A Tale of Two Pureneemo Ball-Jointed Dolls

Here’s a couple of Azone Pureneemo dolls that arrived recently from Mandarake in Japan.

The girl on the left is Ex Cute witch girl Mia Of The Note. She’s the Azone Direct Store Limited Edition Version, so she has a white outfit instead of the regular outfit.

The girl on the right is Ex Cute Princess Aika. I don’t know a lot about her but the Mandarake listing described her as Princess Aika love Sul mermaid Daisaku game! I think she’s quite an old Pureneemo, dating back to 2007. Despite her age she arrived in great condition. Even her pleather boots were in great condition (more on pleather later).

I really like these Ex Cute girls because they are super poseable and Aika is standing upright on my desk right now. Even typing vibrations don’t topple her over. If only my Dollfies would stand upright so easily.

Aika didn’t come with any accessories apart from her mermaid-like hairband.

I live next to the sea so I took Aika out for a photoshoot. I’m not madly keen on taking dolls outside of the house as there’s always the potential for them to get damaged, or accessories to get lost forever etc. etc.

In this particular photoshoot Aika only fell onto the sand once, so she was kind of lucky. Anyway, here she is in all her glory:

It’s actually not that easy to pose Aika. She’s on the Advance body so she lacks both knee joints and elbow joints. I also find her hip joints are very stiff, although her legs can now be moved unlike when I first unboxed her.

I think her hair colour is lovely and I bought her because I really loved her turquoise knee socks. Sadly her legs somehow became detached between her being photographed in Mandarake and arriving at my home, but they were easily reattached. I think she’ll soon become a firm favourite of mine, and at 5,000 Yen she was a comparative bargain.

Here’s one more photo of Aika. I think she’s a terrific girl – let me know if you have her or want her to add to your collection.

Incidentally I think they’ve changed the Pureneemo Ex Cute hands (and legs) since Aika was released. I tried fitting her with different hands, but they wouldn’t fit. It’s actually turned out to not be much of an issue anyway. Since her elbows won’t bend it’s not much use equipping her with peace hands.

Now let’s talk about Pureneemo Mia. She was twice the price of Aika, partly because she is a rarer limited edition doll. I think she has an adorable face and her white outfit is neat. Unfortunately she’s the first Pureneemo I’ve been really disappointed with. Unlike my other girls her legs are floppy and she doesn’t stand up on her own two feet.

A bigger issue is that her pleather boots actually disintegrated as I attempted to put them on her.

Not good!

If I was collecting her for investment purposes then I’d be seriously annoyed. However, I bought her to put on display and I have to admit that I’m not that keen on the boots anyway. She’s also from 2012 so I guess it might have been too much to expect the pleather material to last that long. I’ll see if I can get her some in a similar style to Aika’s, as I really like her platform boots.

Update 1: So apparently Mia’s peeling boots is a known issue with this particular Pureneemo. I actually found a good replacement pair of boots on Etsy and coincidentally one of the reviews mentions that the buyer was buying them as a replacement for Mia’s boots!

One great thing about Mia is that she came with hand packs… a lot of them! As you can see in the photo below she came with 9 – yes 9 sets of hands (excluding her default hands). As I now have 4 dolls on the Flection body this is a nice thing to have.

Oh and in case you think I can’t count, one of the packs appears to contain a spare pack of shoulder joints (for some reason).

Update 2: Mia’s new boots arrived from HelloCoolCat and they’re absolutely gorgeous. I’m back in love with Mia again!

Here’s a photo of Mia at the seaside:

And here’s Mia’s fabulous new boots:

Amazingly they look almost identical to her original pair.

Which girl is your favourite – Aika or Mia? Do let us know in the comments below. Personally I’ll try to avoid acquiring any more Pureneemos that have pleather/vinyl material in their outfits.