A "Cinderella" in the Making [Mika Jougasaki]

I'm not in to idol anime, so I just hope they have a cute face. I don't have to jump through hoops to secure a licensed smart doll, which is good for me in the event that the face looks like one of my characters. :b

 

I am still interested to see how he competes with volks in the event that he does produce a Cinderella girl, considering volks did a really good job. Smart doll really needs smaller bodies.

So being the "second company in" isn't anything new or unexpected.

 

unless you're BANDAI ... then you are the first and only company because oooh boy does BANDAI not like to share their toys! (literally)

Danny said on Twitter that on Sunday, the Cinderella Idolmaster Smart Doll will be revealed.

 

Is this real? I can't find anything about it on Danny's twitter/instagram

I mean, that'd be pretty hard to fake. I'd love to see this girl's face. Her character art has an interesting style.

Hmm, Mika. A fine choice.

I'm not the best person to jump into this discussion because I really don't like SmD, but I wanted to anyway because I need feelings to get out and to talk about this. I really don't know how to feel? Danny picking this franchise to make dolls of seems really silly and on purpose, yet none of the dolls he's made look anything like the characters. That being said Mika is my favorite character - of anything - ever and I've been waiting for Volks to make her. Him making her scares me because of what others said. Maybe Volks won't make one now, or maybe they'll see an opportunity to make a better one. Or she just won't look right. I don't really feel any good way about this.

 

I wish I could pick Danny's brain because it honestly sometimes it feels like his decisions are based not on his own interests and company, but how he can spite Volks. Not all of them,, not even most of them, but sometimes it just seems that way. What about Love Live? Why not Love Live? I wonder if he's making the girls Volks is lacking on purpose? huh.

 

And a personal thing (I know it's childish) but I really didn't see myself owning a Smart Doll again but goddamnit I might have to. I love Mika more than most things. Mika and Miku I'm extremely curious to see how this will turn out but I am very scared because I love her so much. That and she has a bazillion outfits and accessories that I would really like to see instead of her being stuck with that school uniform (and having them be a reasonable price)

 

Alright, I'm done being an angry teenager. I promise I'm not this negative all the time... All we can do is wait and see the front view.

I agree with Littlebirdzoom, i wonder if volks will bother with her now... :/

 

Im a sucker for pink haired girls, so if shes decent i might consider her.... but its also a smart doll.... >~<

 

I have nothing against SmD but i much prefer Volks DD

I had been waiting for Volks to make Mika and Rika but now who knows D: I'm kind of annoyed really as I see Mika better suited being a sister and Rika being on the new Pretty body. Would make such a nice set!

 

There are so many anime out there and Idolmaster is one of the few franchises that Volks does (besides Type Moon and Vocaloid) and he had to pick one of my favourite characters that I was really looking forward to. Will just have to wait and see now but not too happy with this....

I had been waiting for Volks to make Mika and Rika but now who knows D: I'm kind of annoyed really as I see Mika better suited being a sister and Rika being on the new Pretty body. Would make such a nice set!

 

There are so many anime out there and Idolmaster is one of the few franchises that Volks does (besides Type Moon and Vocaloid) and he had to pick one of my favourite characters that I was really looking forward to. Will just have to wait and see now but not too happy with this....

 

Yeah that's the other thing. Danny has one type of body and it doesn't suit her at all... or a lot of characters he's made. I think he should honestly focus on that first.

That picture is such a tease!! Show us her face. I wanna see what she looks like. I'm really liking her outfit so far

Nami was a collab with Megahouse (which I believe is code for 'they sculpted her'), which I think is why she looks the most like the character she's meant to be out of any of these licensed dolls. So maybe - hopefully? this will be also be a collab effort. Maybe I'm being WAY too optimistic but maybe he'll use it as an excuse to announce a new body.

I agree that this is a really weird choice and seems kinda....yeah. Theses so many franchises Volks haven't or won't touch, I don't get it, if his whole shtick is to do what volks 'wont' then why not do one of those? I wonder how this particular collab came about - whether he approached the license holders or they him.

I think it's odd too, but I'm really just curious to see her face. I honestly kinda hope she doesn't work for anyone I want to make because I really hate how danny gives no advanced warnings on doll releases. It's too stressful especially if I'm trying to plan around volks. I do still hope he doesn't just put her as one of his existing sculpts. But considering his history so far with girls, he's probably gonna.

I agree with everyone who has said they don’t know how to feel about Danny making Idol Master girls. I have nothing against smart doll either, and even have a smart doll.. but I prefer DD and I feel like it’s a low blow to Volks to use one of their obviously favorite collab lines. There are so many other shows and games Danny could’ve used for Smart Dolls that weren’t already being done. He did so awesome with Nami (I don’t even watch One Piece and seriously considered buying her) but I feel like this is taking it a bit too far..

 

I’m sure Mika will be fine, and I still hope Danny does well with her. I just hope this doesn’t push Volks away from making her themselves. Danny Choo is obviously doing fine with Smart Dolls, I just don’t see the need to try so hard to compete with Volks. Both brands have special and very different features - and from what I have seen, most people that like one brand will consider buying both types of dolls at least just to try.

So it's Mika after all. Can't say I'm surprised given how popular she is. She being the first of several Cinderella Girls Smart Dolls is worrying though. He really needs to make a shorter girl body for that to work out. Lelouch's release resulted in new upper torso and arms being made for guys, and Nami has that exclusive bust(maybe the new high heel feet too? It'd make sense..) so maybe getting shorter girl legs isn't so farfethched? At least I hope so. If he could update the girl arms too that would be nice but that's probably asking for too much lol;;

 

On the topic of why there will be Cinderella Girls smart dolls instead of DDs, I've been thinking that maybe Volks already has too many dolls planned to produce and sell CG DDs as quickly as Bamco would want? I wouldn't be surprised if Danny convinced them that he could produce several CG Smart Dolls faster than Volks could. Bamco is Scamco after all and I'm sure they'll want to milk their franchises as much as they can. Personally I think SmD Lelouch and Nami look good--similar enough to their original character art that they are believable as those characters as opposed to pretty faces in cosplay--so I think there is a chance that Mika and the others to follow could end up good as well. Let's hope Bamco is as involved with this project as Sunrise and Megahouse were..

 

If I'm being completely honest, in my personal opinion I'd say that aside from the outfits and bodies being perfectly on point, the head sculpt/faceup/eyes of several imas DDs looked off for their characters so I'm hoping that Danny gets that right at least.. ;-;""

P...personally I feel like I'm the only one who thought Lelouch DIDN'T look like his character outside of his clothes, and wig Nami however looked uncannily like her character, and since she was his most recent release, I don't think he'll mess up Mika. She's a bit tall though, are all the Cinderella girls gonna be the same height? Whilst he may make a new face I dunno if he'd make new heights just to accommodate them all, since more of these girls might be on the way.

 

I too find it a bit strange he jumped onto the Idolm@ster train when VOLKS has been doing it for years, but it also wouldn't surprise me if Danny was approached by the company. Idolm@ster has so many arcs and characters they might have wanted to branch out their other lines to different doll companies to get their dolls out faster. VOLKS has alot on their plate right now with VOCALOID, the Fate series, and now Automata, so perhaps their rate of making Idolm@ster kids was slowing down.

 

And if Danny Choo has a promising history of releasing license characters, they would feel inclined to choose him, and he might have taken it up out of liking the Cinderella girls himself. I hope this doesn't mean that VOLKS won't be touching those girls at all, or has lost the license for the Cinderella girls line. I like the intricacy they add to the characters when they produce their dolls.

I guess LIPPS is even more possible now. If the rest of the planned CG smartdolls are indeed the rest of this unit, I hope Danny makes this outfit for them all:

 

I still wish they would be on a shorter body, but oh well.

Edited August 30, 2018 by Guest

I think it's odd too, but I'm really just curious to see her face. I honestly kinda hope she doesn't work for anyone I want to make because I really hate how danny gives no advanced warnings on doll releases. It's too stressful especially if I'm trying to plan around volks. I do still hope he doesn't just put her as one of his existing sculpts. But considering his history so far with girls, he's probably gonna.

 

I'm honestly surprised about this too, especially considering all the smugness about how superior his sale methods are to Volks previously (especially from the fans) - turns out that Volks has the exact same sales methods after all - both companies do - for their standard models. For the limiteds, Volks' method is vastly preferable. What Danny currently has is literally just a clickwar. I know he probably doesn't want to do lotteries because of how much people complain about those and how he makes a big deal about doing things 'better', but a clickwar is not better than a lottery, not in my opinion anyway. It's sustainable at the moment at least because his popularity isn't quite up there enough, and so long as you know the day the doll is going to be up if you put an order in right then you should be golden because it seems the quota takes at least a day to fill as opposed to less than a hour like Volks clickwars. But his popularity and sales have been growing rapidly, and I think the point where he's inviting a server crash/instant KO to the preorder quota isn't very far away. I'm curious if he plans to change his method once this happens.

 

Whether or not the clickwar preorder style is good or bad is beside the point though, he doesnt really telegraph the things much so I can see how easy they are to miss unless you check his twitter every day. He should do what Volks/Azone do and release a digital flyer with pics of the doll and all the necessary details including the day the preorder starts at least 2-3 weeks in advance. Have it pinned on his twitter or as the twitter/facebook/whatever header. I know a lot of people had no idea Nami had even been finished yet but still wanted her, and now can't because they had basically no time to plan.

 

Whether or not the clickwar preorder style is good or bad is beside the point though, he doesnt really telegraph the things much so I can see how easy they are to miss unless you check his twitter every day. He should do what Volks/Azone do and release a digital flyer with pics of the doll and all the necessary details including the day the preorder starts at least 2-3 weeks in advance. Have it pinned on his twitter or as the twitter/facebook/whatever header. I know a lot of people had no idea Nami had even been finished yet but still wanted her, and now can't because they had basically no time to plan.

 

I don't really know how Volks releases their limited dolls, but Danny's social media game is pretty good. It's not the best certainly, as I agree he should pin a specific post with all the details. However, he has a really good synergy across all of his social media platforms. I know not everyone has Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but if you do, I guarantee you will see the same post from him on all three platforms. It's honestly hard to miss. Also, if you're active in forums and groups, other people pretty much keeps tabs for you. It all boils down to how much you really want the doll. He releases periodic updates and responds to a tweet or two. I'm personally used to mining social media for the next makeup launch of the season and its pretty much the same thing. Social Media stalking.

This might just be my first smart doll! I LOVE mika!!

I hope she has an accurate head/faceup ><

while DD im@s characters are really pretty with good clothes/wigs etc their face did not look like the original character much lol (especially 765pro..)

This might just be my first smart doll! I LOVE mika!!

I hope she has an accurate head/faceup ><

while DD im@s characters are really pretty with good clothes/wigs etc their face did not look like the original character much lol (especially 765pro..)

 

I dunno I feel like when it comes to faces it's difficult to make them all look exactly like the same character when anime style art typically has same-face syndrome, or at least very similar faces, and translating a face to vinyl is even harder, especially if they want to make each head mold look different from each other, and not a recycle of the past releases.

 

I too hope that Danny Choo gets at least her face rather accurate. I am still burning over his Lelouch XD I really think the doll's face doesn't look like the character at all But again, Nami looked alot like her character. I'have high hopes that Mika would bare good resemblance to her original.

This might just be my first smart doll! I LOVE mika!!

I hope she has an accurate head/faceup ><

while DD im@s characters are really pretty with good clothes/wigs etc their face did not look like the original character much lol (especially 765pro..)

 

I dunno I feel like when it comes to faces it's difficult to make them all look exactly like the same character when anime style art typically has same-face syndrome, or at least very similar faces, and translating a face to vinyl is even harder, especially if they want to make each head mold look different from each other, and not a recycle of the past releases.

 

I too hope that Danny Choo gets at least her face rather accurate. I am still burning over his Lelouch XD I really think the doll's face doesn't look like the character at all But again, Nami looked alot like her character. I'have high hopes that Mika would bare good resemblance to her original.

 

yeah both danny and volks are hit or miss when making the faces, I guess the only thing we can do is wait and hope

Yeah, it's not even the clickwar thing so much as just not having a specific release date announced ahead of time. And no, a vague post saying "This might get released in a few days" isn't really enough. It's too last minute. I can't plan for that. I wish there was at least a typical release schedule to follow but it really seems random.

I think besides Nami, the rest of them were teased quite a long while before released, so I don't see why there's any problem with his schedule, please correct me if I'm wrong though. It would be nice if he gave certain days ahead of time for sure, but maybe he keeps his schedule more "open", in case of emergencies and such... ? Hm... who knows how he decides things. Perhaps he thinks this way it keeps people on edge and "bars" people from spending their money elsewhere while waiting for his dolls...?

The teasing doesn't give a good idea of when the thing actually comes out. Maybe I'm just an idiot who can't read between the lines enough to piece it together but I really had no idea when Lelouch was coming out until a few days before and even then I wasn't sure when exactly it would be. If I hadn't checked the forums before going to bed I would have missed him entirely.

 

The point is I don't like the vague hints, the guessing games. Maybe it doesn't seem that way to you but that's really how I see it. I don't see a pattern or schedule. I just get really on edge on the off chance it's something I want because I have no way of knowing when to expect it, and therefore I don't have a way to plan for it. That's the thing I like about volks. Lottery releases happen 4 times a year, same general timeframe, preorders are end of the year.

 

I could be less bugged by what danny does if he just gave an actual date and time for the release, at least a few weeks beforehand. Most companies doing a clickwar kind of thing do that. They want people to know when it's gonna happen and be prepared so they can buy the thing. The whole keeping you on your toes thing doesn't make sense since that's just asking for catching people off guard in such a way that they just aren't able to buy it, or they don't even know until it's too late.