Volks DD Fes 2019

Volks Dollpoint has this event in Japan each summer; this year it is 07/13 - 07/15. Yuriko Nanao will be sold again, and there are D'Coords of Alna and Akira:

https://ameblo.jp/blog-dd/entry-12485705993.html

https://ameblo.jp/blog-dd/entry-12486099026.html

Edited June 26, 2019 by cfx

Was wondering what would happen this year, I was kinda hoping there'd be a new character doll release, even if it was another im@s girl like Yuriko last year.

But this is the first time Alna and Akira have been DCoords, right? I know Natsuki and Moe have been a few times, so thats kinda exciting, wonder if either will be tan skin?

We're also probably hearing about the August Dolpa dolls real soon (as in, within a week hopefully EDIT: Volks news was just confirmed for next monday so yes) so since the event is the 13th they might show them off.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Monty

I'm not aware of Alna and Akira being released as D'Coords before. Tan Alna especially would be interesting since she's been practically every other skin color.

While intentionally vague, one of the lines in that first post also made me think that whatever the new dolls are would be shown as well.

Volks News should be out one of the next two Mondays?

5 hours ago, cfx said:

Volks Dollpoint has this event in Japan each summer; this year it is 07/13 - 07/15. Yuriko Nanao will be sold again, and there are D'Coords of Alna and Akira:

 

1 hour ago, Monty said:

Was wondering what would happen this year, I was kinda hoping there'd be a new character doll release, even if it was another im@s girl like Yuriko last year.

Hopefully she makes it to the webstore, and to the US again so @sinclair has a shot at her.

Edited June 26, 2019 by BeyondTime

I've been dying to see tan Alna for YEARS that would be amazing!  

I've been meaning to ask the forum when new iM@s girls are typically released/teased, because I'm SUPPOSED to be holding out for characters I really like, like Mika, Shiki, Kirari, Frederica  etc but Kaede has been tempting me for ages and now she's being re-released. So it doesn't look like there'll be a new girl? I wonder what Volks has up their sleeve

Edited June 27, 2019 by littlebirdzoom

1 hour ago, littlebirdzoom said:

but Kaede has been tempting me for ages and now she's being re-released. So it doesn't look like there'll be a new girl? I wonder what Volks has up their sleeve

I’m sure Volks will release more iM@S girls, but I expect the next release will either be 20th celebration, or maybe the next pre-order project. 

As far as Kaede goes, unless she is now on an F3 body, I expect this is just stock Volks USA held back for special events. 

I have her, I’d grab her, she’s a beautiful doll. Her extra outfit is nice too. 

Hopefully sometime this weekend the new dolls get teased ahead of Volks News 84. If it’s not a new / re-release iM@S girl you are probably safe until September when the next pre-order launches. 

A full on LiPPS pre-order would wreck my wallet, as would Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy X / X-2. XD

Unless they did Rin as Ishtar I think I am safe from another Fate pre-order. 

Edited June 27, 2019 by BeyondTime

The only thing truly consistent with Volks is their inconsistency, but here's when the various iM@S girls were released:

• Miki Hoshii & Haruka Amami at Hometown Dolpa Sendai, August 2012
• Yukiho Hagiwara & Chihaya Kisaragi at Homtown Dolpa Nagoya 5, August 2013
• Makoto Kikuchi at Hometown Dolpa Osaka 8, August 2014
• Takane Shijou at Dolpa 34, December 2014
• Iori Minase & Yayoi Takatsuki were the preorder project for October 2016

Cinderella Girls were somewhat more random:

• Ranko Kanzaki & Rin Shibuya at Dolpa 31, May 2014
• Uzuki Shimamura at Hometown Dolpa Kyoto 11, March 2015
• Mio Honda at Dolpa 33, May 2015
• Rin Shibuya Cinderella Project Version, Dolpa 35, May 2016
• Anastasia was part of preorder project (with Iori and Yayoi) for October 2016
• Kaede Takagaki at Hometown Dolpa Sendai 2, August 2018

Million Live:

• Yuriko Nanao at DD Fes 2018, July 2018

Yuriko was released during DD Fes, but I think she was actually considered part of some Idolmaster event.

I'm not sure when things were teased and I believe that varies a lot. Kaede was known about a long time before release as was Yuriko Nanao.

Anything is possible with Volks, but since they announced the Alna and Akira D'Coords along with selling Yuriko Nanao again at DD Fes 2019, I don't really expect a new doll for that event. Historically, DD Fes has been where Akihabara girls were released. Not sure if they all were; I know Ruri wasn't, but her release was also delayed due to the outfit thing.

I'd expect the dolls shown in next week's Volks News 84 for August Dolpa to be rereleases, and for Volks News 85 to be whatever the preorder project is this year, and the December lottery dolls to be Sailor Moon again. But that's just my assumption.

If the rereleases are consistent with what I think they did last time, there will be one doll for each voting category, which means Miku Reboot was the DD[*], and we will additionally get either a DDS or DDdy (but not both) and a MDD or DDP (but not both). Then over the next year or two there could be more rereleases not specifically stated as part of this event, as with Rin Tohsaka's and Rin Shibuya's rereleases last time.

[*]Which is why I'm pissed. Miku isn't hard to buy, or rare, or even expensive aftermarket, plus Volks resells her all the time anyway. Sure, release her again so everyone can buy her who wants her, but making her the official rerelease is boring. There were far more interesting and wanted rare dolls with bad aftermarket prices--Takane, Saber Lily, Tamaki, Yuki Morikawa, and on and on.

                                                                                                  

Update: With the DDS Rem and Ram announcement, Volks once again proves I have no clue what I'm talking about. Unless they are doing far more dolls than usual, that means no rereleases in Volks News 84. Then the next dolls should be the preorder ones? And those wouldn't be rereleases unless it's dolls that were previously preorder, because they've never before changed a doll from limited/lottery to preorder with a rerelease that I know of. So unless December is rereleases instead of Sailor Moon, no rerelease dolls other than Miku during the anniversary year? Unless Rem and Ram are the preorders, but are those ever announced this early?

Edited June 28, 2019 by cfx

I had a few thoughts about the holdup for rereleases. it isn’t actually DDs 20th anniversary like it is for SD, so maybe they are doing it slower and they just wanted to get the Miku out of the way so she could come out alongside Sakura Miku. (I am aware the last rereleases happened during the 15th SD anniversary, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me... I just don’t understand why they’d bother even making separate polling categories if they didnt plan to release at least one of each. 8’))

However, SD have only had two dolls rereleased so far - both alongside each other at a march dolp. Meanwhile Tyltyl doesn’t count because they had a miniscule number of him at Dolpa only, it wasn’t a true rerelease) *keeping in mind we haven’t seen the August SDs yet if any so they may or may not be rereleases. Clothing rereleases have also been sparse. So it could just be we all jumped the gun expecting it to happen so quickly because of how it went last time.

 

.......Some day my MDD rerelease will come ;-;

Edited June 28, 2019 by Monty

9 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

Unless they did Rin as Ishtar I think I am safe from another Fate pre-order. 

Unless Rin as Ishtar is released, you're spared from making a Grand Order. 😜😅

 

7 hours ago, cfx said:

[*]Which is why I'm pissed. Miku isn't hard to buy, or rare, or even expensive aftermarket, plus Volks resells her all the time anyway. Sure, release her again so everyone can buy her who wants her, but making her the official rerelease is boring. There were far more interesting and wanted rare dolls with bad aftermarket prices--Takane, Saber Lily, Tamaki, Yuki Morikawa, and on and on.

*High 5*

 

7 hours ago, cfx said:

Update: With the DDS Rem and Ram announcement, Volks once again proves I have no clue what I'm talking about.

With the DDS Rem and Ram announcement, Volks proves I shouldn't bother trying to guess which licensed dolls will be announced. I expected DDS Sailor Venus and DDdy Sailor Jupiter because Moon, Mercury, and Mars were released already. Instead of trying to take a stab in the dark, I took a guess based on recent releases. I didn't come close.

 

9 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

A full on LiPPS pre-order would wreck my wallet, as would Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy X / X-2. XD

Your wallet will not be punished in the name of Volks. 😉

Edited June 28, 2019 by growcian

15 hours ago, cfx said:

Then the next dolls should be the preorder ones? And those wouldn't be rereleases unless it's dolls that were previously preorder, because they've never before changed a doll from limited/lottery to preorder with a rerelease that I know of.

Blue Saber.

8 hours ago, Monty said:

I had a few thoughts about the holdup for rereleases. it isn’t actually DDs 20th anniversary like it is for SD, so maybe they are doing it slower and they just wanted to get the Miku out of the way so she could come out alongside Sakura Miku.

The thing with Miku is all they really had to do was take their seemingly unlimited supply of Miku heads, slam them onto F3 bodies, and boom instant Miku Reboot. XD

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great they re-released on an updated body, and my point is more that she probably didn't need a lot of prototyping and production to get her ready for Sakura Miku's launch. They also knew about the DD winners by late March last year. Given the timing of the vote her release with Sakura Miku makes total sense, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had it planned this way from the moment Sakura Miku was a thing.

For other re-releases there may be a lot more involved in producing the dolls. For example they may go with different outfits, or updated faceups. Those would take more time to go from prototype to production. If they did any of the unitorso girls in their original outfits they will need to design a unitorso that works with F3. They would probably have to widen the waist, and that would take a fair bit of time to produce.

They might decide to re-release an iM@S girl with a new 765 Pro girl like with Miku, so if an iM@S girl won that could mean her timing will based on that new girl's release.

Lastly with iM@S there is also the additional outfit releases they tend to include along side them. If they did a new licensed costume from the current games that's going to take prototyping / production.

Edited June 28, 2019 by BeyondTime

As far as new Im@s girls go, Anzu strikes me as being very overdue. I've said this before but it's so weird to me that they'd release her trademark t-shirt and not her. When I saw that they had announced that tshirt to be sold at that one Im@s event I thought for sure it meant they'd be announcing her there, but no dice.

As someone who really doesn't know much about Im@s beyond what a lot of the characters look like, Anzu is definitely a character I really want to see get an official DD, because she's unbelievably cute.

2 minutes ago, Monty said:

As far as new Im@s girls go, Anzu strikes me as being very overdue.

MDD Anzu would go along perfectly with Kirari as the first of a new line of 1/2 scale dolls. XD

1 hour ago, BeyondTime said:

Blue Saber.

Haha. It figures any "rule" I could come up with Volks has violated.

 

You bring up another point on why Miku Reboot is disappointing as the official rerelease; other than being the new body there's nothing new about her. The last time they did this, both the official rereleases and the ones that came over the following years all (? hesitant to make such a declaration lol) had new outfits. Miku's a bit different in that she probably needs to have her basic outfit, but they could've updated to V3 at least.

I just get continually frustrated on how long we are apparently waiting for the rereleases. Once I know what they are then I can consider if I want to buy certain dolls from Mandarake. Since it's clear Volks might rerelease literally anything, it's risky to pay aftermarket prices until I know what is being rereleased. Waiting for possible later rereleases is a pointless endeavor, but we "know" (?) there should be at least one more offiical rerelease from the votes, from the DDS/DDdy voting category (and a MDD for Monty, but that doesn't affect what I'm looking at).

8 hours ago, cfx said:

but we "know" (?) there should be at least one more offiical rerelease from the votes, from the DDS/DDdy voting category (and a MDD for Monty, but that doesn't affect what I'm looking at).

I'm sure it will be bigger than just two more. I mean they made a huge production out of voting all year long in 2018, so I'd expect more than 3 DD.

I'd also make the observation that a 20th anniversary is a bigger deal than 15th anniversary, and they have released a lot of stuff in those five years. They could do something bigger this time around than they did last time, so we can't necessarily go by prior years.

I think the one consistency with Volks is that their launches are kind of a big deal, so I expect they are doing a lot of planning and preparation.

Edited June 29, 2019 by BeyondTime

10 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

I'm sure it will be bigger than just two more. I mean they made a huge production out of voting all year long in 2018, so I'd expect more than 3 DD.

I hope so, but to avoid too much potential disappointment I'm going to just count on one from each voting category, as they did last time. They did do the further rereleases, which were probably influenced by the voting as well, but those didn't have that "The Best of the Bests" thing attached to them.

Another thing that may be impacting DD releases this year in general, is production capacity and delays. Volks just switched to DD-f3 for everything; I know from reading posts on the old forum that at the time they switched to DD3, there was a period when bodies were unavailable to buy for quite some time. Besides that, last year Volks experimented with some different styles of releases, with Luka and Matoi, and both of those experienced some delays, with Matoi delivered later than planned, and Luka's second batch also later than planned. 2B and 9S could be taking up more resources for manufacturing than usual DDs since they're different in some ways, with resin eyes, and I wonder how the faceups are being done i.e. can they still be mask-painted or is it something different like they do with SDs, which I assume aren't mask painted, maybe I'm wrong.

As pointed out above, perhaps Miku Reboot and even Sakura Miku were dolls easier to make than others due to no changes other than the body for Miku Reboot. Sakura Miku is a new doll, but in some ways less so than usual for a variant. She has a new faceup, but the outfit is mostly the same style as the original so the pattern may be mostly the same as well.

It's this Rem/Ram release that makes the rest of the year seemingly not make sense now. Based on number of dolls usually released at a time, those would seem to be the DDs for August's Hometown Dolpa Sendai 7. Then there will be the preorder project in September, which is usually two dolls, and December's Dolpa 42 dolls. I assumed, which is clearly dangerous, that December would get Sailor Moon as the last two years, and that the preorder project wouldn't be rereleases, which would appear to leave no room for any further rereleases this year. Maybe @Monty is right and they'll all be next year, who knows. I guess I am maybe surprised that Ram and Rem aren't the preorder dolls.

I guess there will either be some answers, or just more questions, in 2-3 days when someone has seen Volks News and maybe there will be scans as usual. I think it's two weeks later when Volks has the online version.

Well there is no guarantee that December will be Sailor Moon. People have asked for Minako, and I pretty sure she will get made. She might not be until next year, or she and Jupiter could be the pre-orders.

Right, that's just an assumption I had based on it being the case the past two years, so it's very possible that's wrong.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were December, but then With Volks that might be a reason not to release them in December. 

Volks also has a problem with online resellers wrecking their events. They may need to reassess before releasing any more of the Best Selection dolls. Be pretty messed up if people remember their anniversary as scalper fest. 

On 6/25/2019 at 10:38 PM, BeyondTime said:

 

Hopefully she makes it to the webstore, and to the US again so @sinclair has a shot at her.

She's on the VolksUSA site right now for sale as part of some summer sale.  The temptation is great as she is a cutie, but I'm passing as all new doll purchases are on hold indefinitely at the moment.  Thanks for thinking about me though.

Volks page is up for DD Fes: https://www.volks.co.jp/ddfes/2019/en/item.html

I see a lot of debate on miku reboot.  But you do not think it's in reaction to the miku recast?  They saw that the model is remodeled as well as the skeleton dd3.  So can they remedy the problem in the way?

The recast is Snow Miku, though. I don't know, I think Volks would just respond by basically ignoring that it exists, at least in a public sense.

Since Miku Reboot is a "The Best" rerelease, obviously she got a lot of votes in the poll, and as others have pointed out, was fairly easy to make since they didn't do a new outfit, faceup, or wig.

I was thinking the push for Sakura and Reboot Miku was influenced by the recast 😕 If people are searching for 'miku doll' Volks wants to have products for people to buy available now. Being able to buy the recast and not the official one puts them in a bad spot.

20 hours ago, foo said:

I was thinking the push for Sakura and Reboot Miku was influenced by the recast 😕 If people are searching for 'miku doll' Volks wants to have products for people to buy available now. Being able to buy the recast and not the official one puts them in a bad spot.

That’s not a bad hypothesis. As far as we know the voting is only part of what influences a rerelease, so they could have decided she had enough votes to justify releasing her. It’s also kind of interesting that so far she’s the only best of the best release this year. If she ends up being the only one this year I would find urgency a compelling idea. 

I think the idea that she was just a logical release with the already announced Sakura Miku has a lot of merit though.