Mermaid Princess Minami arrival

I finally got my Mermaid Princess Minami home~ She was shipped nearly two weeks ago by EMS, so I was getting worried that she might've gotten lost or something, but thank god she arrived safely in the end! Usually EMS from Japan takes only a few days, so this wait was quite nerve-wrecking ^^;

Pre-ordering her wasn't as easy as I had hoped. Well, sure I had been prepared for a huge fight since I had the feeling that she might be really, really popular and be sold out very fast. The only similar pastel-colored cutie that Azone has released so far is the Kinoko Juice Chiika, which was sold out in seconds and has ridiculous second-hand prices - she now costs like 3 to 4 times the original price x_x I thought that this Minami might end up just as popular and hard to get, so I was determined to pre-order her, no matter what.

I had set my alarm clock to wake me up at 5:58am, as the pre-orders were supposed to start at 6am my local time. BUT, some stores had actually started taking pre-orders like an hour too early and obviously, she was already sold out on those places! >3< I pretty much woke up to a complete online chaos, lol. Next I stalked Amiami like crazy, I kept refreshing the front page once in a minute or so for like a hour ^^;; Then I see someone posting on Facebook that her sales page is up, I rush to the page and she's already sold out... The doll never even had time to appear on the front page before she was gone >.<

My next place to stalk was Hobby Link Japan. When Minami was up for pre-order, the whole site started crashing and giving error messages when trying to sign in or add something to the cart... At some point I had 5 Minami in the cart lol. I was ready to throw my laptop out of the window when I finally managed to order the doll that I had in my shopping cart, although the sales page claimed that the doll was sold out. In the end, turned out that the website had allowed too many people to order and they had to cancel some of the orders - including mine. I was really desperate at that point, since she was now sold out on every single site that I knew of. When I browsed through Yahoo Japan I saw one that cost much more than the original price, but thought that it might be my only change to get this doll without having to pay even more... So I bought it :D I was anxious the whole time I waited for her release date, worried that my order might get cancelled yet again, but luckily this time everything worked out.

I already rambled more than enough, so let's move on to the box opening! (Though I don't have any photos of the outer box, since Sarg's big Pokémon plush arrived in the same package and she opened the outer box :D)

The box design is super pretty~ 

Look at those jellyfish!! ♥

There's even an adorable drawing of a mermaid Minami ;___; ♥

And as always, I took photos of the leaflet and accessories before the doll itself :'D 

The cover of the leaflet

The outfit and accessories piece by piece

Now let's get you out of there, girl!

Cute shoes, handbag and a hair accessory. At first I didn't recognize what the heck it is, had to take a look at her photos XD

Mermaid Minami in all her glory! ♥ I decided to name her Yume, which means "dream" :3 It's a cute name and this doll is pretty much like a dream for me~ When I saw the first photos of this girl, I was like NO WAAAY - it was almost like Azone had gotten inside my mind XD Pastel colors and mermaids are something that I love deeply, not to mention that Minami was released on June 24th, just one day before my birthday!! Even many of my friends told me that "this looks like your doll/character" hahah XD So yeah, she's perfect for me! ♥♥

The outfit is just gorgeous and has many tiny cute details~ It's so big and poofy XD

I really love her shy expression~ Somehow I already feel a strong emotional bond with this doll ;___;

I took off the chiffon coat thing and played around with her hair a little bit~ ♥ She's probably have this hair-do for a while now, since I fell in love with how she looks like this x3

A bit later I couldn't resist trying my other Minami's glasses on her and oh my... I think I need to buy a pair of light-colored (white?) glasses for her now ;3; She looks so adorable with glasses!

Now after Yume's arrival, me and Sarg have all three different Minami releases in the house :D Malla (on left) is Sarg's and the dark-haired Janna is mine. I love how different they look, even though they have the same face. I'm also considering swapping Yume to a S sized body (she's now on M), so that she'd be shorter than Malla and Janna who are her cousins :3

I also compared the hair color to some other pink-haired Azone girls that I have at home. This Minami has truly pastel pink hair, the other girls' hair have more of a peachy shade. Tiinyan also got Mermaid Princess Minami and shared a hair comparison photo on her blog :)

I can't even put down in words how happy I am to finally have Yume at home, hopefully I can take more photos of her soon~ Just looking at her gives me a lot of inspiration, just need to decide what kind of a photoshoot I could do with her :3 Though the default outfit is gorgeous, I can't wait to sew some other clothes for her as well. She most likely won't stray far from pastel colors ;D