Unboxing Super Sonico -Japanese Doll-

This is the 1/4 scale Super Sonico released as the twelfth entry in the Japanese Doll figure series, a collaboration between F:NEX and the long-established doll house Yoshitoku.

Yoshitoku, who handled the costume and the dressing, was founded in 1711 and is the oldest doll shop in Tokyo. The shop name Yoshinoya was granted by Tokugawa Ienobu, the sixth Tokugawa shogun; joined to Tokubei, the name inherited by each head of the house in turn, Yoshinoya Tokubei was shortened over time into the company name Yoshitoku. Its main store still stands in Asakusabashi, and alongside its hina and May dolls the house is widely known for the phrase “a doll’s face is its life.” A house of that lineage dressing a character figure in genuine Japanese clothing is precisely what this series is about.

One other thing is worth saying up front: the box is enormous. At 1/4 scale the figure stands roughly 420 mm tall and the robes flare out widely at the hem, so it could hardly be otherwise — but if you intend to keep the box, set aside somewhere for it in advance.

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Product Specifications

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Review

The costume uses kinran brocade woven by Bando Shoten, one of Kyoto’s foremost textile houses. Chrysanthemums, plum blossoms and shippo motifs are worked in gold thread across a red ground, and their expression shifts as the angle and the light change. Up close you can trace individual threads through the weave — a lustre no print, however fine, could reproduce. From the layered collar to the moegi green lining and the gold obi with its interlocking shippo pattern and woven cherry blossoms — a Yoshitoku doll is dressed in a real kimono tailored to scale to begin with, and this piece is cut and dressed by exactly that same process. The construction and the fit are both beautifully judged.

The head is crowned with combs, kanzashi, dangling bira-bira ornaments and red camellias, layered to the point of splendour. The kanzashi fanning out behind her are moulded in clear material, so light passing through draws a little colour out of them and keeps so full a headdress from looking heavy. Sonico’s trademark headphones are folded naturally into the arrangement, so that even in full traditional dress she is recognisable at a glance. On the reverse sits a round gold ornament bearing a crest-like device formed from her face and her headphones — a position no viewer sees from the front, given the same care regardless.

In her hands are a shamisen and a bachi. The body is white, the neck a reddish brown with the wood grain painted in, and neither the tuning pegs nor the tension of the strings has been left out. The bachi is a pale pink flecked with fine shimmer, and the fingertips holding it have their nails picked out with equal care. Placing a shamisen in the hands of a character who is herself a musician is what keeps this piece from being merely Sonico in a kimono, and what makes it worthy of being called a crowning work.

The generous bust that is Sonico’s signature is not concealed in the least by the traditional dress. If anything the collar has been drawn deliberately wide, leaving everything from her collarbones downward openly on show. A kimono ordinarily works to smooth away the line of the body; this piece does the opposite, using layered fabric against bare skin to bring that fullness to the fore. By contrast, the feet emerging from beneath the hem wear plain white tabi — the one unexpectedly demure note in the whole composition.

Finally, a point worth knowing before you commit. Because the costume is genuine woven fabric, it cannot be wiped down as a resin figure can, nor taken off and washed. Mine is kept in a display case, but keeping dust off it and holding the humidity steady ask for rather more attention than an ordinary PVC figure would.

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Verdict

Here the craft of a centuries-old house becomes, directly, the figure’s power to convince. The Bando Shoten brocade, the dressing by Yoshitoku, the head laden with combs and kanzashi, the shamisen and the bachi — and for all the commitment to traditional dress, nothing of the character’s own appeal has been given up. Provided you can spare the space to display it and the care it asks for, the level of finish will carry everything you hoped for.

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Where to Buy

• Amazon (Search)
• AmiAmi