This was an interesting surprise! All of a sudden, new doll line! This is a peek at Mirror Mi by MGA.
It was clear from the first glimpse that Mirror Mi was iterating on MGA's prior "good era" Rainbow High doll design, despite not being a tie-in or spinoff with any narrative relation. The sculpting and inset eyes were clearly highly similar, though with taller, (debatably) more proportionate shapes that made the heads look smaller and created more of a BJD aesthetic in a way I personally preferred to the Rainbow High build. I was able to love Rainbow/Shadow High, but now I view my 2023 phase with the brand almost like an amicable breakup--the relationship was real, but now it's passed (with no hard feelings). I do still have an interest in getting Eliza McFee and Berrie Skies, though, and I kept my Karla II, Zooey II, Heather II, and Monique (the First), as well as a few of my Left Out Dolls customs. The Mirror Mi dolls also had the old RH "serious fashion doll" full articulation standard, which was good to see. I personally favored Shadow High for its fantasy skintones, so a Rainbow High successor with an overtly fantastical theme and less chibi proportions was all I could ever ask for, and since RH rebooted and kiddified, people have been mourning the original style. Maybe Mirror Mi will fill that void for a lot of people. Until it falls down the toilet and goes kiddie too Nope, not doing that. I'm staying positive. Maybe it'll just be quietly cancelled after a short time! So sorry; I'm really bad at the whole toy optimism thing.
It does look like Rainbow High is in curious, if not uncertain, if not dangerous waters. It's not hard to speculate that it's stumbling and coughing to death like Monster High G2 before it--after a couple of years of maligned kiddified reboot, the RH team was at one point rumored to be disbanded, and 2026 or '27 might be its last year of releases. Maybe Mirror Mi is taking over as the new RH after all and that's why the doll design is so extremely similar. Then again, Mirror Mi seems to have more echoes aesthetically than physically, and L.O.L. just debuted a new art style after seeming to decay for a few years, so who knows? Maybe the juice isn't gone...though unlicensed original characters in L.O.L. and classic RH dolls are vanishing. I wouldn't call L.O.L.'s reboot a savior until we see MGA original characters with no licensed collabs attached.
Early perceptions of the Mirror Mi dolls were more fairy-tale due to the costuming suggesting this might be a princess school concept, down to the name appearing to be MirrorMi Academy. I was among those suggesting that this line might be MGA taking Mattel's Ever Affer High concept belatedly after Mattel kinda took MGA's Bratzillaz concept a decade late. With Mattel taking MGA's witch school idea a decade later for their own Moonspell Magic, it would turn MGA and Mattel into an ouroboros of two intertwined snakes swallowing each other's tails! Ultimately, it turned out the doll line was just named Mirror Mi and makes no associations with a princess/fairytale theme, though it appears the Academy is part of the brand and that it is yet another highschool story after all. As the name suggests, the dolls are personifications of certain emotional/personality traits with emphasis on music tying into emotion, which makes the whole "cast of archetypes" writing formula rather easier to design for, I imagine. It also potentially leads to a more thoughtful narrative? MGA's writing and characterization is typically deep as a puddle and badly lacking in sincerity and substance, so I won't get my hopes too high for Mirror Mi, but we'll see. It doesn't seem as one-dimensionally obsessed with fashion or designer brands, nor as poisoned by poser-style uses of youth/AAVE slang as other MGA brands.
So how about the cast?
There's Blaze Maxx, the fierce "electric" girl, who looks and sounds more fiery, but I guess it's "electric" a la her guitar.
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| A little difficult not to see Freddy Krueger in the sweater, though. |
Her facial expression is great. Her pleather skirt is probably doomed to destruction over time. She feels a bit like RH Ruby Anderson with her heavy red tones. I love a tough assertive female character, but I'm so leery about her costume.
Then there's Akiko...Kittyama, the cozy girl.
I don't know how to feel about Akiko. From my Western perspective, a Japanese character being a catgirl taking a real surname (Kitayama) and twisting it with a cat pun all feels pretty cringeworthy and stereotypical, like, you couldn't think of anything else for this character? On the other hand, Akiko happens to be exactly the kind of character I think native Japanese audiences would sincerely love and appreciate with zero offense taken, and they might enjoy the pun in her name too. Akiko is a character a native Japanese creative very well might make themselves, so I can only say I personally find her concept a bit embarrassing and uninspired. I adore cats, as in the actual felines. Catgirls, as in the anime caricature of women, are very weird and unappealing to me. I do appreciate the painted fang detail showing a bit of kitty teeth, but Akiko is overall simply not for me.
Then there's Amora Valentina, the love girl.
Her translucent lower legs feel like a bit like G3 Cupid Asteria, Monster High's love representative, but I think Amora's vivid pink, white/blonde, and brown palette are a fun Valentine aesthetic. She seems to be invoking Valentine chocolates in her palette, though that gave me pause as I began to wonder if it was inappropriate for her skintone to seemingly tie into that theme. I could see this all happening with totally innocent intentions, but dark skin being associated with chocolate or other foodnor drink is a well-known microaggression and faux pas at the least. It's also known that Amora being so dark was a last-minute change, since she was ligjter in prototypes. MGA must have realized they were up to their usual colorism and darkened her to avert that...without consideration for how that interacted with her chocolate theme or sleeve color (or eye color). They seriously can't keep from sticking their foot in it, can they. Amora's legs have encased loose beads, which is a different thing from translucent with painted patterns over it.
Luna Skye is the "dreamy" girl, and feels the least cohesive to me visually.
I believe she attempts to abstract the appearance of vitiligo in a more fantastical patterned way, and I'm not sure the effect is successful. Compared to the way Rainbow High's Jewel Richie realistically depicted vitiligo, Luna's feels messy. My favorite thing about Luna is the color of her eyes against her base skintone.
There's Shai Meadows, shy as her name with a literal "sheepish" motif.
Her monotone white makes her feel the most like a classic Rainbow High doll. She's cute and I like her hoof shoes, but dainty and fluffy like this isn't my style. She is a depiction of a Black girl with albinism, thus her hair type, though I'm not convinced the doll's face does service to her intent. Vivid blue eyes are quite inaccurate to a pigment disorder and might guide the visual reading in the wrong direction, while the doll's face in the 2D artwork feels like it lands the appearance of Black facial features better than the physical product. Amora's eye color isn't realistically Black either, and probably was not initially intended to be, but she has skintone as a phentoypic signifier while Shai, necessarily, doesn't. As such, the face ought to be contributing to the depiction, but I don't see it. Rainbow High has a depiction of Black albinism in Delilah Fields, and her face sculpt and molded baby hairs convey her background more clearly to me, despite her rooted hair texture being much looser. I accept fault for having some blinders that made me ignorant to Shai's background at first, but learning it and seeing the artwork, then comparing to the doll, has me feeling like MGA is partially at fault for her doll depiction being very clear. I'd give her face a second pass to make her background more visible.
Then, finally, there's Suki Goldpetal. She's the "fragile" girl and she's another entry into the niche toy category of pseudo-porcelain dolls imitating the style of blue china pottery. You know I'm fascinated by this overly specific doll demographic, so there was no question of whether I loved her. Suki also displays gilt porcelain cracks in her design, replicating the Japanese practice of kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold coloring in the cracks to make the past damage both visible and beautiful as part of the pottery's story. Kintsugi was referenced in one of many baffling choices in The Rise of Skywalker when the decision was made for Kylo Ren to repair his helmet (despite the pointed discarding of it in the last script...). The repaired Ren helmet has angry red cracks in kintsugi style. Not sure that did tribute to the practice in the way the designer may have wanted.
I was really considering getting both Amora and Suki for this review, but seeing how much pleather was involved in Amora's costume halted me, as did my pondering about potential optical issues in her design. It ultimately felt the best to just pick the one doll I was totally sure I wanted. I connected the most to Suki's surreal antique vibe, and she had no pleather or stereotype concerns I could see. Doing a wider sample review could be fun, but I'm far enough into this now that I want to try being a bit choosier.
MGA had to spite me personally, of course, and designate Suki as one of the two retailer exclusives of the starting lineup, the other being Shai. And Suki was at Walmart, which I almost never patronize in-person (it's typically once a year for Halloween candy to give to trick-or-treaters, and I'm relatively confident a Walmart excursion in 2023 gave me the COVID case that ruined my holiday). Blaze, Luna, Amora, and Akiko were day-1 "early-access" drops through MGA direct, but Suki, I had to wait for through retail release. It feels weird for core debut cast members to be assigned to only one store. Imagine Draculaura only being available through one seller. At least I get G3 Ghoulia, Deuce, and Toralei getting that treatment because they're G3 secondary characters. Did MGA have less faith in Shai and Suki? (Suki is the most out-there.) Are they lesser roles in the planned fiction? Or will this be more like RH where each series is a new cast while some older ones recur in other releases? Rumors for a wave 2 of five new emotions suggest so. The rumored "envy" doll intrigues me. She's got to be green, right? Antagonistic or sympathetic? Snake theming? Sorry, back to the dolls that we have.
I also detest this pattern of doll drops not being "once-and-for-all". New Amazon drops now sell out instantly when they ought to stay there for the masses with adequate supply, and when they return at retail price is anybody's guess. Deliberately dropping early preview releases before mass retail is no better. Just let everybody get them at once. I understand it really looks like this isn't entirely at the doll companies' discretion on our global supply stage at the moment. When I tried ordering three random MINNEE dolls, the order was delayed and then canceled after the inventory went out of stock. You can't get anything new when you want it now (all the more reason to pursue retired toys secondhand)...but there's just no excuse for preview launches.
Even considering likely extenuating circumstances, as the wait for Suki to fully stock online drew on for weeks and weeks, I began to lose patience and respect for MGA. Other dolls were getting out there in supply and on schedule, and Moonspell eventually chugged out its supply, while Suki was just AWOL. Shai was right there on shelves the first time I saw Mirror Mi in person. It was unfair that Suki had to be stuck in limbo, and Walmart notifying her as "back in stock" whenever independent scalpers put up one or two copies was also insulting. I think maybe they stopped doing this, because I didn't get email alerts for one of the scalper additions.
In the end, MGA lost my money and I bought a boxed Suki from a reseller in my impatience. It wasn't justified, but I could afford her and I valued the trust and convenience of a damn window of time I could expect her within. You lost this one, MGA. The one doll I really wanted from this line, and you couldn't get her to me. The frankly disastrous release of this doll puts a stain on my assessment from the get-go, moreso tham having to pay more for her in my impatience. The failure to make one exclusive character accessible within a reasonable amount of time is shameful, especially when the other exclusive (Shai) got out with no problems. Everything else in this line seemed to go out smoothly. This is bad. For a doll with visible cracks, this all seemed like an obvious fisssure in the brand rollout.
With Suki now being the fifth doll in the "faux blue china" niche (and the fourth non-custom doll in this style) to appear on my blog, I've added a new "blue china doll aesthetic" blog tag (at the bottom of this post in desktop view) to group those posts together.
The Mirror Mi boxes have diagonally divided bubble windows over cardboard backing, with the windows interlocking with the backing card using plastic tabs. The dolls are mounted to unique prop shells that they strap down to for packaging, each a different shape and color. Accessories are mounted to the right from viewer's perspective.
The back of the box repeats the character art (by the same artist as the MH G3 art) and features a profile.
Suki's nickname is "Goldie Luxe", which is a little bit shallow to me and also strange for evoking a character with golden hair when that's the least of Suki's hair color. I do admit, her personal vibe being "headphones on, pinkies up" is pretty charming and fun. "Dancing like nobody's watching" isn't a particularly novel thing for her to like, but I love that she enjoys blueberry crumble. It sounds perfect for tea and a blue food (at least, before being baked) is perfect for her. Dang. Now I want blueberry crumble. The "favorite lyric" thing is cryptic. I'm assuming it's a lyric from a Mirror Mi original theme song, or a song which will be exclusively focused on Suki. It's not from a known existing song by a real mainstream artist. I'm not sold on the whole musical theme here. I just want pretty, interesting dolls.
Suki's name is not exclusively Asian and has an Anglo history as a nickname for variants of "Susan", but I believe her name, her snack, and her visuals are all indicators that she is another Japanese character. Her porcelain theme is, of course, not Japanese in stylistic origin, but blue china is widespread thanks to global trade, and Suki's kintsugi repair puts a definitively Japanese stamp on her design coding.
Are all of the Mirror Mi cast meant to live in Japan? Blaze has a noodle and egg bowl, and the BJD affect of the doll design may be intentional. Is the line trying for an Asian or Japanese aesthetic overall? Not every doll in the cast is meant to be East Asian in background, but sometimes anime set in Japan contain multi-racial friend groups, so I could buy them all being Japanese citizens.
The name "Suki Goldpetal" might also be constructed of oblique references to kintsugi-- "Suki" being one letter from "sugi" and "Goldpetal" being just a step away from "gold leaf".
Now, MGA has never been praised for its packaging experience, but I'd still heard some particular horror stories about what Mirror Mi served up. Boxes that were impossible to pull open without cracking the plastic or cutting yourself, excessive tags, yada yada...well, I'm not going to say the horrified don't have a point. I did find the plastic tabs interlocked with the cardboard to be far too tight to easily pull out...so I didn't risk any lacerations. I just took out some embroidery scissors and cut the plastic window above the tabs. From there, the window lifted off the front easily.
The accessories were very easy to free...and then we get to the real MGA bullshit. You can see it, right? All holographic and golden?
What the actual hell is this thing? It's hideous, and the last thing in the world that needed design was the plastic cradle the doll was strapped to.
I've heard that MGA intended for these pieces to be kept as displays, like they're the doll stands they unforgivably did not make for these dolls.
Pull the other one. This is flimsy flimsy hollow plastic. The back and the "platform" of this piece are not even firmly attached--they fit together, but the floor is basically a hinged flap. Then there's the tabs on the golden piece that slotted into the backing card, and the fact that in no way does this piece actually grip Suki for a reliable shelf display...it's junk, MGA. You made fancy junk.
Fortunately, Suki herself was not that difficult to remove. The head staples were the kind with big tabs that are easier to pull for the purposes of cutting the ends off.
Under the plastic nonsense, the backing card actually has a fragmented cut-off paragraph about Suki's personality.
I don't believe there's enough cut off to obfuscate the sentences. It seems to say:
Soft-spoken and sensitive, she feels everything deeply. Her heart breaks easily, but she's learning that it is okay. She is delicate but strong and always able to magically mend any situation. She is just a bit clumsy at times.
A clumsy girl who shatters easily makes for a compelling dynamic, though I hope she's careful despite it all. I can see a bit of the "fragile" intent more clearly here, with her being empathetic and vulnerable in part because of it. Learning about picking up the pieces and finding strength through it could lead to some important messaging if MGA can get writers with heart. I like that it seems Suki doesn't seem to be a nervous or anxious sort, just somebody who gets hit hard by things and finds her way through. I don't trust MGA with a productive portrayal of anxiety. I can't think of a single character of theirs in their narrative media who didn't feel broad and stereotyped.
Here's the doll all unboxed.
It's a little hard to say where to start with Suki because her head has so much going on, but I'll start with her headphones.
Suki makes the bold and perhaps not too successful choice to add soft pink to her white, blue, and gold palette, and I think it works in her faceup subtleties far more than it does elsewhere in her design. The headphones are one such case. Suki actually has two pink shades in her stock, with the headphones being the lighter of them.
These are part of the music theming of the dolls, and I can kind of rock with them as part of the ensemble, but overall, Suki looks complete and beautiful without them, and I want her as an enchanting china dolly anyhow, so I don't think I'll ever be using these. The earpieces don't seem to want to fit over the ears unless the connecting bar is angled forward more than real headphones would be. When I first noticed in the photos that the earpieces were teacups, I was more sold on the headphones. Suki was my girl before I even realized she was a tea character, but that facet dawning on me made her a truly kindred spirit.
We'll get back to the headphones in a bit.
Also on Suki's head is a hair decoration on her right side. It depicts a porcelain rabbit loafing and has some simulated dangling gold jewelry with blue "glass" beads.
The bunny has some unsightly paint flaws and is sewn in place with blue cord that blends into Suki's hair.
Rabbits are a subtle motif with Suki, and I'm not totally sure why. They're important to some Asian folklore, but not in any particular way I can connect to Suki's themes. Maybe their perception as very skittish creatures connects to someone shy and able to upset easily?
MGA does good work with hairstyles as usual. Suki has a complicated bouffant in front which wraps around short loose pieces of hair which are gelled into vertical spiky sprigs that fan backward over a back puff, while the rest of the back is loose. These vertical pieces might be abstract bunny ears if they are meant to be split down into two halves.
The front of the hair has straight bangs across the forehead and longer locks ending off the bangs and framing the face. The bun puff section and the bangs and framing locks feel evocative of traditional and more modern Japanese hairstyles. The vertical stalks and bangs and front locks are rigid with MGA's hard-to-wash gel, as well as some of the longer hair which has no business being gel-touched. Suki's hair is primarily a royal blue blend with pale highlights, while some streaks of actual blonde add a golden touch underneath. I'm glad this is so underplayed. The blue-dominant hair looks great.
The hair might be MGA's usual nylon, but I'm not sure it's giving me the wows I remember from Rainbow High hair quality.
The Mirror Mi heads give the dolls their BJD appeal with their more humanoid shape (far less circular than Rainbow High!) and inset eyes and pretty face paint.
Suki's eyes are very wide-set and are relatively large, but not the largest MGA has done relative to the face. She has full lips in a bit of a Bratz silhouette and a defined nose. She has porcelain-white skin, of course, but is not given a gloss effect that would have really matched the ceramic she's imitating.
Suki has an expressive face paint style, with upturned nervous (blue, hooray!) eyebrows befitting a delicate doll afraid to break. I've seen critique that a kintsugi doll ought to be portraying "resilience" rather than "fragility", since the point of kintsugi is to display a damage that has been reclaimed, repaired, and overcome. I can see how Suki looks too passive or nervous in context, and with my custom doll Dahlia, I made a point of writing her character to be the opposite of emotionally fragile. All the same, the delicate, uncertain look Suki wears on her face is endearing and works with her aesthetic. I'm not sure a shifty sassy face like Blaze's would look right here.
Suki has blue and gold eyeshadow and some gold line paint suggesting kintsugi cracking on her face. If the cracks on Suki were not golden, the reference to kintsugi would not be definite, but it's an obvious reference for those who've heard of kintsugi, and it cements it for me that Suki is Japanese. Royal blue and gold happen to look very nice together anyway, so applying gilt kintsugi to blue china is a match made in heaven. She has subtle pink spike shading on the inner corners of her eye makeup and pink blush. Her lip paint is mostly pale pink, with pale blue on top which only looks good at a distance. Up close, the colors clash and the blue looks bruised. There's also some blue lining her lips and white toothy paint that all look worse up close.
Suki's eyes are a rainbow of her colors, but are mostly blue, and have subtle floral eye reflections in them.
They look like tree blossoms, but maybe not quite cherry blossoms?
The face design is so essential to this doll, and I'm worried I somehow won't capture or convey how special it is. This face gives Suki such an unearthly, faerie quality that really makes her feel like some magical china dolly come to life. It's not over-blushed in the way some art dolls are--there's a level of face shading that becomes repellent to me personally, but it's definitely not a flat cartoony design, and the face brings the whole rest of this doll's delicate aesthetic into unity.
Suki's head has earring holes, but the holes do not enter the hollow of the doll head and there are no earrings provided. Not sure if the earrings MGA has planned will have short pegs like Rainbow High or if the dolls with earrings will have the holes fully punched into the hollow of the head. Rainbow High earring pegs are too thick to fit this head, and the typical earring peg size of most fashion dolls would if the hole was deep enough.
Suki's dress is a really complex one-piece garment. I'm not fully sure what to think of it. One thing's for sure--while the perceived princess concept of Mirror Mi only lasted a second before we got to understand what it really was, I fully believe Suki could be a princess doll. She's got the most dainty and old-fashioned costume of the bunch, while retaining modern quirks and fantasy themes,
It starts on top with the exceptionally narrow halter neck, which is two criss-crossed strips of pink faux leather with an incredibly thin and tiny velcro connection in the back.
I don't hate the color here, but it probably wouldn't be hard to paint the straps blue if I chose to mod out the pink. Later, one of the velcro strips came unstitched, which did not impress me. I had to sew it back on.
The bodice of the dress is gold foil fabric with a gold ribbon waist trim that has tails extending onto the skirt. The sewing of the bodice is nicely done, but doesn't seem fitted to the doll's bust at all. A plastic china flower trims the waist right where the ribbon tails emerge, and a scalloped piece also encircles the waist with a wave pattern in blue gradient.
The skirt of the dress resembles an overturned china bowl with gold foil kintsugi cracks across it.
The doll's tea themes and china tableware costume remind me a bit of Mattel's "Once Upon a Whimsy" Princess Belle doll from last year.
The Belle doll is delightful, and maybe I should have gotten her, but I didn't new and won't secondhand.
Suki's overskirt is fairly translucent, and the next layer under is a holographic green fabric that casts its color through the overskirt to make it shimmer and sparkle. I...don't really like this. I wish the second layer was white and longer with blue trim. I don't need sparkles and holo glitter. That's wrong for this character aesthetic. Under that layer is a plastic crinoline sewn into the skirt to give it structure and antique fashion flair. The crinoline frame is molded to look broken as if it too is porcelain, but I'm not sure why the color looks more like the non-ceramic material it would probably be on a real person's dress. Maybe the crinoline distressing isn't intended to look like ceramic.
I think these broken sections of the crinoline being oriented in the front is a stealthy way to allow the hips to swing forward without being blocked by the cage like they would be if the lower ring was intact right there. Shame the hips don't swing 90 degrees forward; we'll get there.
Under the crinoline is a thin satin sewn-in pencil skirt for modesty.
I think the crinoline is okay and the structure is nice, but it makes the skirt hard to take off and put on. The cage has a pin and hole connection at the back to let it open a little wider, but this is springy, fairly firm plastic, not softer vinyl, so it's hard to open and close and pull up and down the doll's hips. I cut the generous white thread loops sewing the crinoline on so I could use it as a separate piece.
The lower ring being closed, rather than the crinoline being able to open fully down the back, added further needless difficulty to dressing Suki, so I snipped the ring open between the struts that frame the pin and hole closure.
The green holo layer still bothers me. A longer white layer that fully covered the crinoline and wasn't holographic green would improve the dress significantly. I'd be delighted to cut the holo layer out and replace it with a new second skirt tier, but I'm not good at sewing circles and don't have better skirts calling out.
Suki's shoes are pink strappy sandals with gold paint on the heel backs. The platforms narrow a lot in the middle, perhaps evoking geta sandals?
It's a cool design, but it highlights the absence of doll stands because these shoes utterly cannot stand Suki up.
I can accept the halter straps and the shoes, and the headphones are much paler, but the bag is awful. This is the breaking point of the pink.
We've also lost the plot on the imagery and gone for aquatic mythical creatures with the bag handle rather than rabbits. It's an atrocious purse. It's open a bit on top, but not useful for holding things.
Suki's food accessory is a pair of onigiri shaped as cute rabbits. Bunnygiri?
I think the cutesy shaping is very plausible given that novelty adorable presentations of food are pretty common in Japan. The onigiri and tray are not separable pieces.
And back to the headphones--because those teacups are removable for use as actual teaware, and pair with the single saucer Suki also includes.
This is an awesome feature even setting aside my overwhelming tea-theming bias. Suki holds the cups pretty well with her fingers all being separated and her pointers sliding into the handles, and the cups and saucer have the right glossy finish. The cups can rotate on the headphones and click on, but not too tightly. They won't fall off or anything (unless, perhaps, the headphones fall on the floor), but it's not a real pull to remove them.
The saucer has a flower shape.
Now, to look at the body design.
For comparison with Rainbow High, I brought out the lovely Monique Verbena. She's the only doll from the brand I still have in complete or unaltered condition (if you don't count retying her hair to do the intended style justice). Zooey II lost an earring and her shoelaces, while Karla II has a slight lip repaint. Monique remains an absolutely stunning design, and her tidy no-fuss braids made her ideal as a body model to work with for photos.
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| Suki and Monique. |
The obvious aesthetic similarities to Rainbow High warped my expectations for the size of the Mirror Mi dolls. Before seeing in-hand photos and comparisons, I had got it in my head that the doll heads would be comparable to RH size with the bodies adjusted to proportion, but these dolls aren't large and Mirror Mi has some of the smallest fashion doll heads MGA has ever made, in a league with Bratzillaz and L.O.L. Tweens. Most MGA heads are significantly oversized, but Mirror Mi doll proportions and sizing are more like G3 Monster High... if the bodies were 70% leg. I might have preferred slightly larger dolls for more of the cast, but Suki being surprisingly small aids her dainty, delicate theming and makes her more precious. It does also make the paint and inset eyes of these small heads all the more impressive. I'm a fan of Mirror Mi's comparative realism, though what Rainbow High has over Mirror Mi currently is sculpt variety. Black dolls in RH have a designated Black face sculpt--Monique is one of several who have it. Mirror Mi really could have used an equivalent mold for Shai and Amora. I hope face mold or even body mold diversity comes for Mirror Mi, because right now, the faces especially need more sculpts.
The body designs are similar, but differently sized. Mirror Mi is more dramatically hippy and has much longer legs, as well as larger hands and feet opposite the smaller head.
The elephant in the room with the Mirror Mi body design is the incredible shrinking torso. There have been leggy dolls in the past. Monster High has considerably long legs even on its short characters. There were dolls like Hi:Glamm and the literal Leggy brand who boasted exaggerated long legs. But I don't think I've ever seen such leggy dolls who do it by having such little torso. It's not that the Mirror Mi torsos are proportionate while the legs are extended--the torsos are extremely short and the dolls look pretty strange unclothed. I can't imagine how these girls have functioning circulatory systems with their feet so far from their hearts. Suki being a china doll makes this all make more sense because she can be read as a fantasy creature without biology to speak of. She also works the visibility of the joints better by letting them read as diegetic.
Rainbow High is already pear-shaped, but Mirror Mi is more bottom-heavy still, with a more dramatic waist pinch. The Mirror Mi torso also has a bit of rib contour which is objectively neutral and not necessarily a sign of being underweight...but it's still not great to see in this era where dramatic weight loss is the prevailing and scary new beauty standard. At least the hips are wide...but I'm honestly getting a little bored of the prevalence of very wide hips in fashion dolls too. Big hips have been MGA's bag for years now, and all the newest Monster High G3 ghoul debuts seem to have the wide-hipped "Cleo" silhouette these days too. G3 has more body types than that...
Here's Mirror Mi with Bratzillaz, Rainbow High, and G1 Monster High examples.
Awkward spot to discuss this, but Suki has special body detailing with symmetrical blue motifs on her arms and knees that make her look just like blue china.
She also has a kintsugi crack on her left leg, both halves, and the crack is a dimensional molded groove painted gold which encircles the leg. This is a great feature.
This detail takes advantage of the knees not rotating because the cracks can connect across both leg pieces without ever being turned out of alignment.
Articulation-wise, Mirror Mi is similar to Rainbow High.
The head rotates and tilts, but it really feels like a push to get the head to tilt, and it's not a super dramatic range. The fit of head on neck is very tight.
The shoulders can hinge upward past parallel with the collarbone, and can move as well as any other rotating shoulder hinge.
The elbows rotate and flex to just under 90 degrees, with the pieces fitting together neatly at the furthest bend.
I love the large, expressive, sharp-nailed hand mold, but the wrists bend much further backward than forward, which is annoying.
The limits of the joints and long arms keep Suki's hands out of her face. I really wish MGA would get on double-hinged elbows if they're going to keep on with the double knees.
The hands are removable, popping in and out easily by their wrist pegs like with most articulated fashion doll builds. Suki's sleeveless costume renders this feature neglected on her, but I'm sure it's handy for the other girls.
Suki's hips are rotating hinges without the weird nested cup joints of Rainbow High. They can't quite side-split and the joints are built so Suki can't sit up fully straight. I wish the hips had more forward and back range.
The thighs rotate independently from the hip joints to let the legs turn. The uneven cut of the top of the thighs also seems to impede certain poses. Suki can't sit up and tuck her legs to the side well, which would be a lovely pose.
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| Not so graceful. |
The knees are good, being double-jointed while the leg pieces close up in front when the knees are fully extended, hiding the jointing pretty seamlessly. Rainbow High has the joints exposed as "kneecaps" in the way other double-jointed fashion dolls usually do.
As you can see, she kneels like a champ. Her legs are far too long for a one-legged kneel, though.
She's also pretty good at crossing her legs, though I think her crinoline would get in the way of most sitting poses. All the more reason to make it optional.
Overall, Suki is beautifully designed visually, but I wish this body had a bit more flexibility and freedom. There's more joints than the standard, but quite a few do less than I want.
In terms of clothing compatibility, I've heard most doll shoes don't fit the large Mirror Mi feet (but G3 Abbey Bominable's do!), and G3 Draculaura and L.O.L. OMG clothes fit Mirror Mi and vice-versa.
Suki's size doesn't seem suited to any doll stands I have. She might do well with a taller O.M.G. Fierce stand, but she's too tall for the flimsy unbranded stands I ordered. While Suki's hair was drying, I tried Skullector Young-hee's stand and the cradle seemed able to fit her, but I wasn't sure how stable it would be or if the shoes would ruin it.
I took Suki down for some aggressive gel-washing and tried to boil her bangs and the sides of her hair down under a hair tie so they'd lay flatter. I then put the doll in the freezer to try setting the hair. That seemed to work on the bangs.
Here's Suki tidied up.
The phantom softening-hardening disappear-reappear hair gel is infuriating, but I chose to let it shape the top hair in its spiky feathery manner, because I could see that while wet, combed-together and loose, it just looked like an empty bouffant and I think the hair spikes do something for Suki. The bangs seemed to flatten successfully, and the side locks are now looser. The crinoline is still a challenge to use, but it's nicer to put it on after the dress.
For now, Suki is in a Made to Move Ken stand which isn't sturdy (the clip is much too wide for her), but it does hold her and is the only working stand I have that isn't currently occupied by someone else in process. I can probably order her a Barbie collector doll stand that would work. I'm frustrated I don't have one right now--I think I lost the pole and clip that came with Weird Barbie's stand. I still have the base, but the last time I know that stand was complete was the review of Barbie Deluxe Style model #2 last year.
Here's Suki with my preceding blue-china-themed dolls. The ghost of my custom Monster High example, Dahlia, is photo-edited into the lineup, scaled as accurately as I could hope to get it.
While the China Girl is the most authentically antique in visuals, the biggest competitors in capturing the blue china look are Dahlia and Suki. Dahlia's palette was much more direct, being only white and royal blue (with a bit of grey from the dress). Her white hair and glossy skin also evoked the ceramic very bluntly. Like with Suki, I painted blue designs on her limbs, but hers were asymmetrical and meant to evoke tattoos. I also gave her a gloss finish, though none of her paint was durable and that's why she never made it out of 2023.
Suki does several things differently from Dahlia, but she also renders that short-lived custom basically obsolete with all she does similarly and better. I think she's a perfectly appropriate artistic interpretation of blue china, and her golden colors and kintsugi theme and tableware skirt are all excellent. The only thing Dahlia does that Suki doesn't is include swappable arm parts as backup, but that's more of a spooky concept anyway. I was considering a remake of Dahlia, even one that relaxed the stark palette and incorporated blonde and gold tones...until Suki was unveiled and achieved the idea better than I felt capable of. I'm more than comfortable putting a custom project to bed because they're always so intensive. Suki satisfies the aesthetic itch.
The Frozen Charlotte dolls are much looser on the theme. While they're referencing china dolls deliberately, and mixing icy blue with blue china, their colors are lighter, with Resurrection Charlotte having no royal blue at all while Series 12 only has it in the face paint. I love my Charlottes, but they're not on the level of blue china theming that the China Girl, Dahlia, and Suki are.
I've demonstrated before with Dahlia and the China Girl that blue china patterning is in strong supply in my home, making their photoshoots easy to stage, but Suki shakes it up a little because I'm able to add gold to the mix (and a touch of pink if I really want to)! First off, I gathered some doilies and placemats and charger plates and paper to layer some compositions of gold and blue china pattern.
This more chaotic arrangement became the cover shot.
And one of the shots looked ideal for a white background, which I digitally achieved.
I put a pink floral placemat into the mix.
And I brought the headphones back in to be sporting, placing Suki in a floating arrangement of the pieces as if depicting the world she zones into when listening to music.
I then moved Suki to the real blue china pieces, throwing in gold for her personal tableau. I regret not catching that her halter straps had come undone.
I fixed Suki's straps for a standing shot.
Then I staged her leaning on the edge of a big bowl.
At some point in this photoshoot, I started noticing some very concerning blue-green stains appearing on Suki's arms, hands, and legs. They wiped off with acetone, but I had no idea where they were coming from, and they developed after certain photos--like, I could see from some of the pictures that she didn't have stains yet where I saw them appearing. I assumed it had to be something she was touching which was leaking color, but I wasn't sure what in the photoshoots could have been able to transfer color onto her, nor what in that category all of the affected body parts had touched. Maybe it was me and something from my crafts projects hadn't fully washed off my hands and was causing harm? I made sure to wash Suki in soapy water and thoroughly scrub my hands, and hoped that would be the last of the problem. Of all cosmetic issues you might expect for a china doll, a skin rash is the last.
Here's Suki against pink. I think I can put aside my gripes. It makes sense with her as an opposing or minor color.
I cut Suki's side locks a little shorter and I probably shouldn't have, but I did another round of boiling to get them to lie closer to her face and more in front of her ears. Boil washing and inset eyes are a scary combination, and I remember clouding a Rainbow High eye from doing this badly before. Every time I saw Suki's eyes fog, I did get a little nervous, but it was surface condensation on the plastic of her eyes and not any internal damage, and the eyes wiped clear again.
Here's the china tableau restaged with a pink wall, a chair, and all of Suki's pieces.
And a few more portraits. Suki is hard to photograph against white.
Suki decided to drop off a cup and her saucer at the Hatter Madness table to loan the pieces. Two of the Hatters I've gotten so far didn't bring their own.
Aesthetically, Suki Goldpetal is one of my favorite dolls in a while, and I'm sure she's earned her place in the end-of-year 2026 collage photo. She's absolutely beautiful and captures a dainty porcelain aesthetic wonderfully. She's the blue china doll I feel I've been chasing for a long time. The Mirror Mi faces are little marvels with the sculpt, paint, and inset eyes giving them an art-doll appeal, and Suki's body paint and costume are harmonious. I love the ways she adds a more modern unusual side with the cut of her dress and her oddly perfect spiky bouffant pieces. I'd love a more classical doll in this style too, but Suki's offbeat inventions are what I come to MGA for. I don't even hate the pink. Really, my only aesthetic problem with her is the green holo skirt layer. It clashes tonally. Suki's teacups and saucer are great accessories and her hands hold them capably. The teacups being part of the headphones if you please is also a really fun feature. Maybe the most satisfied I've been with doll tea accessory interactivity since Living Dead Dolls Series 23.
Handling the doll was a bit less perfect. I don't think the hair is the best fiber or quality MGA has ever had, though it's not as bad as Monster High playline saran fried right out of the box. The dress is a bit frustrating with the attached crinoline cage being a bit stiffer than it needed to be and making the costume harder to put on and take off. Softer plastic, a separate crinonline, or the cage opening fully down the back would have helped. I could do the last two myself. The velcro on her halter strap also broke off on one side.
The articulation is okay, but I was frustrated by what I found Suki unable to do. Her joints feel like they underperform. It's not the end of the world because Suki can do things and she suits subtler posing anyhow, but she's more limited than I would like. My doll got a green skin rash, but I'm willing to accept that I introduced an unknown irritant in some manner, and I won't blame MGA for that.
Suki's purse is also unforgivable. It's ugly as sin. I do like her snack bunnygiri, but the onigiri not being removable pieces is disappointing when paired with her awesome tea accessories.
I wouldn't have minded earrings for the doll. The heads are clearly built with them in mind.
The release of this doll was a total failure. MGA could not get her stocked in a reasonable window of time after the retail drop of the non-exclusive dolls. Target got Shai. Walmart online got weeks of nothing but the occasional scalper doll.
Receiving Suki brought me back a bit to reality after she'd become this mythic coveted thing. The actual doll you get is flawed. But she's still absolutely enchanting and aesthetically wonderful. She's quite capable of being the delicate darling china doll she's meant to depict, and has a similar "curio cabinet" appeal to the otherwise very different Silver Label Mad Hatter. I just want her in some display case for precious things, and that's a very special aesthetic to achieve.
I'm on board for more Mirror Mi to come, though Suki didn't sell me on more of wave 1. I'd still give Amora a chance, but experiencing Suki didn't get me feeling like I need to get right on that immediately.
I think the doll design takes the best aspects of Rainbow High and improves on it aesthetically, with the faces and proportions landing an art-doll BJD aesthetic really well. I also like the fantasy and emotion/personality aspects, with Suki in particular showing the door is open for pretty nonhuman designs. Akiko, Luna, Shai, and Amora all have fantasy traits, but Suki's committed dolly look brings promise of more fully fantastical dolls in the line. I can't expect the bodies to be revised for the better, but I do hope the horrible dressed-up plastic packaging cradles stop pretending and aspiring to be displayable. Doll stands for this line would also be awesome. I won't hold my breath.
I'd like to see at least one Mirror Mi boy, but I'm not holding my breath. The market for boy dolls appears to be at its absolute nadir these days, and since MGA hasn't released one very recently themselves, I have no reason to expect one soon. (Rainbow High boys died in the reboot, with no remolds of their sculpts to suit the current lower articulation). It's a shame because MGA tends to make boy dolls which are worth discussing.
My main takeaway when first experiencing Rainbow/Shadow High was astonishment at the production value and quality of the dolls. I...don't get that same level of awe from Suki. She's just as ambitious but feels a bit less solid and deluxe. Suki is, however, miles more special to me than any doll from Rainbow or Shadow High on a design level. I adore Monique and Zooey. But Suki is just something else, and she's very much a "just for me" kind of doll design. If Mirror Mi continues to push out more dolls on the level of fantasy and artsiness that Suki displays, they'll be some of my favorite doll designs of all time. I hope she doesn't remain an anomaly for the doll line, because Mirror Mi on the whole doesn't light me on fire, but if there are more dolls as offbeat and otherworldly as Suki? I'll be there even if I have to wait over a month for a release that never stocks and ultimately isn't the finest piece of doll craft.
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