What I've learnt about Azone

 I got some Azone Pure Neemo dolls for Christmas. I know, that's ages ago. But I was planning on getting one more before I wrote anything about them or did anything with them and so far that hasn't happened. But in the meantime here is what I've learnt about different Azone bodies and sizes.

 There are four different Azone Pure Neemo bodies. Which one a doll has mostly depends on the age of the doll. I say mostly because there is an overlap period when the new bodies begin production where certain types of doll will have the old body, while others have the new one.
  The oldest body is called Advanced or Advance. I've not seen one of these in person but they seem to have minimal or no articulation. Instead they have interchangeable body parts, so you change the dolls pose by removing body parts and replacing them with others in the correct pose. Which frankly sounds like a storage nightmare.

  The next body is the Flection body. The Flection body has lots of joints. The arms move up and down at the shoulders but not side to side. There is also rotation to the upper arm. The elbows are jointed with a hinge. The hands rotate (but don't bend) and can be removed and replaced with other hands in different poses. They swivel at the waist. Their legs move forward and backward at the hip. There is a rotating joint in the upper thigh. Knees bend on a hinge and the ankles are on a ball type joint. But there is limited side to side mobility in the ankle because of the shape of the lower leg. That is a LOT of joints!

 The next body is the Full Flection body. Which is confusingly similar to the last body but realistically it's almost the same. The legs on the Full Flection dolls move out to the side very slightly at the hips. And I mean VERY slightly. And there's an extra joint at the shoulder so the arms can move sideways, away from the body. Otherwise these seem to be the same as the Flection body. Of my two Full Flection dolls one has jointed wrists that bend, the other (surprisingly the newer one) only rotates at the wrists, so I'm not sure which is more common.

As far as I can tell this is the only significant difference between Flection (right) and Full Flection (left)

  The newest body is the Emotion body and. . . well. . . there isn't a lot I can say about these because other than prototype pictures, I've never even seen a picture of one. Rumour has it they have a ball-jointed waist and all the old joints but with improvements so they can do things like kneel properly. But I don't know anything for sure about them. I'm not even sure I got the name right.

Four different sized Pure Neemos

  So back to the Flection and Full Flection bodies. To put it simply they come in four sizes. Extra Small, Small, Medium and Large. To put it not so simply - it's a bit more complicated than that. The Extra Small dolls are simply Extra Small. They're all the same size, 21 cm or 8 and a quarter inches. An Extra Small doll has hands a different size to the other dolls. So whereas hands are interchangeable between Small, Medium and Large dolls, the Extra Small dolls need Extra Small hands.

  The other sizes are a little more complicated. Because they're made in two parts. The sizes are often listed as doll size, then bust size. So there could be a Medium doll with a Small bust. Or a Medium doll with a Large bust. And they won't be the same size as each other. Or the same height. Because what's referred to as the doll size is the leg length/size up to the waist. And the bust size isn't just the size of the boobs but ALL of the body above the waist. And there are four different bust sizes that can be used on these dolls - Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large (or LL)! This leads to a lot more variation in sizes.

As an example, the doll on the left is a small doll with a small bust. The doll on the right is a medium doll with a medium bust. The doll in the centre is a medium doll with a small bust. So she's the same size as the small doll from the waist down but the same size as the medium doll from the waist up. Interestingly all three dolls arms are exactly the same size. BUT the Extra Small girls arms are a completely different size.

  As well as size differences there are two different skin tones. White (on the left in the picture above) and normal (on the right) which is quite pinkish and not really very dark at all.

  The default hands are sort of starfish hands. Wouldn't be my first choice if it were up to me but some of the dolls come with extra hands and packs of extra hands are sold separately as well. My largest doll came with five extra pairs of hands

And my smallest girl came with three extra sets of hands

Including this hand which is holding something but I don't know what!

A coin? A charm? A guitar pick?

  I'm going to finish up for today by showing how they compare in size to some other dolls. I'll probably write more about these girls soon but I've run out of time for now.

Left to right - When I read I dream, Stacie (old), Extra Small, Creepy vintage Skipper, Small, Small Medium, Medium, Moxie Girl, Olsen twin. Looking at this I'm kind of keen to dig out my Moxie Girl clothes for them!

And I'm not sure how well the neck joint would fit, but the "When I read I dream" dolls heads would proportionately be a good fit on the Extra Small body. (I've always felt their heads looked too big for their original bodies) BUT it would make them about an inch taller. Maybe a little less than that. Other Barbie family dolls probably wouldn't work as well unless they were fairly pale because the Pure Neemos are not tan at all!

The Great Azone Headache.

 I have always wanted an Azone Pure Neemo doll. They're not so expensive as to be completely unaffordable and they're very cute. But I never knew how to get one. Azone themselves only sell within Japan. Other online shops do sell them but their pre-orders usually sell out in minutes. You can buy them on Ebay but the prices there are completely unreasonable. And then I stumbled across Mandarake.

  If you haven't heard of Mandarake, they're a chain of shops in Japan that sell second hand (mostly) collectables. Even better, they have an online shop that ships internationally. And they generally have Azone dolls. The prices are a bit all over the place. Some things are way more expensive than they were originally. Some things are way cheaper than they were originally. But almost all of their prices are a lot more reasonable than Ebay.

 Possibly my favourite thing about Mandarake, and machine translated websites in general, is the translation mistakes. One line of Pure Neemo dolls is called Ex-Cute, except it never translates as that. Ex translates as basically any word starting with E. Effort, ecstacy, example, except, extreme. And frequently Cute is replaced with a random C word as well. So far my favourite mistranslation is when Ex-Cute was written as Escort Crouton! (This isn't specific to Mandarake. It happens on Hobby Link Japan, Hobby Search Japan, Ami Ami, and even Azone's own website.)

 I got to thinking. Pure Neemo dolls, I decided would be a lot more fun to buy if you had characters in mind for them. Since a lot of their dolls are based on anime and manga characters the work is kind of already done for you there. But I'm more difficult than that. I wanted mine to represent my own characters. I've spent most of my life making up characters and stories for them. Browsing through the dolls and thinking about this, I realised that my characters usually fell into a few archetypes and I decided to make up new characters, which are really just composites of old characters to be represented by these dolls.

  I've already ordered one. If I get money for Christmas, I plan on combining that with my dolly savings to buy two more. The one I've ordered is Little Witch of the Snow Railli (or Rilei, or Riley, or Raili, or Reili - clearly it sounds like Reilly and the spelling isn't important.) She's my Ghost Girl. Currently I'm seesawing between Marcella and Celestine for her name. The next two I want are to be a little Goth Girl and a little Bubbly Girl. Their names will be Tristessa and Piccolina. (In case you're concerned, I wouldn't name an actual human something like that. But since these dolls are so cartoonish, I feel I can be quite silly with their names. I plan on eventually naming one Butterscotch McMustardface.)

 This is pretty much where the problems started. Pure Neemos come in a variety of sizes. And I want Piccolina and Tristessa to be the same size. But Mandarake don't list the sizes of their dolls and because they're selling them secondary market, they're generally from a variety of years. I decided I wanted these two girls to be small or medium. I researched what doll's clothes fit small and medium Pure Neemos. I made lists of which dolls would be good fits for the characters almost like I was casting a movie or something. I felt very confident and very clever and like I was an expert.

 And then something happened. I stumbled across several different pieces of information that changed everything. You see Pure Neemo's have had different bodies over the years. Advance, Flexion, Full Flection. And it seems they haven't all been the same size. There's also just been a new body released (some places call it the Emotion body, some places call it Pure Neemo 2) which doesn't fit the previous body's clothes. One source said that after 2013 what was originally considered a small, was relabelled as a medium. One source said the sizes changed again before that. Another source said the sizes have changed again since then. Another source claimed the sizes have never changed and people are just getting confused.

 At this point, I was so confused (and annoyed that all my research was useless since I didn't know which sizes the sizes I'd read about referred to) I felt like I was having a stroke. I had a brilliant idea. Look up the different sizes in doll shops and see what heights they list for the dolls, if they list heights at all. I was so hopeful. I was sure this would fix everything in my brain. It did not. Yes, some shops do list the dolls heights. But it seems when deciding their heights they don't do anything silly like measure them with a ruler. Oh no. Instead, it seems, they hand them to whoever is closest, that person looks at it and says "Ah, I'd say that's about 25 centimetres." and that number is what they put on the website. At least that's my theory since I saw five different dolls with the same body type, from the same year, all in different sizes all listed as 25cm, and I also saw the small body (in the same body type) variously listed as 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 centimetres!

 I have never been so confused in my life. It's possible that dolls released as a small prior to 2013 would have been labelled medium after that date. It's possible that dolls released as a small on the flexion body are the same size as the medium full-flexion body. It's possible that that information only applies to certain special release dolls. It's possible that the sizes have changed many more times than that. It's possible that absolutely no size change has ever happened. But right now - I have a migraine from thinking about it and can only blindly hope that if worst comes to worst, I can buy Piccolina and Tristessa replacement bodies that are the same size and switch their heads around.

 It probably would've been easier to just magic up more money (it would require magic), go to Japan, and compare them myself.