What do you think of Anime Dolls without sculpted mouths?

Ehhhhhhhhhh I don't like anime dolls at all. Those sliced mouths, yikes. I also collect figures, and sometimes I skip pre-orders because the mouth is just one little sign drawn on the face .-.

I just have one Azone (Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works - Tohsaka Rin - Hybrid Active Figure (No.046) - 1/3 (Azone)) but just because she is Rin Tohsaka and I wasn't in the bjd hobby yet. I guess her lips are little sculpted but nothing to write home about.

 

As someone who collects a few anime-faced dolls and is learning to sculpt, I agree some mouths look a little off, but far from lazy design, anime faces are VERY hard to get right.. their 'simple' designs make it so much easier for sculpting flaws to be noticed.

 

I admit, I definitely don't like paying much for that featureless type of face but to be honest, the anime style heads with sculpted mouths get kind of uncanny pretty quick (case in point, 2D Helios)

I appreciate the versatility of no/almost no mouth... I never could have achieved the goofy expressions I have for my Obitsu if the mouth had been more sculpted. The Hime Ane sculpt has basically a single tiny score for a mouth, and while working on it I kept wishing it didn't even have that.

Spoiler

 

I used to have a doll with no sculpted mouth and I found it a little frustrating to paint. >_<

 

I’m not into anime sculpts but if I were, I think I’d like the lack of a sculpted mouth. It would make the sculpt more versatile and could be painted to have any expression, which I think could be a lot of fun.

 

3/4 of my anime style dolls have "slits" (DDS Karin, MDD 01, HDF31 Coco). My 2D Cookie (still waiting on!) has a painted OwO mouth.
A lot of the older anime style dolls from 2D Doll have "traditional" sculpted mouths and they don't look right.
I enjoy both styles but I do prefer the slightly sculpted mouths over the painted ones. As previously stated, anime style looks best when it's simple.

 

Honestly, I'm okay with them! ("them" = unsculpted mouths) As someone who likes anime-style dolls (a lot!), I think translating a flat cartoon to a 3D object is always going to be a little bit of an awkward process, so in that sense a "flat" mouth might suit the aesthetic better? and I like the individuality of the different mouths/expressions different faceups have :0

also, though I agree that 2D Helios looks kinda odd in the company photos, I think he could look better with a different faceup! XD;; 2D Blackcurrent also has anime eyes + sculpted nose and mouth, and while he's definitely kind of unusual looking, I don't hate it!

 

For me, the biggest draw to a flat mouth would be the ease of carving an open mouth mod without having to account for lips.

 

I love anime since I was born, and even to this day as a thirty-nine-year-old-fart, I'm an anime/Japanese video game enthusiast. I own a lot of scale (and non-scale) anime and Japanese video game figures and toys. I don't mind the non-sculpted mouths at all. I actually find it really weird when people do repaints on dolls with fully detailed sculpted full-lipped mouths and round tipped noses, but give them anime-esque eyes (like Monsther High). I don't like both aesthetics combined in that way, I'm not sure why, because I do like the older style BJD like CP Delf, with the hyper larger than life eyes, but still fully sculpted noses and lips (maybe the ultra-thin sharp noses helps my brain mesh the two styles). I'm just not into the full-sized lips, and round-tip-noses with anime-ish painted eyes I guess. I only own two anime BJD sculpts, but only because I stopped collecting BJD before there were a ton anime-esque options available (only Volks and Obitsu were a thing, if I recall correctly). I'm kind of beyond adding to my collection now, and really don't feel like I should (unless it is a mature tiny).

 

I think it's fun! I've seen so many excellent custom faceups on such heads that end up having really expressive mouth shapes because there was free rein in terms of the sculpt. It can really allow a character to come out of the sculpt.

I think it might just be an aesthetic divergence from what we've come to expect in a "BJD faceup" in terms of more realistic or realistic/anime hybrid styles. It's definitely it's own genre, if you will. And the talented faceup artists who excel in the super anime style do marvelous things with such sculpts.

 

I never gotten any anime sculpts, but they look fun to me. I feel like there is just a lot of modding potential.

 

I don’t mind the mouths but the ones with almost non existent noses or just a pimple nose are annoying to me. I know they’re stylised but I like them to have a bit of a recognisable nose, unless they’re completely chibi. I don’t have any resin anime sculpts, mainly because they wouldn’t fit in my group but I do have some mini, off topic ones.

 

I think no mouth would be best, if I collected that type, to encapsulate the feeling of anime/manga aesthetics. It allows free reign for creative expressions and fits with the style of most anime designs.

 

I prefer the ones without any sculpted lips. Anime characters are super expressive so having to conform your character's faceup to whatever default mouth was sculpted in (usually a flat line or an awkward smile from what Ive seen) is a real turn off for me.

I dont own any resin anime heads yet for this reason. Aimerai has some msd anime heads without mouths (actually I think 4 of them have the same blank photos so maybe they technically only have 1 head and different faceup options) but it is what I would probably go with if I do decide to get a resin anime doll.

 

I think it depends on how well they are painted. If it looks flat and doesn't mesh well with the rest of the face is one thing, but I think most I have seen are painted pretty well.
@0bsequi0us I love your faces!!

 

I couldn’t agree more! I also love 0bsequi0us for the same reason!

I also collect anime/game figures and I live in Japan for so long now, I guess I got used of a lot of things not having a mouth at all?

 

Personally, I've only ever seen a few anime style BJD that I actually like, and it's usually the 'semi-realistic' ones with more of a sculpt to the nose and mouth. Like yourself, it bugs me that the flat mouths have no definition on a 3D head and really do not look good photographed from a sideways angle. But that's just the type of collector I am, I like definition, I look for a certain expression and it's not in my mind to want to change it up. That's not true of all people though and especially not of people who like anime which, as part of it's style, is very very expressive.

The problem with all BJD is that once the mouth is sculpted a certain way, that's it. That's your expression. It's not nearly so easy to change the expression of a mouth as it is to change the upper facial expressions on most dolls simply from a change of eyebrows etc. Then being said, if a mouth is completely painted, it can be wiped off and reapplied for as many expressions as you like.
A blank slit cut into the face can, by a dedicated artist, become most anything. A lack of something there entirely may be less complex to sculpt by the maker, but makes it easier for someone who really wants to make some great anime expression on their doll as all they have to do is make sure it looks right in proportion with the rest of the doll, instead of having to cover up tiny lips or a slit. So it's not really the maker being lazy, so much as giving people who like free reign on an anime head what they want. There are plenty of anime style sculpts that are fully sculpted by the artist as well, after all.

The 'flat' mouth look probably bothers most people less because it IS supposed to be evoking an anime look, a cross between flat and 3D and they're only interested in front facing pictures. That's why you even get 'anime' heads with just a nose, no mouth or eye holes! They're free to paint and very much in the interest of the hobbyist bringing their creation to life, rather than the maker of the head. Most anime heads are pretty much the one sculpt but with the faceup painted to give a different look for this same reason. It's like, a more or less blank canvass for serious anime lovers. Practically it's own 'breed' of BJD for it's own niche of BJD hobbyists.

Not to say that like yourself and myself you can't just say 'I think that looks bad' and move on, of course. It's not your niche, not your style, and you'd rather support people who sculpt more intricately. Nothing at all with liking either thing!

 

Oh wow, that's some really fun faceup work XD I love it!