Dal - A Review
A dear friend of mine asked me to do a review on Dal and share some info on the body etc. I took some photos to illustrate my findings. I'm all new to Dal myself, having just recently received my first one, Kanta. She was kind enough to help me demonstrate some of the pros and cons of Groove engineering and show off her posing prowess.
Here's the Dal 9" body. Byul also has this same body. It's very fragile, made of brittle plastic. The arms and legs are thin and delicate. The feet are super small in comparison to her head size, so she's not capable of balancing on her own without a stand or some other aid. She's fully jointed and in theory capable of doing varied poses.
The mid torso joints, at least on my Kanta, were swiveling uncontrolably when she arrived, so I made the decision to tape the torso into a one piece none-mobile one. You can see, I just used plain clear tape and now she's a lot easier to handle. It doesn't look pretty, but at least I don't need to worry that she's going to injure herself suddenly collapsing from her upper body when taking photos of her or displaying her.
Dal basically comes apart from most joints. Just trying to get her default outfit off of her when mine arrived, I literally accidentally disassembled her all over. When taking the coat off, her wrist and elbow joints came lose. When taking the pants off the knee popped off the socket. So, yeah, the joints are lose, very fragile tiny little pegs are holding the doll together. Any one of those pegs could break at the slightest force, so one needs to be very careful when handling these dolls. It is no wonder so many collectors opt for the Obitsu or Pure Neemo bodies for these dolls. I'm however hoping to preserve her original look for as long as possible before taking such measures.
The ankle joints on my girl are equally lose as the rest of joints. I must be very careful when putting on shoes. I prefer to use Blythe shoes and leave them a bit lose. Removing too tight a shoe from that tiny foot with too much force will break the joint in a blink of an eye. I had to heat with hot water her original plastic shoes to make them softer to safely remove them.
Dal and Byul have a different eye mechanism from Pullip, Isul and Taeyang. The three can close their eyes in addition to glancing sideways. Dal and Byul can't close their eyes, but they have a more simplistic mechanism that only allows them to move their eyes from side to side. Personally, this is not a problem for me, as I find I rarely use the eye closing function of my other Groovers anyway.
The Dal face sculpt is just unbelievably endearing to me. I love her big eyes, with that slightly accusatory look in them and that ever pouty little mouth. Dal comes with loads of different style make-ups and eye chips. Mine is a very natural tone one with a rather a calm expression. She does look strong-willed and opinionated in my opinion though. Hehe! Having seen other people's collections, I know the Dal sculpt is slightly smaller than the Byul sculpt. No comparison pics of my own on that yet, as my first Byul is still on the way.
The Dal head stands sturdily on that thin little neck. The head does not wobble at all, but is very firmly attached. She's not able to nod or tilt her head back or sideways. It's what we call a "no, no" head. Hehe! It just swivels around at one level. The neck is the one joint that works fine. The action is nice, it's smooth to rotate.
Dal poses rather well for such a small doll, if you're brave and patient enough to manipulate the joints without breaking them. Hehe! She squeeks and makes dubious noises when moving the limbs. She sits nicely, manages to kneel and stands with support. Her head is large and rather heavy in comparison to her body, so she's tricky to balance. I use props and a metal stick when posing her for photos to support her. She can spread her legs and arms.
In comparison to the Azone bodied Blythe, Dal has about the same posing range, only she's a lot lighter weight and somewhat less stable in poses. Dal is more traditional in engineering and structure than the Pure Neemo. The Groove joint action is nowhere near as nice as with the Pure Neemo type soft plastic bodies. The Dal body also does not have the luxury of changing the hand parts. (Dal can take the S size Pure Neemo body, but there have been some reports of the plastic types not being compatible. I can't confirm this first hand, but apparently there have been cases of the Groove plastic melting when in contact with other types of plastic. Just a word of warning, but you had better confirm this from a more knowledgable source.)
Dal works in photos the best with Isul and Byul, in my opinion. They're more compatible in size. Pullip and Taeyang are quite a bit larger. A great Groove doll size comparison photo HERE. I'll be taking photos of my entire gang though. I don't much mind the size differences as such. They're not exactly realistic looking dolls as it is.
On Clothing...
Dal is very tiny of her body. She has short, skinny arms and legs. Her body is made of slippery and shiny hard plastic, so clothes do not stay on her as well as on Pure Neemo or Takara bodies for example. Dal is similar in height to the Takara body Blythe:
There's very little clothing on offer for Dal specifically. Hardly any Etsy sellers make anything for Dal and she's skinnier than Blythe, so she does suffer a bit there. She can wear Blythe clothes, but they're not a perfect fit. The stocking and socks tend to be lose, the dresses look a bit like sacks on her. Hehe! Clothes made for the Takara body are the best option that I've found so far. The cardigan in the pics above is made for Takara Blythe for example. Her dress one the other hand is a custom order one.
She can wear shoes meant for Pullip or Blythe just fine, particularly with socks underneath. They'll be a bit big for her, but that's good, because we don't want any stress on those fragile ankles.
One can sometimes pick up a second hand stock outfits on Ebay or such places, but in my humble opinion, as pretty as the Groove outfits are, they're not very well made for the most part. They're meant for display use, not play use. The outfits are as fragile as the dolls and impractical in many ways. They're hard to take off and put back on.
On wigs...
Dal has a smaller head than Pullip. Pullip wears 8-9 or 9-10 sized wigs. I would estimate that Dal can wear some stretchy 7-8 and 8-9 sized wigs. I've not removed my Dal's original hair, nor to I mean to any time soon, so I can't be 100% sure on this, but I do have a lot of exprerience with BJDs and their wigs, so I'd say I'm a fairly reliable a source of information on this.
That's about it! I hope this was informative and useful. :D Dal is delicate little flower, but with loving care, she's a wonderful doll with loads of personality!
