Van

My very first doll who does not fall under the typical 'normal'/white skintone category aka the usual BJD skintones offered. I always wanted to own a darker skinned doll, and I knew Van Fanel from the 1996 anime Vision of Escaflowne is the perfect character to work on. Tthe default faceup of DCH-16 was pretty much exactly Van's face from the get go. It was just the matter of getting the perfect eyes and wig to recreate the angelic King of Fanelia! On top of it, that time I was absolutely enamoured by the series and Van in particular at the time, but there isn't much merch from Escaflowne, so I decided a doll would be perfect.

Alongside Heero, Van is the first doll in my collection to have his own default attire sewn entirely by my own hands, and I am still very happy that I did it to this day. The BJD hobby tends to force you to do something new to achieve what you want for your doll, so I took this opportunity to teach myself how to sew clothing for my dolls.

I honestly really enjoy how many people seem to actually remember one of the original and very first isekai genre animes of the nineties, and Van seems to be the conversation sparker for anything related to the 90s era anime. A little fun fact is thanks to Van, I found myself in a whole new hobby of assembling gundam/mecha plastic model kits!