#rasendo

Finished the restoration/completion of the Rasendo Mei. She is on an original Rasendo body with modifications made to increase posing. Her eyewells were also modded to be able to take larger eyes. Outfit is tights, 3-layer skirt with circus-style color changing, blouse and corset-vest. She is a true cat-girl, in that she does not have normal ears, only the cat ears. She's quite heavy with all the fabric, the heavy wig and the thickness of her resin body.

Now can I sleep, brain?

Three oldies about to go through restoration!

I finished up Braq a couple months ago. I did not 3D print him, printed by a friend, but then the project was so daunting for a while that I didn't finish it. I finally did though. As you can see, he's pretty big! Also, a bunny that I DID 3D print. :)

Very old Rasendo (rasen- dou) BJD from the early 2000s. Finally finished up her outfit enough to be presentable. Might add some accessories later on. :) Extremely rare to find these days.

Another rare Rasendo girl, this one the Yukuzu girl who was their main lady. I made her outfit inspired by old fairytale art. I think she’s an adventuring princess. :) Her skirt has three layers of about 1/2 yard in each skirt, so she’s quite heavy! The cape is a short hood with a longer fall that matches the vest piece underneath. 

Surprise! Its who you would never expect...because he’s a very old and rare doll! This is a Rasendo Touya, made in about 2002ish. I owned him, then sold him, then eventually he came back around to me again. I spent a goodly amount of time getting him all fixed up, then decided to make a full suit of armor for him to be a rather handsome anime-style prince. The armor is all tooled leather, painted to look more like metal. He has simple pants, but the really nice quilted shirt I made for him, you can’t even see anymore. lol. The chainmail is a type of fabric, but it looks perfectly in scale. I took inspiration from all around the web for the armor and crown-helm.

All clean*, and a history lesson: Rasendo (also romanized Rasen-dou) was one of the first bjd houses to emerge after Volks launched the Super Dollies in 1998/9. By the time I got into the hobby, Rasendo had been defunct for nearly 2 years, closing up shop in 2005 with a message promising a return which never came. In all, Rasendo released 9 different head sculpts + one variant sculpt. Their sculpts were distinct in that they had very stylized features and separately cast ears, which allowed for dramatic fantasy features such as large, curling elf ears, clear resin mermaid-fin ears, and cat ears. The dolls were offered kit style, and customers could match any head to either gender body, although from the promotional images I have seen, certain heads were intended as male or as female. The Aria elf head sculpt was promoted on the female body, as was their ELF head. My Aria elf is on the Rasendo boy body. His granddaughter, who is the ELF sculpt, is on an original Volks Nono SD10G body. Rasendo didn't last long enough to fully refine the engineering of their bodies, and so Tamsin is a challenge to pose, as well as looking somewhat awkward when undressed. Essentially every joint had to be modified to allow him to sit, stand, anything other than holding a single position. He came to me with most.of these mods already done, and I finished the work to my satisfaction. Given the character's history, the oddity of the body was perfect to me, and actually endearing. Tamsin was my first doll. He was and is wondrous to me. He also received the harshest backhanded insult I've ever gotten in the hobby, at my first ever meet up - "Is that a Rasendo? I had one of those, I got rid of it real quick." The comment only made me love him more. He's a cranky, uncooperative wing nut head, but he's MY cranky, uncooperative wing nut head, and a piece of BJD history. *at least, as clean as I can get him without an ultrasonic cleaner - there's a lot of pinholes in his resin and his sealant was 10+ years old.