DDS Rem and Ram (Re:zero)

There are some pictures of these two from Dolpa on this blog: http://blog.livedoor.jp/teaoevo/archives/1907354.html

Here's a Ram with a white wig:

 

Rem and Ram will be clickwar.. which seems rather unwise: https://ec.volks.co.jp/ext/htdn7/index.html?__lang=en

Makes me really worried actually, I was hoping for a backup lottery if I missed out at DollPoint.. 

 

edit: They were on display again at Dollpoint for the Comiket period and there wasn't a crowd so I could get some closer shots (sorry iPhone only and more Ram than Rem): 

Untitled by Beani F, on Flickr

Untitled by Beani F, on Flickr

 

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by Beani

7 hours ago, Beani said:

Rem and Ram will be clickwar.. which seems rather unwise: https://ec.volks.co.jp/ext/htdn7/index.html?__lang=en

Makes me really worried actually, I was hoping for a backup lottery if I missed out at DollPoint..

Yeah, that seems like a terrible idea, and I'm guessing the scalpers are going to get all the dolls again.

I think they'd be better off doing limited pre-orders will full payment up front. From what I can tell these guys seem focused on buying a large quantity of dolls and turning them around quickly, so they might not be as interested in something they need to pay upfront for and then wait 4 months to get. I know that would be a bit harder on legit customers, but at least they would have a real shot at getting their doll.

I really kind of wonder why Volks is doing it this way, perhaps the lottery code for their new website isn't in place yet?

Haven't all the After Event style dolls sold on the Jp website been clickwar?  I expected them to be clickwar, so this is no surprise to me.  Not that I was intending on ordering through the Jp store anyway.

 

2 minutes ago, Gabriel said:

Haven't all the After Event style dolls sold on the Jp website been clickwar?  I expected them to be clickwar, so this is no surprise to me.  Not that I was intending on ordering through the Jp store anyway.

 

It depends on what you mean by after event style dolls? Normally the Dolpa dolls have had some form of lottery. 

1 minute ago, BeyondTime said:

It depends on what you mean by after event style dolls? Normally the Dolpa dolls have had some form of lottery. 

I just hadn't recalled any lotteries done on the Jp site in the few years I had been using it.  Then again, I historically didn't pay much attention to the dolls and instead focused on the other items. 

My recollection is that Jp either announces a pre-order campaign, or just gives a short term announcement for a new doll and then does clickwar.

 

 

 

22 minutes ago, Gabriel said:

I just hadn't recalled any lotteries done on the Jp site in the few years I had been using it.  Then again, I historically didn't pay much attention to the dolls and instead focused on the other items. 

My recollection is that Jp either announces a pre-order campaign, or just gives a short term announcement for a new doll and then does clickwar.

Ok, that makes a bit of sense. Last year they did do more of a pre-order thing with some of the Dolpa dolls. In my own experience they’ve usually been lottery, so last year was unusual to me.

I’m really surprised they are doing clickwar, because the Miku clickwar a few months back was a disaster for legit buyers, and a boon to resellers. 

5 hours ago, Gabriel said:

I just hadn't recalled any lotteries done on the Jp site in the few years I had been using it.  Then again, I historically didn't pay much attention to the dolls and instead focused on the other items. 

My recollection is that Jp either announces a pre-order campaign, or just gives a short term announcement for a new doll and then does clickwar.

 

 

 

Weren’t Mercury and Mars lottery? If so that was less than a year ago. Lottery just seems a much fairer way of doll distribution if they don’t do made to order. 

 

If they are going more clickwar in future that is pretty disappointing. As Beyond says, it just tends to result in fewer dolls for real buyers and more for resellers. Given Mercury/Mars were lottery I was hoping for the same here (made to order seemed too much to hope for). 

33 minutes ago, Beani said:

Weren’t Mercury and Mars lottery? If so that was less than a year ago. Lottery just seems a much fairer way of doll distribution if they don’t do made to order. 

 

If they are going more clickwar in future that is pretty disappointing. As Beyond says, it just tends to result in fewer dolls for real buyers and more for resellers. Given Mercury/Mars were lottery I was hoping for the same here (made to order seemed too much to hope for). 

The clickwar ones I can think of.

Sakura Miku / Miku Reboot

Yuriko Nanao.

Rem & Ram.

The re-release of Ranka & Sheryl from Macros.

Freya Won.

It's hard to say if these to qualify, but the Kagamine twins were for sale on the Volks site for ages. They were originally lottery though iirc.

I may be missing one or two, but I think pretty much every other webstore limited doll release since I joined the hobby in 2014 has been lottery. After the lottery any extras from people who didn't pay for their win were sold in a clickwar. That part kind of went away when they started requiring pre-payment.

Edit:

33 minutes ago, Beani said:

Weren’t Mercury and Mars lottery? If so that was less than a year ago. Lottery just seems a much fairer way of doll distribution if they don’t do made to order.

 

And to answer your question, yes they were lottery. It was just easier to list the ones I knew weren't lottery, than the ones that were.

Edited August 11, 2019 by BeyondTime

I believe Freyja was lottery; she just didn't sell so she was available on the website for years afterwards. https://www.volks.co.jp/newdollfie/2016winter_en/

My assumption, perhaps wrong, was that before last year, everything that wasn't preorder was lottery. Last year Volks certainly experimented with various different methods, the two-batch lottery for Luka, the limited preorder for Matoi, and the clickwar for Yuriko and Sheryl/Ranka. Clickwar worked for those because there wasn't that much demand and/or they had a lot of dolls. Ranka is still available now even.

Then when Mars and Mercury went back to lottery I figured the experiments were over.

I'm guessing Rem and Ram will be mega-popular so that the clickwar is going to be a mess no matter how many are available.

One of the things I don't like about clickwars is they're unfair to anyone who doesn't have extra fabulous internet service. The other big issue is how Volks' webstore doesn't reserve an item once it's in your cart anymore. It sucks for dolls; it's worse for the clothing and other items because if you want to buy more than one thing you risk losing out on everything.

On 8/11/2019 at 12:10 AM, cfx said:

I believe Freyja was lottery; she just didn't sell so she was available on the website for years afterwards. 

Poor Freyja. No one likes her.  It looks like Matoi is heading down the same path.

---

As for clickwars, I'm not sure which ones are worse: clickwars for Dollfie Dream stuff or clickwars for Bandai Macross stuff.

At least with Bandai Macross stuff, when it sells out in less than a second at one place, it's at least possible to navigate to another shop and try elsewhere.  That and the Macross clickwars don't always absolutely paralyze the storefronts like DD clickwars do to the Volks sites.

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by Gabriel

Volks finally sold out of Freyja and has removed her from the site so she's probably gone for good now. Once before she was sold out I think but then restocked.

My impression is Macross Delta wasn't as popular as Macross F, and Freyja is a case of Volks' pictures really underselling her. She looks so much cuter in user pictures, yours, and some time ago I found this blog:

http://grande-masquerade.blogspot.com/2017/02/dds-freyja-arrival.html

http://grande-masquerade.blogspot.com/2017/06/cherry-blossoms-2017.html

Her face is really cute and she reminds me of some of the Idolmaster girls like Uzuki and Yayoi. I think her default outfit isn't that appealing, nor was the extra one Volks released, but I'm not familiar enough with the show to know if there were other choices that might have been better.

I don't know what's up with Matoi. Maybe it's because she's expensive and isn't a Fate character. Maybe PSO2 fans aren't doll collectors. I know why she probably wasn't popular in the US, since the game doesn't exist here but I don't know what's up in Japan.

I'm too uninformed on those Bandai Macross toy clickwars and they come and go before I even know most of the time. I've noticed Amiami was putting them up a day or so ahead of time with a "coming soon" thing, at least for a while; I don't know if they still are. I just wanted a VF-1S Strike Valkyrie and a VE-1 Elintseeker but I'll never have one.

Edited August 12, 2019 by cfx

2 hours ago, cfx said:

Volks finally sold out of Freyja and has removed her from the site so she's probably gone for good now. Once before she was sold out I think but then restocked.

My impression is Macross Delta wasn't as popular as Macross F, and Freyja is a case of Volks' pictures really underselling her.

I think her default outfit isn't that appealing, nor was the extra one Volks released, but I'm not familiar enough with the show to know if there were other choices that might have been better.

I don't know what's up with Matoi. Maybe it's because she's expensive and isn't a Fate character. Maybe PSO2 fans aren't doll collectors. I know why she probably wasn't popular in the US, since the game doesn't exist here but I don't know what's up in Japan.

 

The thing with Delta is that it opened up with quite big expectations after the teaser episode, along with Ikenai Borderline setting the high-ish tempo, but it ended up doing the same thing as Frontier, and chasing its own tail again trying to find that special something of the first series -- So that might have dampened some feelings towards it. Personally I do like it better than Frontier, but only just... If only for including the classic VF-1's, even though as trainers.

With Freya the issue is also that in Delta the screenwriters couldn't decide who to make the main girl Freya or Mikumo ... thinking they could repeat the so-so double lead of Frontier (which was in turn in theory just a reverse of the original Macross sideplot with the hollywood star on board the ship). They do try to focus on Freya with the tragedy aspect of her in the last few eps, but that was too little too late.

Also Freya was possibly sold with the wrong outfit by default. If they had sold her with her more distinctive introduction outfit (Which was the optional one) as the default one, that might have helped a little. The Walkyre stage outfits never really were that interesting personally.

Well as far as I know, PSO2 is just that, a online MMO, and for what I know from playing FFXIV, id love to have a doll out of my own Miqo, but the NPC's not so much (well maybe Tsukiyomi ... ) so could be a similar case going on. Also, expensive, and party contributing to the price possibly in a wrong outfit if there was some options for that.

4 hours ago, finnleo said:

Well as far as I know, PSO2 is just that, a online MMO, and for what I know from playing FFXIV, id love to have a doll out of my own Miqo, but the NPC's not so much (well maybe Tsukiyomi ... ) so could be a similar case going on. Also, expensive, and party contributing to the price possibly in a wrong outfit if there was some options for that.

Now that SE has done a license with SquareEnix, it's possible you may see some characters from other SE properties turned into dolls. To me it's a very logical move, and while it might be hard to offer the variety of options for a PC in an MMO we might see some story characters from their MMOs make an appearance. 

Found some more pics of Rem and Ram on instagram:

 

According to an image on the VolksUSA facebook page, Rem and Ram will be lottery on VolksUSA and the entry period will be September 1 thru 10.

Or at least that's what it implies.  

That's good; so far I believe Volks USA is still doing lottery no matter what Volks Japan does.

More Rems and Rams are showing up on instagram.

 

Noticed some outfits for the girls on Yahoo and know some people are interested @baldylox The prices aren’t really wallet friendly though..

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/s679140023

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n362962780

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/t666248129

It looks like there were a couple of the outfits for 18-20k but they were snapped up fast. Price may go down when the rest release but hard to say how many owners really don’t want the outfits. They are gorgeous and very well made. 

 

And thanks @cfx for posting the Instagram shots. Loving seeing these girls more. 

Edited August 16, 2019 by Beani

I ended up caving and ordering Ram on Buyee. Got her today, and warning to those that want her: the box is kinda flimsy, so you’ll likely receive the box with some sort of damage/creases.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Arara

This blog has many pics of Rem including closeups of the various clothing bits:

http://blog.livedoor.jp/teaoevo/archives/1907602.html

That same blog now has an article on Ram:

http://blog.livedoor.jp/teaoevo/archives/1907710.html

Looks like the wig they got shows the wig cap pretty badly.

5 hours ago, cfx said:

Looks like the wig they got shows the wig cap pretty badly.

From the front it's bad. The bit on the side is probably just how the hairclip has been put on.

Edited August 23, 2019 by BeyondTime

Yeah I mainly noticed it in the pic where they didn't cover her eye. I went back and checked the Rem article and they didn't show her like that so I don't know if that wig was the same though it didn't show it as much by the hair clip, so it's probably sample variation.

I just wish the Volks wigs were better overall.

On 8/17/2019 at 2:06 AM, Arara said:

I ended up caving and ordering Ram on Buyee. Got her today, and warning to those that want her: the box is kinda flimsy, so you’ll likely receive the box with some sort of damage/creases.

How did you get her so early? Volks has not even released them yet.