Name: Bishuku Keitaro (Japanese order)
Age: 19
Hair: Blue
Eye: Red-amber
Special status: Seiryuu's Sei Ashitare (with the power of lycanthropy)
Occupation: Wanderer
Doll type: Doll In Mind Rain
In his story, Keitaro recieved a magical pendant that taught him how to shape-shift out of his natural half-man/half-wolf form, and into that of a normal wolf or a normal human. After about 8 months, I finally got around to making a version for the doll. The chain is sterling silver half-Persian 4-in-1, hand cut and woven by yours truly. The pendant is a pewter charm; I haven't found a silver one I like as well yet.
A better view requires checking out part of his not-so-manly chest.
Since my dolls are almost always of a specific pre-existing character, acquiring a doll is just the first step. There's always customization to be done afterwards. In Keitaro's case, the doll itself didn't need any modification (thank goodness; I don't know if I could have after learning he was a one-off), but I still needed to get a somewhat wild blue wig, one eye that would meet the description of "red-amber" I use in story (I'm not even sure exactly what color that is), and a peach-colored marble to take the place of his left eye, which is supposed to be missing. He needed some traditional Japanese clothing as well. I also went and painted his Sei character on the base of his spine, but sadly there are no hinder shots of Keitaro to show you.
The blind eye wasn't too much trouble. A trip to JoAnn's netted a bag of decorative glass blobs that match the resin pretty well. Knowing that there aren't a lot of fur wigs in styles and colors I like, I'd already bought some fake fur in an appropriately Keitaro-like color, and made the wig myself.
Keitaro doesn't like to go around without an eyepatch, since it tends to ook people. I made one out of felt, intending it to be temporary. That was over six months ago. I've never gotten around to making a permanent one, and this one seems to be working just fine.
I'd expected to be searching forever for the eyes, but a pair of coral DropRops urethane eyes came up for sale. In person they're a little pinker than I'd like (they appear more orangish in most photos), but they're so intense that they've become Keitaro's official eye color. Of course he needed one more thing to truly be complete: his beloved, Tsukiko.
Little story on how I ended up with Keitaro here. Originally Rain was released as a limited edition of 20 dolls. Then, toward the end of 2006, D.I.M put up a "Rain Face-up" on their English language site. I immediately fell in love with the mold as pictured, but thinking that it was an unlimited release, I sat back and waited for owner pics. I managed to hold out for three weeks, but then I had one too many bad days in a row, and was able to come up with any number of excuses why I should just go for it (D.I.M. is slow to restock and said they only carried one at a time, none of the other D.I.M. dealers had picked him up, they'd just canceled 5 molds with no warning), so I just bought him.
Later that day I was at Den of Angels, and someone in the Picture Request forum asked why there weren't more pictures of Rain. The owner of D.I.M. wrote in to say that it was because there were only 21 in existance: the 20 limiteds, and the Rain Face-up they had sold that morning.
0_0 He wasn't just the only one in stock, he was the only one they'd made. Lucky for me no one else in the fandom has any taste.
D.I.M. later released Rain as an unlimited, and although they changed their face-up team shortly afterwards, it's possible that a few more were painted the same way first. Nonetheless, even if Keitaro isn't an official one-off, he is absolutely my favorite doll in my entire collection. I'm so glad to have gotten to him first, and I could almost kick myself for waiting as long as I did.
One adorable trait of the Rain mold is that the ears are slightly pointed. The right ear shows this better than the left. It fits the character perfectly.
I find it rather funny, however, that he came with green eyes. All the pics on D.I.M.'s site showed him in pink, which would work great for Keitaro, and since he was the only Rain Face-up in existance, the photos must have been of him. But they swapped them out for green glass eyes. (I'm guessing the pink ones were acrylic.) What makes this funny is that it seems every doll I order comes with green eyes. They're supposed to be random, but Nic came with green, Lord Mandali came with green, Keitaro shows up in green. Even funnier, I don't like the plain green glass eyes. Grey-green has a nice depth to it, but the normal green is rather blah.
Because I bought Keitaro sooner than I had planned (thinking he was an unlimited release), I didn't have any clothes for him. Fortunately, he came with a wig. I borrowed a kimono from Nicodemus, but Nic is a Hound (one of the largest dolls on the market), and unexpectedly it turned out that Keitaro is smaller than a standard SD13-sized doll, so he positively swam in it.
Laura was nice enough to lend him some clothes from her SD13 boy. You can see how baggy it is on Keitaro; that's a well-fitting shirt on the doll it's designed for.
And while we were taking photos anyway, we put Keitaro beside the other werewolf in the house, Laura's Remus Lupin. Remus is an official Volks SD13, to give you a size comparison.
Copyright Kati d'Esprit 2007