Doll Show 38: Pretty Cure!

I'm putting this in "other" because I can't verify if all the dolls I'll be posting about are Dollfie Dreams or not. But I thought I would try and preserve a little bit of doll history as it caught my eye while browsing Pinterest. I love both dolls and magical girls. I collect pins for both these things on my Pinterest, so naturally the site tries to recommend me things related to that. And lately I've been seeing all these pins of custom dolls in these gorgeous Pretty Cure cosplays. My interest was piqued, so I tried tracking down as many of these photos as I could on Pinterest. They almost all seemed to be from the same meet or convention table, you can clearly see the dolls are all set up in a very specific way and can catch glimpses of neighboring dolls in each shot. Once I ran out of these photos on Pinterest (and ofc nobody sourced their damn photos), I decided to try and source the photos myself. It didn't take long to make some progress, and I sourced them back to the 2013 Doll Show 38 convention in Japan. In fact, Danny Choo reported on this very convention in his pre-Smart Doll days!

I'm sure there's better archiving of this booth on the Japanese side of the internet, but I didn't want these really cool doll cosplays to be lost to time, so I decided to catalogue all the photos I could find here. If you know the sources of these photos, or better yet, the sources of the dolls, please let me know! And just for fun, maybe help me identify some of the doll sculpts too?

I'll post a few images here. If you'd like to see more, I've compiled them into an imgur album here.

I dunno, I just thought it was neat! And the looks are all so cool!

This is fantastic! The details on the outfits… *chef’s kiss*

I find it interesting there's only one photo of Cure Black I could find, and no Cure White to be found.

True, that is odd. 

@PlasticJester  Thank you for not only following this rabbit hole to its end, but also sharing your find, and preserving it for later. Stuff like this is the sort of thing I love about this hobby. Watching so many people who are passionate about the same things come together for a bit of fun and collaborate, even when it's impromptu.

On 2/5/2025 at 9:30 PM, PlasticJester said:

 

This blue girl in center is an 04. I think the girl in pink and white to her left is an Akihabara After School Girls Moe, based on various shots? And her dark pink twin is a Moe as well. The blue girl with the purple hair behind 04 is a character sculpt with default faceup, maybe the original Rin Tosaka from Fate? At least that's who she looks like to me, based on shots in the album. I think the blue-haired blue girl to the right is a default sculpt, but I'm not sure.

The pink girl to the right of the custom is a Millhiore F Biscotti. I've been studying the yellow girl to the left, but I can't decide if she's an 06 or a character sculpt that's very similar. (I'm not an expert)  I am going to guess the custom girl in the middle might be a modified After School Akihabara Girls Mariko, based on her eye, nose, and face shape.

...She does seem like an 06 in this shot though. And the purple girl is a character sculpt, but I can't for the life of me think of her default set.

Although many of these girls are modified with larger eyes to fit the style, I would bet there are some 03s in this group somewhere.

 

Cure Marine and Cure Black as DDH-04 were the only two I could positively identify! I need to stare at some official doll heads sometime to try and figure out who Cure Moonlight is. You've actually reminded me I should make a small post of who each doll is, since I know my Pretty Cure pretty decently! I'm so glad people appreciate this archiving of stuff like this, I love nothing more than to get into these really specific rabbitholes!

Ok ok, small visual guide to all the Precure dolls here, in order of series release:

(Sorry for some images being crusty, finding March and Sword in the pictures was like trying to find Bigfoot.)

Melody and Rhythm look like the OG Moe/Natsuki head sculpt, I think Beat is the original Rin Tohsaka release, Blossom looks like a Millhiore. Muse and Sunshine are 06s and Black and Marine are 04s.

For ones I'm less certain on, Moonlight strikes me like she may be a DDH-14, but I'm not 100% on that call. Beauty also looks like an 06, and I would bet that Rosetta is a modded 06. Sword may be a modded 06, too, based on the similarity of the jawline with Rosetta. March from your picture looks like she could potentially be a Feena/Estel head, but it's hard to tell with the grainy resolution. I have no clue about the rest, though, particularly the ones with modded mouths.

I think Cure Moonlight is DDH-07, Cure Muse is DDS Reimu. Since this is 2013 that does help limit the possible sculpts 😄

They're clearly Dollfie Dreams if you ask me! Cure March does have legs that look a little weird for a DD, but that could just be the light though... Looking at the cures represented, it basically everyone from Heartcatch (one pic even shows mid-season Cures Sunshine and Moonlight together), Suite, and Smile, but Doki Doki (Cure Rosetta, the yellow one with green accents) and Futari Wa have one cosplay doll for both series. The latter makes me sad cause there's no Cure White.... Why don't they have both of the lesbians who started it all!? T^T

.... I got into magical girl anime/manga via Madoka Magica... Needless to say, I can name most if not everyone in those photos!

Edited February 20 by RozenGermain