MGA Needs to Look in the Mirror Mi

So what's this all about?

Well, there's been some Mirror Mi news and it wasn't the kind I wanted to discuss after buying more product like I'd usually do. Checking in on the brand status while continuing to participate in it felt wrong this time because MGA has managed to rapidly curdle its promising new brand.

I discussed Mirror Mi when I reviewed the lovely Suki Goldpetal recently. Then, I was only mad about how damn hard it was to get her due to supply issues. But now...well...it's sad to say "put it back" when promising media produces more content.

The first news came about with the reveals of the Mirror Mi Mini Mi line-- highly articulated chibi dolls influenced by things like Nendoroid, reimagining the aesthetics of the core characters. The joints looked pretty impressive, similar to mini BJD bodies I've grown familiar with through some customs. I'm not a fan of chibi, but on paper, these were interesting. The bag charm functionality, character-specific carabiners, "keepable" plastic cases, and lack of blind boxing were also appealing, potentially placing these as a pseudo-comptetitor to MINNEE. They also have doll stands...why couldn't the big dolls?

Here's mini Blaze.

I hate anime "emote" gags and symbols used as stock facial punchlines, so I really don't like the tension mark on Blaze's forehead. The dolls can swap hair, but alternate faceplates would be better. I'm impressed by the fabric clothing.

Mini Amora would be better without the gum bubble. 

Mini Akiko looks less like her original.

I like her better as a catgirl than big Akiko. I'd like big Akiko more with a different hairstyle and outfit because her face and hair color do work for me. Amora and Akiko's stock photos erased their knee joints, which is a wonderful indicator that MGA is pro-AI. Ugh.

Shai's mini doll appears to double down on the Black albinism coding perceived in her debut doll thanks to her wearing full braids/twists. Her palette and fashion aesthetic is totally shifted with this "shorn-headed black sheep" hoodie. It's not as fluffy and shy-feeling as her first doll.

Wait, are we sure we want a protective hairstyle to be swappable and wearable by all three of the non-Black cast? That's pretty touchy. 

The fact that evidence exists of this doll being considered to have albinistic white lashes (unlike the big doll), and she ultimately doesn't, might be part of one of the big prblems I'm here to discuss.

Suki unfortunately loses the stark porcelain color and paint authenticity of her big doll, and is encased in a plastic wrap accessory that must impede her articulation significantly. I get that it's like a vase or something, but she can't be well-articulated with it on.

And then there's Luna. And I'm not a fan of big Luna. She's my least favorite design of the big dolls. She's even my favorite design of the Mini Mis, taken alone. And yet, this doll is absolutely wrong and I cannot endorse it being designed this way.

Out of context, the doll is a very pretty whimsical aesthetic and her color palette ditching the pastel yellow/green tones is great. But analyzing work out of context is foolish because Luna looks like this:

Luna has brown skin, and regardless of whether it's done well, her skin has vitiligo-esque patterns. Mini Luna has solid purple skin. Nobody else in the Minis gained or lost patterns or changed skintones. 

This is exactly how G1 Monster High mishandled some darker-skinned dolls ten years ago or more. It's like Clawden's natural brown skintone changing to purple for Great Scarrier Reef when her friends kept their coloration. Or Clawdeen's "noir" Freak du Chic doll being a paler value than her normal skintone. Or Boo York Cleo and Nefera (and Scream and Sugar Nefera) having a shimmer effect that made them look paler. It's wrong. It's unfair. It makes designers look eager to get rid of nonwhite skin.

Also, mini Luna's top does not seem to cover her for modesty well.

So seeing Luna's reimagining was bad. And then the discourse around Shai got even muddier.

While I stated confidently that big Shai, debut Shai, was a Black girl with albinism, based on being keyed into that perception by others and being on board, this was clearly not cut and dried for most. Many people, even operating in good faith, weren't so sure when presented with the notion that Shai is Black. It's not hard to see why. Shai's face isn't given distinctive Afrocentric features. Her eyes are far too saturated for albinistic coloring--blue eyes in albinism are not that vivid. She also has black eyelashes, maybe for a sheepier look, but it loses albinism coding as a result. But her hair texture still seemed like a good indicator. Darko's 2D art made her face look a bit more like a Black girl than the doll. And then the Mini Mi had her full twists. Smoking gun, right? But why did they actively reject white lashes?

And why did they cast big Shai's live actor with a white person?

These are images from an official live-action music video by MGA, where it can be seen that Shai is not portrayed by a Black girl with albinism, despite her hair texture looking like less ambiguous than the doll's in my mind. There are other problems. Suki is Asian but people found she was not played by a Japanese performer and her styling doesn't go fill fantasy like the doll, while Luna is not marked in any way resembling vitiligo. These are important, but Shai especially became a powder keg, with some people being innocently confused about her intent, others insisting she was whitewashed and atrociously miscast, and others outright determined to deny she was ever Black in the first place. What sucks is that we don't know for sure.

So...there are three things that could be happening.

1. Shai is a white girl canonically but MGA is giving her hair textures suggesting she's not, and she has no business wearing the full twists in particular; we can see they are being racist.
2. Shai is a Black girl and MGA failed to convey that definitively, severely miscast her live performer based on skintone instead of phenotype, and we can see they are being racist.
3. Shai is deliberately ambiguous (or unstated mixed rather than having albinism), and is not depicted as "Black" as she could be because MGA is afraid to make a very Black-featured doll and wants to have Shai both ways and avoid confirming one interpretation or the other and we can all see this is racist too, right?

There is a real anti-Black design trend in dolls. Amora has the dark skin but not the hair texture. Shai, potentially, has the texture but not the skintone. G3 Venus McFlytrap has the texture every time but not the human skintone. Clawdeen Wolf, far more often, has the human skintone but not the texture. And when a doll is dark-skinned, has Black features, and textured hair...she doesn't sell. It doesn't make sense to me at all, but there is evidence that people beyond niche audiences are not buying the most visibly Black doll designs enough to encourage designers to push them. So that creates an environment where MGA or Mattel or anyone else feels unwilling to be explicit or have too many Black features on one doll, but goddamn, at least Mattel seem to have put certain patterns in the past. MGA is currently doing shit Mattel did so badly a decade ago. Of course, I should carry no faith that Mattel won't make the same mistakes any day now. Anybody can disappoint.

So what we have with Mirror Mi now is a doll brand all about connecting with yourself that is demonstrably unafraid to discard and erase or confuse identities that deserve honest, respectful depictions.

Shai's intent isn't explicit, but her execution looks mishandled and racist any possible way you interpret it. Also, her hair texture has concerns of comparing tight curls to wool, which is racist if she is a Black character, so she literally couldn't win. What was needed for Shai was confidence and transparency on her background, and clear direction as a result, but MGA isn't giving that and it all makes them look bad. Some of the most frustrating characters are those that refuse to pin down a background, thus shirking responsibility for the handling of any one group while potentially harming all of the groups they are perceived to belong to. This was the issue with G1 MH Jane Boolittle, too. I have more respect for you if you pick a demographic for a character and screw it up, because at least you chose something and tried an actual angle.

Amora is fine, but her avoidance of textured hair is annoying if it keeps on, and it's known that she was not intended to be Black at first. Making her so created some questionable associations with her Valentine chocolate theming, and her eye color is unrealistic for her skintone.

Suki can fairly be accused of ignorant Asian representation. Kintsugi and blue china are from two different countries, her name is not Japanese, and her live actress is Korean. I think Suki is allowed to be all that she is, and that she doesn't need to be pigeonholed by Japanese culture, but it's worth noting. If she was trying to be anchored solely in Japanese theming...she's not.

Akiko, of course, could be accused of stereotyping Japanese pop culture and mocking a foreign name with a pun, but I'm not inclined to think native Japanese people would be offended by her at large. 

Blaze seems the least questionable.

And of course, Luna's skintone and patterning could be unproductive and unwelcomely fantasy-fied references to vitiligo, but then the potential vitiligo coding has now just been erased in two subsequent depictions, as well as her human brown coloring altogether on her mini doll. 

So we see...MGA being MGA. They have a history of mishandling diversity and people of color in their brands, and I think this just lays bare that nothing has changed and that we should never expect it to. I mean, why hold out hope with such a consistent and current track record? MGA needs real people of different backgrounds in their teams, but nope, they'd rather use AI. I'm not feeling ready to keep on with Mirror Mi, and now that I feel the Bratzillaz 2027 revival probably isn't going to have any more diversity than the original 2010s line, I might have to step out on that too. I'm not shutting MGA out forever, but I'm definitely comfortable ignoring new releases. There is a good MGA somewhere in the annals--the artistic side with ideas and fashions that felt like nobody else. There's the clothing quality and the finger on the pulse that other brands can struggle with. But I can get some of those vibes through retired secondhand MGA products worth discussing. I'm not looking to pick any off the shelf right now.