Volks Dollfie Dream Saber Lily Unboxing (Round Two)

It looks like I’m really late in posting unboxing of Volks Fate/unlimited codes Dollfie Dream Saber Lily. I actually received Saber Lily from Volks Japan on January 4th. The reason behind the delay and the reason why this is a unboxing round two is that the wig that was shipped with Saber Lily was broken as soon as I put the wig on her. More on that later, now onto the unboxing. Volks Dollfie Dream Saber Lily from Fate/unlimited code is a Dolpa 24 limited item. Dolpa 24 was held on December 12, 2010 at Tokyo Big Site. The MSRP for Saber Lily is ¥95,000 which is the same price as Dollfie Dream Saber which was released back in 2008. You can get more information on Saber Lily from Volks’ official web page.

Here’s the box Saber Lily was shipped in. The big box contains the doll, clothes and the armor pieces and the smaller box contains her sword Caliburn. Volks International shipped the doll and the sword together with a bit of bubble wrap to “protect” them. Now EMS shipping to North America typically gets reasonable treatment, but I wonder how well it failed when the package is shipping to other countries with less courteous postal workers.

While Dollfie Dream Saber’s box is black, Saber Lily’s box is all white. Dollfie dream Saber is secured on a protective soft pillow like those used in Volks’ Super Dollfies. Saber Lily doesn’t have such a good treatment, the doll is simply protected by some bubble wraps.

And here we are after removing all those bubble wraps.

A closer look of Saber Lily in her pristine condition before I open her up.

All the other items for the dolls are stashed right under the doll. Here’s everything else that with Saber Lily: wig, shoes, clothes and armor pieces.

Her sword Caliburn is shipped separately in a smaller box. It is also wrapped in some bubble wraps.

I’ve also got the Ever-Distant Utopia Avalon.

Now I begin to put the doll together. As usual, I put the clothes on first starting with the undergarment then the dress, and finally the armor pieces. I always leave the wig to the last since this way it doesn’t mess up the hair as much. And that’s when things went wrong. As soon as I put the wigs on, I notices that the pony tail simply fell off. Here’s what it looks like. So Saber Lily’s wig is simply tied together with strings and then cut to be a short stub. Then without any other mean of securing the wig, a pony tail hair net is tied on top of that stub. Below is what my broken wig looks like taken by my poor quality iPhone camera.

I emailed Volks about the wig issue the very day I received Saber Lily and they replied 2 days later indicating that they are sending me a replacement wig. While waiting for the replacement wig to come, I actually came up with a method of repair it. The problem with the design of Saber Lily’s wig is that the hair tied together to form the short stub for the pony tail is way too short. So the string can easily lose grip and then the stub just falls apart and then the pony tail will just fall off. So to fix that, I tied the hair that forms the stub together again, just temporarily so doesn’t have to tie it that hard. Then using hot glue, I glued the hair that forms that short stub together. Once the glue cools, the stub now is formed permanently and will not get lose that easily. In fact, now I can untie the string and the ends of hairs are still glue together. Now I tie the stub together again, this harder and closer to the base. Then I put the ribbons back around the stub and then while stretching the hair net on the pony tail a bit, I put the pony tail back onto the now glued together stub. This actually fixed the problem reasonably well. Not to mention now I don’t have to worry about the pony tail any more, even pulling on it won’t damage the wig, at the worst, I just push the pony tail back up on the stub again. I don’t know why Volks doesn’t glue the hair stub and then pony tail in place, seems to me that a bit of blue provides much better security for the wig than the way it is right now. All Saber Lily owners, please be very careful with the pony tail. Try never touch the pony tail part of the wig when putting the wig on or off. Otherwise, who know if Volks will help you with your broken wig after some time.

Okay, now a week later, I finally got my replacement wig in the mail. So finally I can continue my unboxing effort. And hence, now it’s unboxing round 2.

Here’s Saber Lily full appearance with all her clothes, armor pieces and swords.

And here’s a closeup of her head. This is a different head mold than the original Saber and the later Saber Alter. The eye color is a bit brighter too. I will be doing some comparisons of the original Saber and Saber Lily in the future.

Another shot form the side.

There are three gauntlet part. Two is the standard left/right hand. And there’s one that’s specially for holding the sword. The sword has a small red piece that can be removed to reveal a hole. There is a small stub in the palm of the hand that allow Saber Lily to carry the sword like this.

Saber Lily ready to unsheath the sword.

Saber Lily is still using the same Dollfie Dream Base Body II. So the load holding capacity of her joints are still very weak. It is very difficult to get her to hold that giant sword up like this without it falls down as soon as you let your finger go. The new Dollfie Dream Sister is suppose to have better load holding capabilities. I can’t wait for my DDS Marisa to ship from Volks so I can test it out.

A few shots with Saber Lily holding just the Caliburn with out the sheath.

Holding the Caliburn with two hands was barely enough to keep the sword from falling down.

I was trying to get Saber Lily to strike a similar pose as my Saber Lily ~Distant Avalon~ PVC. But it was very difficult. I had to hold the tip of the Caliburn up with fishing wires, and the internal structure of the Dollfie Dream body still wasn’t flexible enough for me to pose her in a similar pose. So in the end this is my best attempt. I’m hoping with the release of Dollfie Dream Sister, the flexibility of the body will be improved for better poses.

Here it is Dollfie Dream Saber Lily together with 1/7 scaled Saber Lily ~Distant Avalon~ PVC by Good Smile Company.

I will end this post with a close-up shot of Saber Lily. Believe it or not, I’m probably in the minority group that I actually liked original Saber’s head sculpture better. I personally found the old head sculpture to be cuter and more likable. While most people on the Internet seems to like this new more lady like sculpture. Yes this is more of an elegant head sculpture now, but for one reason or another, I like cuter faces and the original Saber with the wider face is simply adorable.

Here’s a 2D illustration of Saber Lily. As you can see Volks really did a very good job of creating all the clothes and armor pieces for her. Nearly a one to one match down to the layer of clothes. There will be more Saber Lily posts following since she’s got so much more to offer. This is just to catch up the unboxing which should have taken place a week ago.