The two Sabers

It’s more than 2.5 years ago in April of 2008, when Volks released the original Fate/hollow ataraxia Dollfie Dream Saber. The a few months later in December of 2008, Volks released Saber Alter. Saber Alter is actually identical to Saber in terms of head sculpture. The wig is also nearly identical with a different coloured hair, a different coloured ribbon at the back and sans ahoge on top. So the only difference is Saber Alter is in white colour and has a different/much simpler outfit than Saber. Surprisingly thought, due to the popularity of Saber Alter, at times it actually fetches higher prices in auctions than original Saber. It really gave a new meaning to “less is more”. Now 2 years after Saber Alter’s release, in 2010, Volks released Fate/unlimited codes Dollfie Dream Saber Lily with a brand new yet even more complex outfit/armor set than the original Saber. It also sports a new head sculpture and a new new wig. Since I own both the original dollfie dream Saber and the new dollfie dream Saber Lily, I decide to do a side by side comparison so that the difference between the two can be examined in detail.

Let’s start by comparing the head and the wigs. Despite the obvious difference in wigs, one thing to note is that the ahoge on Saber and Saber Lily points at different directions.

Here’s a few more shots looking at the Saber (left) and Saber Lily’s head sculpture and the wigs. As you can see Saber Lily’s chin has a sharper shape. Saber Lily also have thinner eyebrows, lighter shades around the eyes, and the corners of her eyes doesn’t lift up as much. All that making Saber lily more elegant and lady like. And on top of that, a wider smile on Saber Lily doesn’t hurt.

Here’s a look at the wig difference. I really like Saber’s braid though. It looks nice and it’s not as fragile as Saber Lily’s pony tail.

Here, the wigs are removed for a better look at the head sculpture. The white Saber Alter is basically the same head sculpture as Saber just in white colour. But Saber Lily has a completely new sculpture. It seems that even the ears are newly sculpted just for Saber Lily.

Looking at the full front comparison. Saber (left) has a wider face than Saber Lily (right), while Saber Lily has a taller face than Saber. The eye’s color are both green but Saber Lily’s eyes are much more vibrant. And if you look at the profile comparison, it is evident that Saber Lily has a much longer chin. I know just about everyone on the Internet is head over heel about Saber Lily’s new head sculpture. But I still think original Saber is cuter. Saber Lily is elegant, but not as kawaii as Saber.

The hand parts from Saber (left) are much rougher when compared with Saber Lily’s (right). The separation between fingers in Saber’s gauntlet is not as distinct. As seen in photo on the right, Saber Lily comes with these black hand joints. These are great because you don’t have to worry about scratching the original skin coloured hand joints. Whenever I put armor parts on the original Saber, the hand joints are always scratches with armor’s black color. Tiny things like this shows that Volks really did learn from the original dollfie Saber and improved upon it to make Saber Lily a better product.

Saber’s arm armor (left) compared with Saber Lily’s arm armor (right). Both seems to be in three sections, but Saber’s arm armor is actually one straight piece, while Saber Lily’s arm armor is actually in three pieces. This makes putting them on Saber Lily much easier than Saber.

And as seen here, with the arm armor in three pieces, Saber Lily’s hand can maneuver a lot more than Saber. Saber practically can’t bend her hand at all once you put on the arm armor and the gauntlet.

Saber’s Leg armor (left) is again in a single piece. Saber Lily’s leg armor (right) is two pieces with a piece of black guard cloth to protect the white socks underneath. Again nice going there Volks, you made the armor easy to install while include things like these guard clothes to make sure the armor pieces will not stain anything underneath. The thoroughness is well observed.

Here’s the foot parts compared. Saber’s foot (left) is much rougher while Saber Lily’s foot (right) is much more refined. It is also odd that under the original Saber’s foot, there’s a big hole (mold injection hole?). This prevents you from showing the underside of her foot. While Saber Lily doesn’t have this issue at all as you can see in the photo on the right.

Here’s chest armor pieces compared. Saber’s chest armor is on the right and Saber Lily’s chest armor is on the left. Now you can’t see this from the photos, but Saber Lily’s chest armor is much easier to put on, and actually stays on. Saber’s chest armor is much harder to put on, and it splits apart every time I adjust any small thing. Volks put some extra tabs on the inside of the two piece Saber Lily chest armor to make it stay together a bit better than the original Saber.

The worst piece of armor from the original Saber has to be her side armors that hung on either side of Saber’s skirt. They are very big and heavy, and they need to be hung on a thin leather strap that’s then attached to Saber’s waist. Whenever those armor pieces are on Saber, the weight always drag the leather straps way down, and I always felt like they are going to drop down at any time. Look at the photo on the right and you can see how much smaller Saber Lily’s side armors are. And they feel lighter by density too. Now of course the size of the armor pieces are limited due to character design. But Volks really should have made the original Saber’s side armor thinner and lighter.

Another things that Volks did with Saber Lily is that there’s a center piece of plastic that joints the two side armor together. So the three pieces of armor actually formed 3/4 of a loop already. As you can see the armor actually stands by itself. The leather strap really just serves to make sure the loop is closed so that the armor will not fall out. And naturally they go on Saber Lily much better than the original side armor on Saber.

Well that pretty much sums up all the differences between Saber and Saber Lily (besides the obvious clothing difference). I will end this post with a couple shot of Saber and Saber Lily together.