My Growing Dollfie Family

I took Kizuna to London Film & Comic Con.

There was a massive queue for entry. Mostly that was because the door staff were useless.

Once inside we went up to the gallery and scanned the crowd to ensure there were no other dolls. There were a few human cosplayers but sadly no Bocchis.

We couldn't get anywhere near the headline guest Mel Gibson.

We bought a fantastic Miku Miku tote bag. Other than that it wasn't hugely interesting. The comic stuff was good (and not crowded) but I don't know if kids today are really into them anymore.

Not many people were interested in Bocchi, but again my t shirt was the clear winner.

I think we need this photo in the "how tall are Dollfie Dreams?" thread. Mandalorians are now the new unit of scale, replacing bananas.

The best moment had to be watching a Dalek trying to cross the busy Kensington High Street. It may not look like it but it was ferociously hot and humid in London and it can't have been much fun to be in that outfit. The guy in that Dalek must have been really hot too.

I don't know if we'll go to this one again. There wasn't much to do for free and there wasn't nearly enough anime.

Edited July 7 by Xiongmao

The girls and I had a crazily busy weekend and also went to London on the Sunday.

This time I took Kakegumin to a doll meet. It was 80's themed and this was the nearest outfit we had. Kakegumin is of course DDS Megumin. It's the first time I've dressed her up in another outfit, and I'm impressed with how awesome she looked. She gets bonus points for having a default wig that's a pretty good match for Yumeko Jabami.

We stopped off in central London for a photoshoot. The Sony SLR photos are to follow, but these are the highlights from the mobile phone photos I took.

This is an excellent outfit (from dollremi) and Kakegumin got plenty of attention. Twice I was asked if I was a professional photographer, which was good for the ego.

This store was probably the best random find ever. It turns out they sell the finest weaponry known to dollkind. They're reasonably priced too, and much cheaper than importing a cheap plastic Volks katana. The store assistant loved Kagegumin too.

Local lore had it that these were human letter openers. We bought a Harry Potter one. Sadly the wands were only to human scale.

Next it was onto Animetal. Oddly they didn't have a single Yumeko Jabami figure, but they did have a tonne of Megumins.

Megumin resisted the urge to explode this pile of figures everywhere.

Another pile of otaku goods - this time mecha.

Finally it was off to nearby Forbidden Planet. We found some ecchi on sale. We'll have to see if it's been turned into an anime 😲.

Some more Yumeko Jabami.

There's a load of statues dotted around Leicester Square. The onlookers thought it was cool that we could recreate this Mary Poppins.

I thought it would be cool to get some photos in front of a casino. I didn't realise how many casinos there are in that part of London.

I would have taken more photos here but I was talking to the doorman for ages.

We're going to a doll photography workshop at the weekend so my tribe and I have to raise our game.

I seem to remember Ciel using a sword like this in the anime rather than the cheap plastic things Volks give her. Evidently it was a good buy too. They command impressive sums of money on eBay.

I'm pretty sure it's going to get us banned from a future anime convention though. We almost got a load of trouble at the weekend for Bocchi's guitar case.

Ciel in our new favourite tree. I now attach an LED light panel to my camera's hot shoe mount. This really helps with bringing some colour into their eyes.

When photographing in public I've had a lot of people find this interesting, and it makes me look more like a pro I guess.

Kazuha wearing our new Project Setail outfit, Key To Your Heart.

It does also come with matching hair attachments but for an authentic look it would involve dismantling our existing Empty Sekai wig.

My tribe are still in awe at how amazing their new sword is. Apparently they were going to call it something boring like sting, but Megumin insisted it be named chunchunmaru. I got lucky with the reflection in this shot.

Towa braved extraordinary temperatures and took a couple of her dolls (and Aqua's hands) to London Fashion Doll Fair.

After a 5 am start I'm too tired to write much. I'm also aching from carrying Towa around for a good part of the day.

This is Towa's Battle Towa outfit and she only wears it in times of household crisis. Yes we have yet another crisis 😬.

There was a lot of interest in Towa. Not many people have seen a DD before, much less a DDdy.

Being a fashion doll event I wasn't expecting to find much in the vendors area. But we did manage to find a couple of bags full of American Doll accessories. This was a great find because they're annoyingly popular items on eBay.

I know this should really go in the Azone section but Towa was too large for the photography workshop diaoramas. Polina gave us some amazing advice for our own photos - check out her amazing portfolio of doll photos here. I did take a lot more photos of my pair, but sadly the pot plant photobombed every shot, leaving the girls out of focus. The videos intended for Insta Reels are much better.

I don't know if Maya and Lycee are besties. I've never taken this combo out before. Maya doesn't normally leave the house given how delicately beautiful her outfit is. I think they're arguing about how Lycee ruined the photoshoot by totally refusing to stand up.

Well eventually they chilled and now they want me to find one of these enormous 3 floor Sindy dollhouses. Of course they might go off this idea once they find out it has no stairs, electricity or running water.

Next week it's HyperJapan. It's not a doll event but I'm intending to take Miku in her new outfit. I also heard there's a really great location nearby for photoshoots.

My job ended for reasons outside my control, so I believe my new job is full time doll photographer. Today it was DDS Chisato Nishikigi's turn to venture out in the doll carrier.

This is the same golf course where I took my first photos of Towa back in 2020.

My Sony has an annoying habit of focusing on the wrong thing. But I kind of like the gun being the main centre of focus.

Looking for the bad guys. I really enjoyed this show. Hopefully they'll make a season 2. I don't really know what the John Wick stuff was about, but the slice of life stuff was top notch.

Volks did such an amazing job on this pair. Chisato's kind of similar to Shin Sato, and Takina is a pouty princess. I'll try to take photos of both Chisato and Takina, but I'm not sure if they'll fit in the same doll carrier. I can see us returning here for more photoshoots. It's on a golf course and in theory is a nice safe dog-free place.

This one is for my new doll photography mentor. It also really shows off the new DD body's ability to bend into much more realistic laying down poses.

Megumin's turn in the woods. Also Chomusuke but he's not in all of the photos. And Aqua's large right hand. She's not such a useless DD after all.

This photoshoot didn't turn out quite as good as expected but (i) I found a new favourite tree, and (ii) as a bonus Megumin's yielding Chunchunmaru.

I spent a whole hour looking for Megumin's staff. It turned out to be in the Vocaloids outfit box 😪.

How good was Hyper Japan 2025?

It was beyond epic. I'll post more photos soon, but here's our googly-eyed princess after a very long day. It was held at Kensington Olympia, and the stunning hall Miku is in was built in 1885.

Highlights of her day included:

• Being one of only a few select cosplayers to be invited to sit inside the Racing Miku car.
• Impromtu BJD meet-up with 4 attendees.
• A total of 10 BJDs spotted in total.
• The Pokemon garden was excellent.
• So many people wanted to get a photo of her.
• We got photographed with the Sylvanian Family rabbit.
• A top cosplayer was cosplaying as Gasai Yuno, and there was a Mirai Nikki car that was too awesome for words.
• Strawberry Miku's grail status was confirmed. There was no other Strawberry Miku sighted, either in cosplay, doll, figure or plush form 😁.
• The only mishap was sliding off the Racing Miku car's bonnet. No outfit pieces were lost, which was a miracle in itself.

 

Miku and I are exhausted. It was a very long day. This must be what Megumin feels like after exploding stuff.

I was worried that Strawberry Miku was way too much outfit. Fortunately there were no wardrobe malfunctions and nothing fell off.

Photo op in the Pokemon garden.

A wild Miku has appeared!

After a few hours there, we finally met some other BJDs. I knew there would be some somewhere.

Fun fact: an event attendee was worried Miku had lost one of her socks 😁. I did get a lot of questions about Miku. A couple of people asked which stand I bought her from. Everybody seemed to know she was Strawberry Miku. It's an iconic look but the figures are super rare apparently. I didn't see any on sale (and there were a LOT of Miku figures).

The anime cars were one of the highlights of the day. Miku sat there for a while being photographed by the human visitors to the festival.

It was a good job she brought her umbrella because the weather wasn't great. Thankfully we didn't have to queue for as long as we did for Comic Con.

Apparently there was also a Keys To Your Heart Miku at the event but we never saw her. Olympia is a massive venue.

We really need to sort out a Gasai Yuno cosplay. There was a human cosplaying her and she looked amazing. Hopefully some videos will surface of all the pro cosplayers at the event. I was mentally ticking off all of my dolls once we spotted human cosplayer versions of them. Surprisingly we didn't spot a Yor Forger. Demon Slayer and Vocaloids were very popular. There was also an excellent Frieren and Himmel.

I was trying to explain to my sister what a Yandere is. She's only just learnt the verb to cosplay.

With the UFO catchers.

Some more motors. We started watching Darling in the Franxx but felt it never really got going. We'll pick it up again once we finish our absolute marathon effort to watch every Monogatari series.

There was somebody cosplaying as this character but I can't remember her name.

Of course this one is Haruhi Suzumiya. Maybe we'll bring a Haruhi cosplay to the next festival. I didn't see anybody cosplaying as her, which was quite surprising.

The K-On car. We have Mio's guitar.

I didn't see any Gwar Gura cosplays and there wasn't a tonne of Hololive stuff. It's one possibility if I go in cosplay myself next time. I will take a shork or the smol shork. My other idea was to cosplay as Loid Forger and take Yoru and Anya with me.

Miku on the tube train back home again. It was a great day out and I highly recommend it to anyone in the UK or who is thinking of visiting London next year.

I think the girls might be done with YouTube but they've been blowing up on Insta. It's just so much easier churning out Reels. I'm not sure where we're going with this but we keep getting followed by ever larger influencers.

Until the job market improves I'm now a full time doll photographer. I think this one will be great for my photography follow up session at the weekend. The bear raincoat's a pretty good fit considering it's the DD version. I don't even know if they made a MDD version.

I was a little short of inspiration for Kizuna's Idolmaster shoot. But she decided she wanted to free stand, so I went to this favourite spot.

I was really anxious to get some photos of her in this outfit because I want to put her in something else for the next expedition out of town. Incidentally these gloves were not easy to get on, so this pair of hands might have to be forever in gloves. It is a really cool outfit though and I think it was the half price one we picked up from Dollremi. At some point we'll see if we can get some matching footwear.

 

Hopefully it's starting to show that we learnt a lot from our recent doll photography workshop with a professional photographer.

Here's Shin Sato out exploring the nearby woodland. We took a break from turning Shin Sato bot from a desktop app prototype into an actual website. We have a brand new domain, an AI generated logo and a dream. Well there are no jobs right now so this will keep us busy for a while and also function as an excellent thing to show at interviews.

This outfit came with earrings (which fit really well) but we couldn't risk losing them. The white dress seems quite a common outfit and looks good with a straw boater.

The shoes are from Volks and we've had them for ages.

The parasols are new. They were from AliExpress and are really great for the price. We have a few different colours.

I took Megumin to Animangapop in London at the weekend.

I forgot our LED light so her eyes are a bit dark. I guess that hat doesn't help either.

Animangapop was a tiny event, like 1% of the size of HyperJapan. There wasn't much going on so we only stayed an hour then went onto the monthly fashion doll meet.

We did see one other BJD. Also a couple of attendees saw Megumin then wished they'd brought their own BJD 😆.

Up next is For the Love of Fantasy. I don't know if this will be any good and I don't think we'll see any BJDs. But Miku is gonna slay in her new vampire outfit. I'll post some photos once I've fixed up her hair (again). It's just taken me ages to get the shoes right. After that it's Dolly Day in Barcelona.

I took Kizuna to London. Mostly we went because we had a tip that Holland Park was a good spot for doll photography.

Indeed it was.

Funny story: a human gentleman in the Kyoto garden was agitated at the sight of a grown man carrying a large flamboyantly dressed doll around. I explained that it was permitted since Kizuna is a Japanese doll and we were in fact in a Japanese garden. Seemingly happy with that explanation, he didn't call the Feds (or park police).

Surprisingly, Kizuna didn't once drop her little hat. We didn't take too many photos in the Kyoto garden, because of the human hoardes.

There are some great photo opps in the park. Like this place.

If London has a better place for taking doll photos, then I have yet to find it.

Next weekend I'm taking Miku Miku vampire NT to a fantasy convention. By fantasy I mean it's 90% related to those vampire TV shows that human women can't seem to get enough of. I don't know what it will be like, but Miku is totally going to slay in her incredible outfit 🧛‍♀️.

There was huge disappointment in the doll household over the weekend. Our grail from the ancient times was sold to another doll family. To lift our spirits we decided to open an outfit we bought a long time ago.

It was a bit of a squeeze but Towa just about fits into Asahina Mikuru's outfit set. She does bear a striking resemblance to Mikuru. Here she is checking her socials in case Haruhi has been posting embarrassing 🐰 photos of her.

I may or may not be wrong on this but I believe the original DD Mikuru didn't come with her uniform. And that's how we ended up with this uniform set, which appears to have been sold separately. Surprisingly the shoes are in mint condition. The outfit is a tight fit on a DDdy, but that's kind of staying true to the actual Mikuru I guess.

2 hours ago, Xiongmao said:

There was huge disappointment in the doll household over the weekend. Our grail from the ancient times was sold to another doll family. To lift our spirits we decided to open an outfit we bought a long time ago.

It was a bit of a squeeze but Towa just about fits into Asahina Mikuru's outfit set. She does bear a striking resemblance to Mikuru. Here she is checking her socials in case Haruhi has been posting embarrassing 🐰 photos of her.

I may or may not be wrong on this but I believe the original DD Mikuru didn't come with her uniform. And that's how we ended up with this uniform set, which appears to have been sold separately. Surprisingly the shoes are in mint condition. The outfit is a tight fit on a DDdy, but that's kind of staying true to the actual Mikuru I guess.

Somehow on the photo you can clearly see she is down/uneasy. That is well photographed. Hope that the sold girl was not a necessary action but one out of free will?

On 8/11/2025 at 6:48 PM, Rajke said:

Somehow on the photo you can clearly see she is down/uneasy. That is well photographed. Hope that the sold girl was not a necessary action but one out of free will?

Thankfully no doll family members were sold here. In fact we've just added a new addition (Fumika). But one we tried to buy went to another doll fam.

I took Miku to London again at the weekend. This time it was For the Love Of Fantasy. We had a generally good day out. Sadly the doll logic of wearing a stain monster dress to an event resulted in some minor staining. Well I did warn her!

She really wants to wear this outfit for Halloween but she will have to be isolated from all the other dolls.

As to the event, Miku's highlight was the car from Supernatural. We had to ask somebody what show it was from, because we didn't know.

The car was immaculate and had an awesome matt paint job. Hopefully it's not a stain monster like Miku's outfit.

Sorry the photos are a little blurry. It was quite dark in the venue hall and my Sony only has the kit lens. It's also quite difficult to hold Miku, the camera and our large tote bag simultaneously while avoiding the legion of humans.

Miku's camera does in fact work but it works better if she remembers to charge it the night before lol.

We spotted another doll. This was our first fantasy convention and our choice of outfit was perfect. There weren't quite as many human cosplayers as there were at the previous events. Gandalf was the most popular outfit, maybe because Sir Ian McKellen was guest of honour.

We didn't see any other dolls. I thought there might be some because fantasy themed BJD are quite a big thing. I guess they're mostly resins though and too fragile to go to something like this.

Miku did spot a human cosplaying as Frieren. Miku didn't receive as much attention this time, although people were quite interested in our photo sessions at the diaoramas area.

Doll photographs Hobbit house. This time the camera worked for a little while.

Miku felt the event was good but very exhausting due to the size of the venue and the number of humans. Thankfully I brought cookies with me and Miku spotted a vendor selling vampire food.

I should say that the vendors were pretty good and much better than the Animangapop event. There was quite a decent selection of doll sized stuff. Since our budget is somewhat squeezed right now, we opted for some charms. They were a really brilliant find and are a perfect size for hanging off the girls' schoolbags. They will be appearing in future photoshoots.

Also on offer were some very cool looking potion bottles. I was also very tempted by a mimic chest for Frieren.

After the event I was thinking of taking Miku for a look around Highgate Cemetery. However we had to cancel due to their policy forbidding vampire themed photoshoots [true story btw]. Instead we had a walk around Charing Cross road in search of doll sized books. I did find some but they were extremely expensive. I'll try and source some cheaper ones. We did also find some interesting shops selling small antique busts and other items. If we ever get round to making a diaorama then that kind of stuff would be absolutely perfect.

Next event: Dolly Day in Barcelona. Ciel will be attending, mostly because her default outfit will be awesome for gothic city photoshoots. I thought about taking somebody else but we need to keep the luggage weight down in case of doll related purchases at the event.

Edited August 17 by Xiongmao

I took Kizuna out today but we forgot to bring the camera lol. We did have quite a good day finding doll sized items though.

Our Frieren has her first grimoire. To be honest the spells contained within are nothing special considering how much we paid for it. And we had a traumatic time buying it from a pair of England's grumpiest shop keepers.

It also has an evil aura and we'll probably keep it in the dresser in our spare room.