today

And a bloody head split

And a rewrite.

With a bundle of the papers

Full of news that's yet to be

Poor Isaiah got his head split

If he'd only cared to read...

Here's the death certificate. Isaiah died on October 29, 1929. 

This was the fateful date of the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. This is likely just to establish his context and aesthetic more in history, but perhaps it's this specific day because the crash and Depression were something that everyone wishes had been foreseen. 

His certificate poem says:

They found this paperboy's limp body

His bicycle en route but quite shoddy

A car left behind a twisted gory wreck

Papers did fly, crushed skull, broken neck.

Thankfully the doll, while bloody and beaten, doesn't look quite as bad as all that. The mention of a bicycle suggests he was a suburban paperboy, but his costume and reference to the stock market crash make him feel very urban to me. He should be a city newsboy, while newsboys on bikes conjure strong suburban-neighborhood tones. I'm going to disregard that in this rewrite, at least so his setting is more ambiguous and can be interpreted in either locale.

The car swerved and crashed right upon the dark corner

Where little Isaiah sold news for Perdition

A broken young boy killed with nary a mourner

The unforeseen crime topped his special edition.

Here he is out of the box. He seems fairly untouched, with a slightly aged elastic holding on his cap--though it might not be an original packing elastic. An elastic from 2006 has almost no chance of surviving that long, so maybe the previous owner put the band on for shipping. That question doesn't matter much to me. Isaiah doesn't need an elastic holding his hat on, though. The outfit has a lot of loose threads and his right sleeve seems a lot longer, but it turns out both sleeves are the same length and they're supposed to be pushed up his arms.

Isaiah starts on top with his newsboy cap, which is grey denim fabric in a puffed shape with a brim. The piece rests on his head snug with the gathering inside forming its shape. The piece is big enough to fully hide his hair on all sides, which is unusual. The piece also has some staining for dirty effect as well as bloodstains on the side where he was hit.

The brim falls over and shadows Isaiah's eyes, but the cap can be pulled backward to light his face better and show his brows.

Isaiah's hair is done entirely with brown flocking to make it look very close-cropped and short. 

I don't love this--or at least, I think the doll could look better totally bald in this case, but it's fine and works better in-person than I expected. I know Jacob in Series 13 afterward would have similar flocking for his hairstyle, done in black, though the first flock-haired LDD was Sheena in Series 3. From the front, she may look like she has a wild red bob, but those are just bangs at the very front, and the rest of her scalp is covered in black "shaved" flocking. Billy of the Psychobillies two-pack exclusive set also has all-flocked hair. LDD Presents Showtime Beetlejuice wears an elabprate plastic carousel headpiece, with the hair underneath looking close-cropped, but it looks like it's just painted, rather than flocked or rooted.

Isaiah's flocking has some spots that look scuffed and lighter, but this is fairly typical, and there's no actual wear or reduction in the material. 

With the combination of the texture of the flocked hair and the fit of the cap, it is actually possible to lift and move Isaiah by pinching onto only the fabric on the top of the cap. It's that tight! Without flocked hair, there wouldn't be enough friction to keep his hat on that securely! No rubber band  was necessary for packaging!

(Reminding myself how nice it is that LDD never stapled items to doll heads with plastic tags like Mattel so often does.)

Isaiah's face is very creepy and has a great paint job.

He has rough-textured brown eyebrow paint and eyes that look beaten in with smudgy reddish shading around them as well as heavy dark brown outlines. His irises are grey with yellow pupils and a red ring around them, and from a distance, they look like they're dully glowing gold in a super spooky way.  More shading makes his face look rough, while his lips are bluish with corpse-like line painting over them. He's also yet another doll I had never realized uses the bumpy-skin head mold. 

This sculpt originated on Posey, then was seen on Faith and Hollow and Captain Bonney, all on the swivel doll build, but maybe it's actually Isaiah who might have ushered the sculpt into the ball-joint LDD era, because he actually comes before 13th-anniversary Posey. I can't say for sure he pre-dates Resurrection Posey, however, so it's possible a Posey was still the one to bring this sculpt to the second body design. I think the head mold definitely fits Isaiah. His bumps are lightly accented with some color-washing to bring them out. 

Isaiah is very similar to Hollywood in that both have gory deaths from a head wound induced by an automotive accident, though Isaiah was a hit pedestrian/cyclist while Hollywood was the driver in an out-of-control car. Both are wounded on the sides of their heads, but Isaiah is on the left, while Hollywood is wounded on the right. Their paint is very similar, though Isaiah's blood paint subtly goes into his flocked hair, while Hollywood's hair is oddly clean.

While Hollywood's hair wasn't drenched, LDD did still have the diabolical detail of the scalp being painted red and pink in that segment to add to the head-wound imagery and suggest her brain was bashed open.

It would have been an interesting choice if the same car accident had killed both Living Dead Dolls--Hollywood behind the wheel and Isaiah under one--but of course, the chronology doesn't align. Hollywood could have been alive at the time of Isaiah's death, but she'd be significantly younger. She died in 1967 and is styled as a grown woman.

Isaiah's skintone and vinyl cast are unique among LDD, presenting as a yellowish creamy color that feels pale but also aged. I think it really suits him under the lens of a real antique doll gone twisted, and I wouldn't change the color a single tone. It coalesces perfectly with the colors of his costume and paint and hair. I think Isaiah is a really strong design.

Isaiah's body costume is one piece made to look like two--grey denim overalls layered above a blue collared long-sleeve shirt. With his cap, it's very classic-newsboy. The historical cap has clear DNA from the archetypal Victorian street urchin, and a city newsboy wouldn't be much different from that, but the outfit is clearly of its time in the late 1920s. 

The shirt portion has a fairly large collar, and as mentioned, the sleeves are long and slide over his hands if they aren't bunched up, which seems deliberate to oversize his costume. Overlarge clothing is an easy way to emphasize or create a childlike look. The shirt has a defined panel overlap in front, but no simulated buttons. The overalls match the hat and have similar dirtying, and have decorative silver buckles on the straps which would be used on a real pair to adjust tightness. The pocket on the chest is functional.

The outfit has bloodstains on the same side as his major head wound, making the design more cohesive.

The costume is sewn together as one piece and velcros in the back, which is typical for boy-doll outfits, including LDD's. It would be more surprising if this was two parts.

The tailoring of the costume, perhaps as part of a deliberate oversizedness, is not too tight and is not difficult to slide off or on the body, unlike some others I've encountered. The boots slide easily up the overall legs because the ankles aren't super tight.

If you trimmed the sleeves, you'd have a pretty good base for a farm-girl Pearl custom LDD.

Mia Goth as the violent, disturbed lead in Pearl (2022).

Isaiah's body is unpainted for the most part. His head wound does not trickle onto his torso because the shirt covers it all, and there's only some shading on his hands besides.

Despite him being in the most treacherous period for LDD hip joints, Isaiah's were not stuck and did not snap on me.

Isaiah's boots are a pretty soft, flexible cast of the round-toed mold and have a brushed dirty effect that almost looks like rusted metal by accident.

He does not have socks to make these fit tight, so he's a wobbly boy. As with Lilith, it feels too early in the brand for this BS. I expect sockless boots on later dolls, but in Series 11? Ugh. I guess I can't blame it, though, because if any Series 11 doll didn't have the budget for socks, it was the one with a fully-written eight-page printed prop document!

The biggest exciting draw to Isaiah was his miniature newspaper. Something this elaborate and full of Easter eggs is exactly the kind of thing I would do, and I have done so, extensively, for Series 5 and my ongoing LDD dollhouse project. As such, I was excited to finally get a good look at this document and see how Mezco filled it out. Conceptually, this had the promise of being one of the coolest LDD accessories ever. But also, like. That's my job, Mezco!

The piece unfolds to this size, and is fully-printed. It's stapled together on a seam like a booklet rather than being loose sheets like a real newspaper, and...fair enough. That makes it much easier to work with. The paper feels like fairly good quality. It's more robust than actual newsprint, at least.

The paper is called The Rotting Register, and is dated to October 28, 1929, indeed the day before Isaiah died. I feel like it's actually a bit strange he would have this paper, because tomorrow's news today is also yesterday's news when it happens. On the day Isaiah died, he ought to have been carrying an October 29 edition printed with news from the 30th. But it makes sense for the doll to have the edition that predicted his tragedy, even though narratively he'd have carried it while still alive. If I had worked with this eerie concept of immediately-prophetic newspapers, I'd have changed the story so the edition carried the news that was yet to occur that very day rather than tomorrow. As such, Isaiah would be carrying the newspaper saying "YOU WILL DIE TODAY", and then he'd die that day, found with papers saying exactly that. Make it more like a horoscope, in that sense--the edition advises on the immediate and so it makes a little more sense for dead Isaiah to hold the paper that predicted it.

The article written about Isaiah's death doesn't specify where it happened, but it suggests that it was a murder and a hit placed on him by a rival paper, which is exceedingly violent and morbid. I do love the surrealism of an article written in semi-future tense, though I wish the bizarrre tense had been maintained in the "will be" phrasing for longer.

The second front-page article discusses a study conducted by Dr. Dedwin suggesting that daily interaction with a Living Dead Doll reduces your chances of death. I'm not sure what this would mean in-universe. Do the LDDs consider themselves to be dolls and toys or not? Is there a concept of dolls in a world of LDD where they see themselves as normal people? Surely; The Lost has a toy rag doll accessory. And why would Dedwin want to reduce death? Broadly, I think this is a metaphorical bit of subliminal messaging from LDD: "Buy our dolls and you'll feel better." Honestly, though? This hobby has absolutely given me joy and excitement and structure and things to look forward to. I can't exactly say this sentiment is wrong, at least in my case.

As with his chipboard, "Doctor" is not abbreviated in Dedwin's address.

I'm going to sound extremely obnoxious and insufferable, but LDD did not consider the chronology of deaths when writing this newspaper, and most characters are anachronistic here because they died after October 28, 1929 when this edition would have been printed in this universe. I did consider that chronology with my Series 5 news pieces (read my Series 5 posts all recut together here). Because I am obsessed. But I don't think the range of Isaiah's prophetic papers would extend as far as a character who died in 1993 like Dedwin.

Here's the first interior spread.

The top article is a fluff piece about Gluttony and Schitzo (a problematic pair if ever there was one; see here for why Gluttony has issues), who are apparently besties and roommates...or they're just the only people not subject to each other's violence--Gluttony doesn't eat clowns because of that corny old joke, and he eats too much to laugh at Schitzo's jokes, so he doesn't fit the clown's murder M.O. 

Schitzo was dead since 1923 and suits an appearance in a 1929 paper, but Gluttony died in '74. 

The lower half of the page is a mix of apparently real print ads and LDD imagery--an ad for what looks like the LDD board game, and an ad for The Great Zombini's magic show, copying over the chipboard art from his and Viv's doll set.

The LDD board game features multiple characters who wouldn't be around at the time of 1929, and Zombini and Viv died in '75.

The facing page makes mention of Posey, but uses an old prototype photo of her, with an old doll box design. This picture is still on the LDD site.

The headline echoes the tagline "When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth" from George A. Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. This little box isn't formatted like an article, really, and doesn't suggest there's one to be found with more information.

Posey died in 1970.

Next to this is a poem rewriting "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music to be morbid.

Below that is an article about a cat shooting mice with a gun...okay? The intersection of "lol-random" and "brutal edgy" isn't any funnier than those styles on their own. Props to the headline punning on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, though.

The next spread is an extended feature about Vincent Vaude, and hey, I did that! This piece, however, discusses the aftermath of his death, detailing how he continues to perform his act in a fetid trunk, reappearing onstage almost like a haunting. He performed in the Dedfolk Theater, which I got wrong in my own piece. Having not known about this paper, I named his locale as the Long Theater after Ed (and I probably should have named it after the guy who didn't lose himself the job at LDD instead.)

I think this is a cute article, though the use of actual human photography blurs the canon a little as to what Living Dead Dolls are. Also, Vincent's trunk is being sold to Ripley of Ripley's Believe it or Not! That's a weird crossover and the mention is likely not based on any real relationship to the Ripley's brand. Just an offhand reference to a real institution.

This was my piece about Vincent, which is set in a wholly self-contained universe and written in mind of the death dates as considered on a chronological timeline--only characters dead before Vincent were allowed to be referenced.

The next spread of the paper breaks the fourth wall and the 1929 kayfabe open entirely by featuring an article waxing horrific about creators Ed Long and Damien Glonek taking normal photo-ops with fans at meet-and-greets.

I believe Glonek is the man holding his hand facetiously over the fan's mouth, while Long is in the cap. The fan's eyes have been blocked out here, which is probably fair play for a published document like this, though it's possible the fan would have embraced a cameo here...and I'd be surprised to be able to ID them with their mouth already covered. Because edgy, Long and Glonek are said to be kidnappers and murderers posing with fans before disappearing them. I have no reason to believe either committed genuine misconduct, at least not in terms of a personal relationship. Ed Long is alleged to have taken commission money without delivering, which is believed to be the reason for his departure from LDD and the brand's stagnation in the late 2010s.

Next to this is a small spot advertising an art show, which were real LDD events that happened, but no dates are hinted at to identify which LDD art show this might have been. I guess whichever one took place right  after this doll was released in 2006.

Under that is a poem? Maybe? with a mirrored title saying "I Buried Paul" over lines of "Bread and Butter" and a few "Kill Kill Kill" lines. "I Buried Paul" is actually an alleged backmasked lyric/auditory illusion heard when playing the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" in reverse, contributing to the unhinged pop-culture conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney died and was replaced at some point with someone playing his role. I have nothing on where the pairing of "Bread and Butter" and "Kill Kill Kill" comes from.

At the bottom of the page, there's a resurgence of prophecy and period-appropriate content foretelling the Black Tuesday market crash--though this would be far more suited as the front-page prediction. A newsboy dying from a paper rivalry is comparably small potatoes.

This actually feels like an ominous warning that could mysteriously make it into a publication right before a disaster.

The next page features a "horrorscope" feature, with an evident gag of advice messages designed to unsettle you and ruin your life. 

I don't hold with horoscopes or astrology or fortune-telling of any sort, so I can appreciate a satirical take. 

The last page is on the back, featuring another news article from the future, foretelling how a brand called "Bloody Ass" will confess to being fake-goth and admit it has no originality and...uh? 

LDD? Did someone hurt you? Who was it?

This sounds like a bitchy real-life veiled rant against some company LDD felt was copying them in some way. There's nothing I could find of a real goth brand called "Bloody Ass" (thank god; can you imagine?), so who is this targeting? 

Is this possibly supposed to be a jab at Bleeding Edge Goths and their creator Steve Varner? BEGoths are goth fashion dolls with a cult following, and they did recently announce a plan to relaunch with higher doll articulation around the same time LDD did. They released after LDD started and existed by the point of Isaiah's release, and the scansion of "Bloody Ass" and "Bleeding Edge" is similar...but BEGoths have nothing really in common with LDD. They're adult figures and fashion dolls primarily focused on the style and alt subculture rather than supernatural horror tropes. Only a few LDDs, like Morgana, share much territory with BEGoths, and no BEGoth character designs infringe upon LDD's. 

Oh wait a damn minute. 

Were...were the LDD Fashion Victims involved? I don't know how the dates aligned, but in this scenario where we assume LDD hated BEGoths, then maybe their Fashion Victim dolls had something to do with it.

 

Fashion Victims Sadie.

BEGoths.

Maybe LDD made their line of sexualized adult fashion dolls to compete with and insult BEGoths, hoping to outsell them or offend them? LDD calling BEGoths harlots through the Fashion Victim designs would be even worse than the Fashion Victims just being extremely skeevy dolls in their own right, because then you get more explicit misogyny and the aspect of pettiness, but maybe there is a parody aspect to the Fashion Victims--parody toward a competitor the designers bizarrely thought was tarted-up? Awful if true, but compelling to consider. If this is the case, then LDD declared war on someone who wasn't actually harming them and then fell on their own sword releasing poorly-made yucky dolls and making damn fools of themselves.

That might be too absurd and cynical, though. The other, probably more likely, way this rivalry snit might have gone was that the Fashion Victims were LDD's own stupid embarrassing idea in a vacuum, the BEGoths arrived after, and that superficial similarity was what got LDD mad and made them feel like they were being copied and infringed upon and thus fueled this newspaper vaguepost. But I'm sorry sir; they did it better. BEGoths aren't pervy porno dolls. They're bad bitches; know the difference. 

Imagine getting mad your ugly horny dolls are threatened by something with more style and class.

Please know that maybe I'm absolutely wrong. Maybe there's no real drama this article is referencing. The Fashion Victims might not have entangled with BEGoths in any way. But I don't know. I feel some Gen X callout-post energy in this article, and if the target is BEGoths, then that potentially explains a lot. I feel like I figured something out. I think the girls were fighting.

This incentivizes me even more to get a Fashion Victim on the table just to figure out who in this chicken and egg puzzle did what, but there's still so much to prioritize for the blog beforehand.

But seriously? Calling out fake goths? Leave that mentality to Ebony Dark'Ness Dementia Raven Way and grow up.

Next is a feature about another Series 11 doll, Jubilee, an undead girl haunting birthday parties. She did actually die before this paper's time, in 1893. 

The article gives me a little whiplash, because it starts like a perhaps-clunky LDD poem and then turns out to be rambling prose, like a recitation that turns into a panicked spiel, like:

Party till you puke 

Is what the little one did

But the real scare is that she keeps coming back for more even though she passed away many years ago-

I feel like I got verse-baited, if such a thing can be.

Below that is an ad for the site Unearthly Possessions, which was an independent mail-order site owned by Damien Glonek and sold handmade LDDs before they were taken into Mezco Toyz and mass-produced starting with the official Series 1. That's a fun piece of history. Today, LDD per Mezco uses the title "Unearthly Possessions" to describe the merchandise category of LDD branded swag that isn't dolls--currently, the only inventory for this group is a T-shirt and the supplemental accessory pack for the Return doll line.

Isaiah's newspaper doesn't have a lot of lore consistency or perfect grammar, but it's a really interesting snapshot into what LDD was about at the time, and if not a time capsule for Isaiah's universe, certainly is one for 2006 LDD.

While the folded paper easily wedges under Isaiah's arm, one thing this doll was sorely missing was a satchel to carry his paper in. I tried looking at premade options and styles, but ended up buying some mini canvas tote bags to harvest for the appropriate fabric. Newsboys are stereotyped carrying fairly shapeless over-the-shoulder bags that look like they could be made from flour sacks, so I emulated that. This was all glued after I lost patience sewing. I also dabbed some blood paint on to keep consistent with the rest. The edges are sealed with fabric glue.

I was fortunate to get the strap exactly right. It easily slides over his head and raised arm, and the pouch hangs at the right level. His paper fits easily in it, and I decided to put his rolled death certificate (sans ribbon) in as a second accessory. He's a rare case who makes sense using the document as a display item.

My photoshoot with Isaiah was pretty basic, but worked with themes of old-timey photography, a newspaper-style backdrop, some implied urban scenery, and the newspaper as a prop, which was difficult to keep in his hands, even with putty.

Overall, I like Isaiah far more than I was sure I would. In-person, his design is perfectly cohesive with a spooky gory vintage theme that suits a historical character and an old doll. I love his colors and paint and costume, and his newspaper is a fascinating, fascinating piece of LDD history and is its own production! His outfit was very messy with loose threads and the lack of a satchel and socks bothered me, but the satchel was easily remedied myself. He's a neat little guy.

Now for the third doll:

71V1/\/6 |)34|) |)077

So, last year, I did my first atypical LDD roundup in roundup 3, where I featured four dolls but only three characters, by way of discussing Vincent Vaude and his variant in one entry. Now, I do the opposite: my first LDD Roundup with three dolls and only two characters! 

Oh, yeah.

This doll is Isaiah too. Resurrection XI Isaiah, to be precise.

I've already shown you Isaiah's only previous doll--vintage gory paperboy on the haunted-antique-doll spectrum of visuals. And to Resurrect Isaiah, they obviously drew from his design and--uh. Wait. They. They turned him...into a modern hacker cyborg?

Resurrection Isaiah (or would that be 15414H?) is by far the most removed and unidentifiable any Res doll has ever been when compared to their debut. Inhuman pallor, green computer colors, modern minimalistic clothing, and circuitry and camera eyeballs define this doll, and he truly puts the "AI" in "Isaiah". There are no visual markers you can use to correctly, conclusively identify which prior character he's redesigning. And let me tell you, it's been actual years of me saying "dang, that's a cool doll, but why???" for me, until it finally, finally clicked. It's nothing to do with computers as media and communications. The newspaper is a red herring. 

The reason these two dolls are both Isaiah, the only way the Res doll could have possibly been inspired by the main, is down to just two words: 

the future. 

Series 11 Isaiah had papers that foretold future events; Res is a caricature of futurism itself. It's so obvious, and yet so obtuse. Absolutely the biggest conceptual stretch in the Res lineup, but it's genuinely rewarding to finally understand what the team were doing with this. 

Anyway, I always liked Res Isaiah's aesthetic and he's a low-end Res doll on the aftermarket, so hey. He struck me right in the moment. The reason such a prestige doll is down in a roundup is kind of threefold--he was available in my January haul to complete a roster of three, I liked his design and he stands alone really easily, and I don't anticipate Res dolls becoming a staple of my LDD collection, but they're part of it now and I don't want to impose some loftier standard upon them in the way I blog them. I was fully ready to review him without the original until the roundup process derailed and a S11 Isaiah slid into place to complete the roundup. He ended up transposed to the second doll slot despite coming third because the structure would be less fun bringing him in after his Res.

Isaiah was in Resurrection XI, making him one of the Resurrected dolls whose main-series and Res-series numerals are the same value. 11 all around. Also in Res XI were S6 originals Dottie Rose and Hush, and S9 original Dawn. I like all of the set in some form. Hush's main is cute and her rat-suit variant is hilarious, Dottie Rose's variant is fun but I could see liking the main, and Dawn's variant is really poppy and strange with her kitschy candy colors mixing with gore. Res XI was one of the first LDD releases to be revealed and to drop after the point where I discovered the brand as a teenager, so I remember it pretty well. 

Res X just before had a special packaging gimmick where the dolls all had opaque black coffin window lids (like the Series 5 variants blindly slipped into full-set purchases) and their chipboards were laid over the outside of the box inside the shrink-wrap, but Res XI goes back to fairly standard packaging with regular windows. XI had a promotional gimmick of paper dolls to preview the character designs, and those paper doll illustrations are used as the character portraits on the chipboards, which have an arts-and-crafts doodle theme.

The rest of the chipboard has more doodles, including evil Satanic imagery.

Unlike Res II, the only other Res set I've acquired from thus far, Res XI reprints a poem on the chipboard, though this is Isaiah's S11 certificate poem, not what was on his chipboard. Both poems reference him being a newsboy and are equally ill-suited to this redesign, so I don't know why this one was chosen.

The death certificate matches the design of this point of certificates in LDD history, rather than reprinting the graphic style the S11 originals would have used in a new palette like the Res II certificates did. This uses the same poem as the chipboard, which was, again, S11 Isaiah's original certificate poem.

Here's Isaiah out. He's so striking.

Res Isaiah's look is really stark and unique among LDD as a whole, which understandably trends retro or vintage most often due to the dolls themselves being more resonant with older themes. No other LDD is this futuristic or as modernist as Res Isaiah, and I kind of love that he's out there doing something really different. For all I enjoy older styles and nostalgia, sometimes I crave modernism and boldness and Isaiah gives me that. 

His costume focus is his hoodie, which is made from hoodie material and is all black except for the neon green trim around the hood and the zipper.

The green trim does not transition into a full lining throughout the hood, and it is just around the inner edge, but it's very bright and dramatic. The hood isn't super snug around his face and it doesn't have drawstrings to tighten it, but I think it looks pretty good as it is.The hood pulls down to show off his hair.

Res Isaiah's hair is black and full, but feels slightly dry and has some unruly flyaways. When it's pulled together and arranged properly, it's worth it, though, because it's cut very very specifically to form a long curved swoopy bang that hangs over his right eye, emo-style.

Messy.

Perfect.

This is very fiddly, but again, so worth it. Trying to comb his hair out of his eyes exposes how many lengths his hair really has and it doesn't look as good.

I think the moody alt hair suits the spooky LDD alternative vibe and justifies the android aesthetic within the brand a bit more. Robots and horror are already a bit of a tangential theme, despite the fear fueling their use as sci-fi antagonists. 

The hair was soft but may have been lightly gelled because white flecks appeared in his bangs after some time. Going through the hair with a wet comb tidied it, and gel doesn't seem to be necessary to keep the shape in order, though I imagine it helps a lot.

Isaiah's face is really fascinating. His skintone is a slightly yellowish pale grey tone that's not quite white, and the doll has a slightly shiny finish that must be intentional given how visible it is. He's not on the level of gloss that Faith or Return Eggzorcist has, but he's not as matte as most LDDs are from their vinyl casting. 

His face paint design is simple but extremely cool. He has flat rings of grey shading around his eyes, and grey shading inside the gap in his lips, and the rest is neon lime circuitry designs around his face that make him look illuminated, artificial and futuristic. The circuits cross onto the eye shading but I think them either meeting the eye edge or starting at the end of the shading would have looked cleaner. The designs are still fun. They exist above his right eye, below his right eye and to the corner of his mouth, on his left temple, and below his left eye to his cheek...

...and from his right ear to his cheek.

Completing his android face design are his inset eyes, which have a unique design in shades of green that makes them look like camera apertures!

There's also visible black around the edge, which could be part of what the Res eyes are built into. The fake Lilith clone had this for her inset eyes:

So this could be similar to the build of the official dolls. Isaiah's black eye trim showing feels stylistic or at least, not jarring. Other Res dolls seem to have well-fit eyes as a rule, so I don't think Isaiah's are incorrect.

Isaiah's eyes are also smaller than Sadie's, and the sockets don't seem perfectly symmetrical. Is it possible the Res heads aren't new molds after all and the eyes are cut in? That would save all the new head molds that would be needed for Res dolls on top of the molds different eye sockets would require, but eye cups seem like they'd be required. How are the inset pieces secured? 

There are other Res dolls with big round eyes like Sadie's. I don't know. I just know Isaiah's eyes look great. 

There's a small black dot on his upper lip which I wasn't able to wipe off. His hair covers it when arranged properly.

Back to the hoodie, because its next special feature is a working zipper! The pull is long and bar-shaped rather than flat with a hole in the end. The only other LDD piece I've encountered with a working zipper is Return Sadie's dress, and Res Isaiah could be the first LDD with a working zipper at all, unless Calavera beat him to it ages ago in Series 18. I knew Isaiah was wearing a T-shirt underneath, but I'd completely forgotten what the design was, so I was excited.

The shirt is black, and made from a very stretchy material that a lot of things get printed on, and features a brushstroke inverted cross in a medium green that goes well with his eyes. The symbol is oddly religious/blasphemous for an android, but it suits Isaiah's Biblical name. I'd have expected the sulfur symbol, so this is a bit refreshing. The design is cute, but I wish it looked more modern and flat, or somehow computerized. His chipboard illustration featured a form composed of binary code numbers in green, and that would be more fun, if also more cliché. Even just completely flat vector strokes with blunt ends would feel more attuned to Isaiah's aesthetic. The brush look is more grunge or punk. I still appreciate it, though, and it makes him feel even more like a moody rebel kid. I feel like I know who this character is. His vibe is defined. While Res Isaiah's take on the future seems fairly likely to endure as aesthetic used for "the future" in the future, rather than being period-specific like The Jetsons' visual design, I think there's a bit of retro in his look that gives him a cyberpunk style.

The shirt does not open at all in back, and, as such, is not designed to be removed. 

Saves me the effort of checking for more details! (Still did; there aren't any.)

His head and maybe arms would need to pop out to safely remove this piece. Something similar was the case for Res XI variant Dottie Rose's shirt, in the same release collection.

There were a couple of nitpicky outfit flaws I noticed. The inner seam of his collar isn't fully hidden by the sew.

And the end of the zipper strip on his hoodie pokes below the right corner of the panel.

These are minor things, however.

Isaiah's pants are black and tight, and do velcro in back. He's wearing black round-toed boots and black socks are visible in the slit in the back, but I didn't take the boots off because they're tucked up his pant legs and it looks like it would be a pain to get them back up there.

Oh, and that's it, by the way. The boots. That's the sole design trait Res Isaiah meaningfully shares with S11!

No likeness whatsoever. It's so interesting!

Here's all three of my Res dolls now.

I could have called January "Resurrection Month" had all three Res reviews been able to post then. I got Sadie in December and Lilith and Isaiah both in January, with both Sadie and Isaiah ending up posting during the month after I got them.

Resurrection Isaiah is a simple doll, but he's so arresting and I love the alternative modern futurist character he has. His hoodie is a really fun piece, and it offers a lot of display variance thanks to the hood, zipper, and shirt underneath. 

I don't understand the variant of this doll. The colors are less focused, with pink trim on the hoodie, and the doll is less robotic, with airbrushed green eye shading, no circuitry, and white humanoid eyes. His shirt has a blue rendition of the same graphic. The color palette seems more eighties-retro in some way, but it's not as sharp and interesting and visually directed as the main feels.

I believe the lighting has dulled and greyed this doll out, but his produced vinyl color would be the same as the doll I've shown.

There are many Resurrections where the variant feels more clicked and desirable than the main to me, but Isaiah is one Res where the main is the best rendition.

Isaiah's futuristic android theme and camera eyes are rather similar to Monster High character Elle Eedee. Her color palette is futuristic blue while his is computerized green, which makes an interesting pair.

In the animation, Elle's facial plating grooves are all illuminated blue in a similar and more prominent effect to Isaiah's circuits. Actual circuit patterns appear on her cape here.

Elle has far more detail, but both are great dolls.

The first thing I needed was Isaiah against binary code imagery, Matrix-style, and I found an animation to throw up on my computer screen behind him. The results are stunning and seamless.

He also looked good illuminated by the screen itself.

The only parts of Isaiah that react super well to blacklight are his hoodie trim and skintone, but not his eyes or circuitry, but I still got some interesting pictures with that.

Other lighting setups worked nicely too. This is just an unusually captivating doll, so I was probably taking more pictures than were actually meaningful.

I used that blacklight photo where he looks illuminated from inside and clipped it onto some basic backgrounds.

With my review of Symphanee Midnight, I assembled a tableau of my black, white, and green dolls.

I couldn't resist re-staging it to add Isaiah to the group!

And just a few more pictures. Because I don't have a lot of modernist scenery or futuristic-looking tech, Isaiah is more amenable to portraiture than staged scenes, but he makes really good portraits!

I did have one piece I wanted to do digitally-- a movie poster of Isaiah looming over a cityscape as a face branching into circuitry like the image of SHODAN from the System Shock games. I did two takes with inverted colors since each option had its merit. The second take is more clean and sci-fi, but the first depicts the doll's face more accurately due to using a positive photo.

Res Isaiah is a simple doll and not the most spectacular production, but he's visually very refined and striking and artistic and has such a clean, bold, standout character design. Nobody else in LDD looks anywhere close to him or his aesthetic or genre, and his impact is strong. I also love his shinier skin, face paint, eye design, hairstyle, and zippered hoodie. He's just a little fiddly hair-wise and his costume isn't quite as polished as a first glance conveys. I think he's a fascinating doll, though, and he was a lot of fun to work with, for what little my means let me achieve. He's striking enough to coast on simpler portraits!

So that's this roundup complete...at last. January is already a marathon, but waiting the whole time to resolve my third doll definitely lengthened it for me, and I'm quite happy to have it packed away now! But my final lineup makes a lot of sense to me thanks to the alignment of Isaiahs in my roster.

Yuki-Onna was the easiest doll to photograph and devise ideas for with her wintry theming and environment, though I'm happy with both Isaiahs' work despite their limited scenery. Of the three dolls, it's possible I like Series 11 Isaiah the most. His design is just so correct and interesting, his outfit looks good, and he doesn't have any quality problems or overly fiddly aspects. His newspaper is also an all-timer novelty for the brand, and I had fun reading it, presenting it, and analyzing and speculating upon it. All the same, he was the only doll I saw fit to add to, and I do honestly think he was incomplete as-made. I don't know. 

This entire roundup is defined by serendipity--a cheap Yuki-Onna dropped into my lap, it was a time Res Isaiah made sense, and then his counterpart showed up cheap and complete again precisely when I needed him most. Things worked out in this roundup, and that's the takeaway. It all just worked out this time.