Sdtrk: ‘Heart and soul’ by Joy division

Our top stories this month *cue sfx of either morse code or typewriters*:

+ Abyss Creations have got a new news section on their website, entitled ‘The Doll Street Journal’, wherein they post notices of discounted RealDolls for sale, or various deals on offer, or clearance items, etc etc. Plus, they have a Doll of the Month feature, where a silicone lass at the factory details a few things about herself (it reminds me a bit of seeing adverts for cats and dogs up for adoption). This month’s instalment is the second one out, so catch yourself up on the News page of the site…

+ Orient industry has finally released a number of photos of two of their sexy new Real Love Doll Ange girls; the Sora-type, and the Rie-type.

Sora-chan, after being told her sushi came from that fish tank behind her

While we’re hoping that the company will post pics of the other four models of Dolls in that line relatively soon, you can hit up ‘Ta-bo’s Kisekae Dataroom’ in the interim, and check out his photo-reports taken in Orient industry’s Tokyo showroom.

Rie-chan thought sitting in front of her seating made her
look more ‘artsy’. Actually, it just made her look drunk

Personally, whenever Ta-bo-san does those reports, I always get the impression that he’s window-shopping for yet another addition to his staggering collection as he does so. Which is more than likely the case…

+ 4woods is back to work! As if they’d ever stopped. Not only have they unveiled a cute new head, Kurumi, for the A.I.Peach line, but they’ve also developed an alluring new body type as well, known as the A.I.Doll Evolution.

If Doctor Who’s Dodo Chaplet was turned into a Doll and joined Morning
musume, this is what she would look like

Like Kate Moss, but much less expensive

Now, as the seductive Mia has a definite Caucasian facial styling, it could be argued that 4woods is aiming for the non-Japanese market, much like Cindy and Maria of Axis Japan‘s Honey Dolls line. Well, there’s a reason for that, which I’m leading up to; don’t rush me.

Personally, Kurumi’s only okay in my book — she looks a bit too… chirpy. But as you’re aware, two exact same models of Doll can look radically different, depending on hair, makeup, lighting, photography, overall personality, etc. For instance, the Missus and her nymphomaniac cousin Charlie Joanne are both Body 2, Face 4 RealDolls, but the difference is like night and day. Which is entirely appropriate, if you think about it. Maybe when I see some owner pics of Kurumi, I’ll change my tune.
Mia, on the other hand, gets my full Seal of Approval. The A.I.Evolution is apparently the culmination of seven years of 4woods Doll developments (has it really been seven years??); she’s 5’4″, weighs 71 lbs, and her measurements are 35.25.37. Huh! ‘The wider spread of legs, better touch/feeling while being intimate, attention to small detail on each body part, an existence you can almost feel her breath… You can find these characteristics in our evolved A.I doll,’ boasts the site, and I’m certainly willing to believe that.

+ Back in November — on my birthday, coincidentally enough — KnightHorse, Matt Krivicke & Bronwen Keller’s new company, opened its virtual doors. Introducing: Lovable Dolls. Or Loveable Dolls; I’m not sure which spelling they’ll end up with.

Comes shipped with romantic ambience; candle and pillows sold separately

Ripped from the pages of a popular forum that handles this sort of thing:

Yvette shown here is 5’3″ tall, her measurements are 32A-22-30 and she wears a size 7 shoe. She weighs approximately 65lb. She has a removable head designed with a system that allows you to easily change her eye color and position the eyes without damaging the eyelashes. We use beautiful handmade eyes in each doll. The eyes are available in 9 gorgeous colors that reflect light in a beautifully realistic way. She is available in 7 different skin tones ranging from very fair to very dark, and she is made of premium grade platinum silicone. You will be able to order Yvette with all the options offered by the other high end doll companies, plus a few extra.

Yvette can be purchased with built in entries or with a removable insert. She is fully posable and jointed. We have been very fortunate to establish an exciting partnership with 4Woods of Japan; we are using a skeleton based on their design, and we will be their USA affiliate for people who would like to purchase 4Woods dolls. We will also be offering maintenance services for 4Woods within the USA. They, in turn, will be marketing our dolls in Japan.

Our base price for Yvette is $5,500 + shipping. […] We hope you love her as much as we do!

Best wishes,
Matt Krivicke

No snappy caption here; too busy drooling over Dollfeet

From the pics I’ve seen of Yvette (the company plans on releasing additional models over time), she’s scarily realistic. And I mean that in the best possible context!
If her particulars aren’t enticing enough, Matt K & Bronwen also state on the site’s FAQ that not only are they willing to repair any of their Dolls at their aptly-named Doll Hospital should they require repair, but they say they can give a go at repairing other manufacturer’s Dolls as well, which is a boon since Slade, the RealDoll Doctor, is no longer practising. I’ve gotta say, that’s a hell of a standard that they’ll be establishing for all Doll makers. KnightHorse’s gorgeous lasses will definitely be something to keep an eye on in the next coming months…

And it looks as if Japanese audiences will finally be getting the chance to enjoy ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ later this month! Wonder why that took so long?

That’s the least-withdrawn Lars has ever looked

There’s a couple of pics in the News section of Bianca — well, a Bianca; everyone knows there’s more than one — taking in the sights of Tokyo, which is rather charming.

She’s not big enough of a star to warrant a limousine, apparently

What with Japan being a nation that is not as averse to the concept of either passive or active Synthetiks, one wonders what the overall reaction will be to this film? Do let us know, Japan!

And there you have December!
‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. More Doll news than you can physically handle, so we suggest employing some sort of large container to prevent spillage

Technorati tags: Abyss Creations, RealDolls, Orient Industry, CandyGirl, 4woods, A.I.Dolls, Axis Japan, Honey Dolls, Charlie Joanne, KnightHorse, Lovable Dolls, Lars and the Real Girl, ラースと、その彼女, リアルドール

Sdtrk: ‘Blister’ by Venetian snares

So going from the results of our recent poll, it appears our little toy robot cat finally has a name — you can call him Shironeko.

See how ecstatic he looks? That’s the picture of glee right there

It was a landslide; as of 12.40am Monday morning, that particular name choice garnered twenty votes, versus the ten that Mecha-Moggy 5000 received. I suspect that Shi-chan might have called in some favours from other Dolls…

Our friend Neo did have a point, though, when he remarked ‘I really think the lady of the house gets first dibs as she has to house-sit the cat!’ Yeah yeah, buddy, you and your ‘logic’. *waves hand dismissively*

Thanks very much for your participation! We’re all winners?

Sdtrk: ‘The November men’ by Death in June

Greetings, new readers who’ve arrived at ‘Shouting to hear the echoes’, due to the link provided by Korea Beat! For the record, that post that sent you here? It’s riddled with errors. Riddled. This is what occurs when you use a blender to edit your articles. Let’s go over the highlights with a red pen, shall we?

The Real Dolls, made of a material similar to silicone, really look and feel just like a real person. And at 40 to 50 kilograms they even weigh as much as a woman. They can wear makeup and the more expensive ones can even eat.

Y’know, if I could get Sidore to cook for the pair of us, that would save so much time. Maybe she never learned how cos I never taught her, durr hey?

It is becoming increasingly easy to find men overseas with similar stories. 34-year old Dave of Detroit, in the United States, keeps a blog about his daily life with his Real Doll. They take walks together, eat together, and share secrets in bed just like a real married couple.

I can just see us attempting to do that. Either I’m blithely dragging her along by one arm, or hoisting her onto my back for a ride, and killing the pair of us.
And for the record, that’s Davecat, not Dave. Davecat, Esq. Well, maybe not esquire, but I’m working on it.

Here, the article’s broken up by a couple of pics of Synthetiks who are clearly CandyGirls, and not RealDolls. Another mark for lack of research!

He confessed his feelings about loneliness and the Real Doll. “I was always alone ever since I was a child. I think it was because of my appearance…”

Initially, people could handle my two sets of horns and prehensile tail, but then one Summer, I developed a row of glistening black eyeballs across my forehead. For some bizarre reason, that put people off!

“Suzi (the name of his Real Doll) is the first woman I had sex with and she does everything I want…”

Suzi? SUZI?? How the hell did they parse Sidore into Suzi? Did they just stop translating at the first letter and randomly select a female name that also starts with ‘S’?
And unfortunately Shi-chan (the first Synthetik woman I had sex with, just so you know) doesn’t do everything. She’s categorically refused to allow me to use her as a table or a chair, in the style of Allen Jones, for example.

“my mother, who is deceased, really wanted me to meet a girl but I think she understood that with the doll I’m not so lonely.”

Actually, unless Korea knows something I don’t, mum is above ground, and doing quite well. I spoke with her yesterday, as a matter of fact. No ouija board or scrying-glass was needed!
Also, they may be confusing (or just fusing) me with Everard, whose mother has in fact passed, and has said things to this effect in ‘Guys and Dolls / Love me, love my Doll’.

Men who only date their Real Dolls are mostly people who trouble fitting in to society. Because of their appearance or sexual experiences they live at home, with few friends, let alone a girlfriend, and purchase a Real Doll to solve those problems and have it them be their friends and lovers. On Dave’s blog he once wrote, “our conversations are one-way but even so I feel thankful to her.”

*facepalms* Where do I even begin with this paragraph?? It’s 95% bullshit!
For one, I think that once you have a Doll, you’re not really dating her — you’ve pretty much skipped that whole process entirely.
My favourite bit out of that cavalcade of conjecture though, is that quote I ‘wrote’. Take a moment to plug that phrase into the Search engine of ‘Shouting etc etc’, and see if you can find it. Go on, I’ll wait.
Did you find it? Heh, neither did I.

And the final paragraph,

Many people are unable to understand how they can treat a doll as their girlfriend. But the only way for them not to be that way is for us to understand them. When we understand their feelings there will no longer be dolls in their beds.

Ahh, but what if a person wants a Doll in their bed? Or did I just blow your mind??
A good spur-of-the-moment analogy would be that some people enjoy Coke, and some people like Pepsi. And then, there are those of us who love Dr pepper. There’s not a thing wrong with Dr pepper; it’s simply another type of beverage…

Anyway, you can find the undissected work of fiction-disguised-as-fact here. It’s left me more amused than angry, if nothing else, but there’s so much mistranslation/appropriation/fanciful bollocks that I’m left wondering if this article came from North Korea, and not the southern half. As we all know, North Korea has their own, shall we say, unique, take on reality

Sdtrk: ‘Get closer’ by Valerie Dore

It must be Winter (not officially, as the Winter Solstice hasn’t taken place, but nevertheless), as I’m currently losing my voice and fighting a flu with my bare hands. In between extended seven-hour naps, however, I managed to nominate the original version of Actroid, ReplieeQ1-san, to Carnegie Mellon’s Robot Hall of Fame.

A vote for Actroid is a vote for a Sexy Future

It seems that they hold induction ceremonies every two years, and I’d missed the one for this year. The nominees can include both real and fictional robots, such as Osamu Tezuka’s titular Astro Boy (inducted 2004), and Sony’s late-lamented AIBO (added 2006).

Here’s hoping that a) they choose to nominate Actroid-san, and b) the people will do the right thing and vote her in. Actroid in 2010!

Technorati tags: Carnegie Mellon, Robot Hall of Fame, Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy, AIBO, Actroid, ReplieeQ1, Android, Gynoid, robots

Sdtrk: ‘Disclaimer’ by the Dears

Hurrr. Believe me when I say that I’ve had really nothing of any import to write about since… well, the 16th. Well, our friend Tim moved back to Michigan, and he and his girlfriend joined goshou, SafeT, Steph and I for sushi and Rock Band 2 this past week-end. O, and I finished Warriors Orochi 2 — not 100% completion, but still. And a cluster of us iDollators got together for another meeting in London (Ontario), which was as fantastic as one would expect. But that’s about it, really!

For one, it got bastard cold rather quickly, which always throws me off. To that end, I purchased a brand-new electronic blanket on Saturday, and it does the business. You could slow-roast food on that fucker, that’s how well it works. Shi-chan’s making use of it now, and if she could see me from where she is, I’m sure she’d give me an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

So yeah! I’ve already commenced work on December’s ‘Any Doll/Synthetik news?’ article, as there’s a sizeable amount of material to cover, but apart from that, it’s an unintentional go-slow round Deafening silence Plus. My Muse is oftentimes found asleep, passed out on a couch somewhere whilst ‘Seinfeld’ reruns blare in the background, and this would be one of those times. We’ve all been there, I’m sure

As an aside, regarding Rock Band 2: Has anyone else noticed that the new Guns n’ roses song, ‘Shackler’s revenge’, sounds like it was frozen in a glacier sometime round 1993, and recently thawed out? That song sounds so much like Nine inch nails it’s not even true.
15 year wait, huh? I’d hate to be a Guns n’ roses fan right about now

Sdtrk: ‘Thieves like us’ by New order

Last year, Burger King offered store-only versions of Tiger Toys’ I-DOG line. Basically, the Burger King ones are substandard versions of the actual I-DOG toys, which are pets that, when you hook your .mp3 player up to them, they flash lights and wave their ears in time with the music, in an unbridled display of whimsy. BK was selling the dog, cat, penguin, and turtle versions. So why is the toy line called I-DOG then, when three-quarters of them aren’t dogs? *shrug*
I’d wanted the cat, naturally, but I missed the window to get one. So you can imagine my glee when I learned that not only would BK have them again this year, but each would have a Hallowe’en theme. Glee, squared!

After weeks of pestering various Burger King employees in the SE Michigan area, I can now proudly announce that I have the i-Cat… and he’s got a robot costume. How appropriate is that?? Actually, I bought the cowboy one day by mistake, and the next day I got the robot, but still.

The Missus’ T-shirt provided by Mr Rstevens of Diesel sweeties Boutique,
in beautiful downtown Burbank, California

Now the quandary is that this lil’ fella needs a name. Sidore suggested ‘Shironeko’, as it’s a pun on her last name, Kuroneko (‘black cat’), with shiro meaning white. ‘O, that’s not pretentious at all,’ I laughed. ‘So what, he’s gonna sit round the place all day, listening to Bauhaus and writing awful poetry?’ I suggested the clearly superior Mecha-Moggy 5000. Shi-chan’s response? ‘That is retarded, and you are retarded.’

This is where you come in, reader! In the spirit of it being an election year, we have a poll, where you can vote for the name of a toy cat that you don’t even own! The winning entry will be the one we go with, so vote with vigour. VIGOUR! And if you think you can come up with a name more suitable for said cat, then have at it in the comments. Technically we haven’t even decided on a gender yet, so that doubles the possibilities.
FUTURE EDIT (02 DEC): Poll’s closed! We have a winner!

As an aside…

‘[You and Sidore] are living in as close to the Diesel Sweeties future as anyone alive today.’

– rstevens, webcomics assembler person

How ace is that??

Sdtrk: ‘Sir Keith at Lambeth’ by Mount Vernon Arts lab

As I’ve been consistently viewing enough anime titles and features since 1986 to choke a horse, I’ve seen a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. Fellow iDollator PBShelley (he of Alastor’s Reflection) tipped me off to a fab site that suits my anal-retentive cataloguing tendencies nicely: MyAnimeList.net. You create an account, list the features you’ve seen, the ones you want to see, the ones you’ve dropped, rate them, discuss them, compare your lists to other users, etc, and it includes manga as well. Shame that it overlooks tokusatsu, but I suppose you can’t have everything. Overall, it’s a good place to take a couple of steps back and say ‘I have seen… so much crap’.
But this post isn’t about that! A fellow named gff left a comment on my profile there, tipping me off to a new anime series called ‘Eve no Jikan’, which translates to ‘Time of Eve‘. It’s an Original Net Animation, which means it wasn’t shown on television, nor did it get a home video release, like an OVA (Original Video Animation); instead, the episodes are available for viewing directly on das InfoBahn. In fact, you can see them on a site called Crunchyroll, a name which sounds simultaneously disgusting and delicious.

‘Eve no Jikan’ tells a story about Japan in the near-future, where Androids and Gynoids are found in most households, being nearly as commonplace as appliances. In fact, that’s pretty much how a lot of their owners treat them — those that relate to Androids (the show unfortunately uses that as a blanket term for humanoid robots of both sexes, but I suppose you can’t have everything) as anything but things are labelled ‘dori-kei’, so-called social deviants that invest too much emotion toward things that supposedly don’t deserve it. Heh, sound familiar? In order to tell them apart from flesh-and-blood humans, they are required to have a digital halo above their heads at all times.

‘Huh, when I plug my phone into you, I get two bars more than usual’

Our protagonist, Rikuo, starts the story checking the movement logs of his family’s Android, Sammy, and discovers that she’s often been stopping round to a place she wasn’t ordered to go. With the help of his classmate, Masaki, they track down the location, and find it to be a clandestine cafe, where the only hard and fast rule is that humans and robots are to be treated equally. Any Androids there deactivate their halos and behave as humans, which is in direct violation of societal laws. But what’s stopping Rikuo from reporting it? Could it be that he’s actually a dori-kei himself, with burgeoning feelings for Sammy? Dun dun DUNNN!

Not that there’s anything wrong with that

Studio Rikka, which is headed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura, another one of those Japanese blokes that’s put ninety per cent of his projects together at home on his computer (see also ROMANoV HiGA or Makoto Shinkai), has been releasing a new 15-minute episode every two months since August 2008, and the wait is killin’ me. ‘Eve no jikan’ has an engaging story with charming characters, and an interesting storyline and concept. My hope, of course, is that the series gets picked up for domestic distribution sometime soon. Honestly, it’s getting harder to find anime that isn’t being picked up for domestic distribution these days, but you’d be surprised what slips through the cracks.
So until ‘Act03: KOJI & RINA’ comes out in December, go catch yourselves up!

Wow, was that just an anime review there? I think it was