Maggot is one of the LDD fan community's bigger grail dolls. I think this is for the same reason as S12 Frozen Charlotte, and to a lesser extent, S12 Chloe: she's really cute. Maggot and Charlotte are probably the top two sweetest, most gentle-looking and most classically adorable dolls in the brand, giving them much wider appeal than most LDD characters. Maggot is a little grosser with her infectious theme, but it's pretty tame. Her colors are more horror-themed than Charlotte, but that doesn't make her alienating. Maggot also has a trick Charlotte doesn't: she's got a Japanese aesthetic, and Japanese iconography is very popular in the west.
I'm not actually sure why Maggot is Japanese-coded, but it's clear she is, for reasons I'll discuss. This probably wasn't on the minds of LDD, but as a mostly black-and-white horror doll with Japanese theming, you can make shallow associations between Maggot and the greyscale manga artwork of Junji Ito--though Ito's art style is more realistic and more often deals in more extensively visceral and surreal imagery than a girl with boils. I've read and collected Ito's manga devotedly (reading most of it first from unofficial translation before the late-2010s-onward wave of official English publication in book form!) and I can tell you Maggot rings no bells as far as his work goes.
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| Every time one of his new volumes shows up at the bookstore, I get it on sight. Trust me when I say I don't recognize Maggot in his works! |
I wouldn't be surprised if LDD Presents made a Tomie doll any day now. Nendoroid is going to, after making a doll of Kirie Goshima, the protagonist of Ito's magnum opus Uzumaki!
I ended up getting my Maggot through a deal with a seller who sold me Maggot, Sadie as Alice from the Wonderland set, and Series 1 Sin for a collective $350--a good deal, all things considered, because Maggot and Alice can each easily go for over $150 each solo. There was a hiccup because Sin ended up incomplete--the seller lost the coffin and non-doll parts in the time between photographing the sale dolls and me being able to pay, but she offered me another doll for no charge as compensation, so I ended up going forward with the Sin and getting Vanity as a generous bonus--that doll gets me a step on my next uncomfortable roundup, and getting her free was a welcome opportunity because, even for a relatively low-end LDD, I don't like her enough otherwise. I don't think my home is where the incomplete Sin will be staying because I really need one complete and with intact paint on her horns, but it was still a good deal and I can either find someone who does want Sin loose sans pitchfork, certificate, and coffin, or I can consider customizing her. A horned pale LDD could dye blue easily for an oni doll... I also still haven't gotten any news on the Return Sin doll I ordered yet, so it's fine that the S1 isn't yet in my collection as I want her.
Maggot's clear coffin lid was badly yellowed and dented, and the doll had been unboxed, but I was very glad to see she was complete and that her death certificate was present in back, still taped in the packet on the tray and never removed. Here's the lid on.
The actual doll is white underneath, a contrast between yellowed lid and doll I previously experienced with Frozen Charlotte. Unlike Charlotte, Maggot herself had no yellowing at all. Charlotte wasn't as yellowed as her lid, but she had a few discolored patches.
And her chipboard.
Both of her poems misspell the word "pus", though the doll mercifully doesn't feature any in her design. I will not replicate the typo, because it's an exceptionally unfortunate one. A second "s" totally changes the meaning in a terrible way.
Spreading her disease
Of infected boils and pus
This sad little maggot
Is really quite contagious
Not a rhyme. How about:
Little Maggot was pale and she played 'round the dead
As a dainty, small store of disease
When she itches her boils and smiles so sweet
You can't help but feel the unease
I tried to explain her name, because LDD didn't. Maggots are fly larvae, typically associated with rotting flesh, but have little to do with disease or the doll's theme. It's quite a nasty name for such a sweet doll, and I'm not sure why it was picked. None of Maggot's three dolls depict any maggots in her festering skin. I decided to explain the name metaphorically with my interpretation--pale kid associated with death.
Maggot is one of few LDDs with an incomplete death date recorded on her certificate, only specifying "sometime in 1946"...a fraught time for Japan, to be sure, though I'm not sure her theming and death year are meant to be associated by the audience. Her certificate poem says:
The declaration of time flows well with the phrase "sometime in 1946" replacing "on [date]" on a typical certificate, though "sometime" probably should be all lowercase.
The poem says:
Adorable little Maggot was the runt of the litter
Eyes of empty black, a peculiar little critter
Then one day she was infected with a disease unknown to man
Blistering boils and oozing pus, her cankerous soul now damned
LDD knew what they were doing--they acknowledge this is an adorable character. Also interesting to think of her as the smallest in a group of siblings, because we've never seen or heard anything about them as such. This might be the only LDD mentioned to have siblings which were totally "offscreen". All other LDD siblings are depicted as doll characters that go with each other.
Here's a rewrite.
The runt of the litter with eyes wide and black
She died of an illness but shortly came back
Now spreading the sickness unheard of to man
Sweet Maggot's a menace who's feared through Japan
As an infectious person from 1946 and implicitly Japan...it's not hard to take a few leaps and theorize that maybe Maggot was a remnant military bioweapon. Japanese WWII experiments in biological warfare, which included many unconscionable tortures upon people from vulnerable groups, are a dark, horrific, and shameful part of the country's past and maybe Maggot is a living dead vector of a flesh-eating disease developed in some war laboratory. In that sense, as a frilly girl with a dark industrial background, she'd pair well with Toxic Molly. Then again, none of her text states she's scientific in origin and her poems give no specifics of where her illness came from. Her death being the year after the war ended may also indicate that that isn't part of her concept. That's probably just me trying to tie her Japanese theme, era, and disease together in a way they don't have to be. Maybe her country and time period just have nothing to do with her infection, though it's hard for an immediately-postwar Japan setting to feel arbitrary. It's been posited her death year has to do with the time of the introduction of DDT in quelling the spread of malaria, which is an insect-borne disease, though not known for boils or an association with Japan.
Here's Maggot out of the box.
Maggot's color palette is solely black, white, and red, like so many other LDDs, but there's something uniquely delicate about how she does it. Her red tones are so faint and muted, and her overall look is so heartbreakingly sweet and prim that she feels like a dainty antique far more than an edgy terror. She's absolutely precious and my heart melts every time I look at her face. I think Frozen Charlotte is adorable too, but maybe Maggot is winning the contest because there's something so striking and disarming about her, perhaps something more tragic. Charlotte is very very sweet, but she looks more lighthearted and happy to do her own thing. Maggot looks like she wants a hug, which is terribly ironic for someone so infectious.
Her hair is black and center-parted with no bangs, falling in a steep curtain that frames her face in a way I really like, and each half of her hair is tied in a low ponytail at the side, sweeping over her ears. The hair ties are clear elastic that has yellowed and crumbled, and smooth, silky white satin ribbons have been tied in bows to dress the hair ties the doll was given.
Her hair will want combing, washing, and re-tying with a more stable material.
Maggot's skin is stark white and her face is unassailably charming despite the stark colors and the horror elements.
Maggot's eyes are painted with big black irises with two eye reflections each in a distinctively anime art style, perhaps closer to retro anime of the 1980s or so. The eyes remove any distinction between iris and pupil and give her a puppy-dog look despite the dimensions of the eyes themselves being no larger than normal for LDD. She has big lashes on the sides and lower edge of her eyes, and her mouth has a gentle smile while her eyebrows have sharp crooks at the ends but are in an upward curve that makes her expression very innocent and potentially friendly, wistful, or sad. She's just absolutely sweet, and unlike Chloe and Frozen Charlotte, Maggot has eyebrows to make her more personable and natural-looking, which aids her cute factor. Maggot's infection is depicted with shading and painted designs. Her eyes have red jagged brushing around the edges as well as pink airbrushing to give her an irritated look in a way that's still quite dainty and beautiful, while her face and body have patterns of sores in dark red with mixes of shades and gaps in them that give them a scabby, possibly infected look in a way that doesn't feel gratuitously repulsive. I could see her as a girl with a rash or another minor skin problem, and the sores not being super disgusting is good because Maggot is designed to be cute. Some of the sores cross directly from the bottom of her neck to her collar.
Maggot's lips are dark red with a vertical corpse-lining design in muted pink and black. Rain is actually the only Series 11 doll with no such corpse-lining on her lips! Isaiah and Jubilee have similar paint, and Killbaby has vertical lines on her mouth as part of her skull serial-killer face makeup. Series 12 afterward features sculpted lined corpse lips as one feature of the head mold debuted by Tessa, while Chloe has them painted. LDD had a thing for this visual at this period in the brand, huh?
I really like Maggot's face paint. It's got a retro charm with its anime theme, it's spooky, it's haunting, it's a little icky, and it's just cute. It's surprising how many aesthetic bases the design hits on, and that might be why she's so popular.
The dark smudge on her forehead cleaned off later.
Maggot's costume is all black-and-white and is one piece, depicting a sailor dress with lacy accents. Sailor dresses were associated with Japan through the seifuku or sailor fuku school uniforms worn by Japanese schoolgirls in the first half of the 20th century, though Maggot's dress looks more like an out-of-school outfit than a uniform since it's lacy and all one piece. The sailor look is definitely an intentional piece of Maggot's Japanese theming, though.
The top of the dress defines the sailor cut with the collar wrapped around the shoulders and the scarf layered under it, secured in the front. The black fabric of the dress is cotton, while the stripes of the dress are satin ribbon. Two horizontal stripes each feature on the collar, the bottom of the sleeves, and the hem of the dress. The dress's lace trim features at the base of the collar and at the hem.
The white scarf under the collar is a separate layer formed from two strips of white cotton sewn to the tops of the shoulders.
The black band encircling the tails is loose so the tails can be tightened and adjusted like sliding the knot of a necktie--though there's also the risk of the band sliding down off the tails and you having a hell of a time getting it back on. The scarf has some loose threads that needed cutting down.
The body of the dress has no horizontal waist seams or separate bodice, but the dress flows out into the skirt. The bottom of the skirt is a ruffle of sheer white fabric (which isn't tulle).
Maggot's socks have lace tops turned down over her ankles which match her costume very well and continue her delicate feel. Her shoes are classic black Mary Janes. My only other lace-sock LDD thus far is Tina Pink. Maggot's shoes are pretty loose on her, which I never like to see.
Maggot's sores feature somewhere on each of her six body pieces, with pink airbrushing backdropping them. None cross onto the back of her torso. The sores on her left arm are normally hidden by the rotation and her sleeve until she lifts the arm and turns it.
She has a faint red mark on her left hand, but it's not that out of place and I didn't care to wipe it off.
Resurrection Maggot's two dolls double down on her Japanese iconography, with both having anime eye designs, the main having big anime twintails and a square medical eyepatch, and the variant having the sailor style again and a black face mask with a manga-punk tone. Both Res Maggots have bangs and are are fully missing their right eyes thanks to the disease and have only one inset eye each, with hollow sockets on the other side. The main Res has sores like S11 and is dressed in a fun retro look, while the variant's sores are more goopy patches spread further on her skin and look pus-infected. Her white color balance and pitiful frowny face (using the sculpt debuted by Res Frozen Charlotte) are compelling. Both are grosser than the S11 doll, but the main is less so.
The Resurrection Maggots are cute and well-designed, but there's something special about the original that they don't have. The S11 doll is instantly adorable and I'm fully satisfied to have her as my resident Maggot. With Charlotte, I can see myself having and treasuring both the original and the Resurrection main because Res-main Charlotte looks so sad and triggers my protective empathy, and her design looks really wonderful in her own way. I think the Resurrection Maggots are cool, but I'm not putting them on my list right now.
I washed and combed Maggot's hair and replaced her hair ties with thin cord. The slippery satin ribbon was hard to re-tie into bows! Her hair feels fine after washing--better now than many other LDDs', but who knows how it'll last.
Here's my "cute grail dolls" collection--Maggot, Chloe, and Frozen Charlotte.
Maggot puts up a very strong fight for the honor of cutest. It's amazing what eyebrows can do.
Here's my two Japanese-themed LDDs--Maggot and Yuki-Onna. There are other LDDs who might be read as Japanese-coded, and I'd argue for it, but these two LDD characters (including Maggot's Resurrections) are the only ones I can confidently say are intended to be Japanese.
I took a picture of Maggot and edited it like a vintage piece from an album.
I also got some red and white cherry-blossom paper with Maggot in mind, which she works really well with--not just because she's Japanese, but because the blossoms mimic her sores.
Here she is in the leaves of a red berry tree.
Because I don't have Japanese scenery around, I instead spent a very very long time drawing Maggot freehand into an anime poster using a background traced and modified from a photo. If Google Translate failed me, I apologize, but the text was what it told me was "maggot" in Japanese.
Then I decided to go ahead and work with a Junji Ito style despite the doll having nothing really to do with him. As a base to modify, I traced over this panel centered on a young girl from his manga "The Strange Tale of the Tunnel", compiled in the volume Tombs.
I took a page out of the Resurrections' book by depicting the disease having eaten away and filled Maggot's right eye socket, since Ito is known for viscerally detailed distortion and gore in his artwork.
While Ito often does wordless panels for atmosphere and horror, I also did an edit with it presented like a dialogue panel so its context as manga imagery was clearer. I made the quote very ambiguous given the lack of context. Is Maggot making a genuine appeal, or is she cynically dismissing the potential for help?
Taking loose inspiration from the scariest chapter of Ito's magnum opus Uzumaki, I put Maggot in a white straw hat, which really suits her for looking cute or ominous depending on its tilt. I photographed her in my garage for sinister alleyway photos, then around the trees and garden for more pastoral pictures that suited her cute design and the hat. While the hat I'm referencing from Uzumaki was not a straw piece, the straw piece has the thematic advantage of being woven in a spiral!
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| The background tree is truly red, but I edited some green plants closer to the camera so they'd also be red. |
At the end of the day, I completely get the hype. There's something so absolutely endearing about this doll's design that stands out among the crowd. Black and white colors and icky skin sores can't do anything against the doll's gentle wide-eyed face and dainty clothing making her seem so innocent and bittersweet. Is she happy, is she wistful? She can be both, and regardless, her face has very strong cute appeal that I don't personally derive from most actual manga and anime. Chibi art with giant eyes and massive heads doesn't appeal to me, but Maggot is darling to the Nth degree. I wasn't sure I'd like or want her as much as Frozen Charlotte, but she may have won out for me. She arrived in better condition than my Charlotte, I have zero quibbles with her design, and there's something all her own that might make her even more endearing, just a bit. While that's subjective, she's definitely the better doll. Charlotte's hair and vinyl aren't as bright as I think she should have had and her earmuffs were held tight by a decaying elastic, my copy had a tiny dent in her head, and her joint pegs, being Series 12 pieces, are really fragile. Maggot needs some fussy hair tying to make her look nice and her shoes aren't tight, but otherwise came pristine with no issues. Regardless, I'm so glad I went in for her, and I'm proud to have her as a fandom grail doll. She's eerie and gross enough to be a horror doll, but she's sweet enough to charm anybody.
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