Obitsu made by the company Obitsu is a rather unusual doll line.
It's a Japanese brand which is made from concept to production completely in Japan and which is of quite high quality. Obitsu's specialty is that the dolls are sold as separate pieces so everyone can assemble their dream doll.
Bodies and heads are available in two skintones: "natural" (light white skintone) and "white". Darker colours were only available for a short time in very limited amounts.
Apart from the colour there are also several sizes and looks for both genders.
The female bodies are available in 21, 23, 25 and 27cm size, with varying bust sizes from 23cm and up. There are three bust sizes to choose from and bodies with hard plastic torsos and those from the so-called SBH series that come with a torso made from soft, rubberlike plastic. The latter ones look undeniably better and more realistic in bathing suits and likewise fashion, which is the reason I only own these. Their big downside is that they discolour and stain quite easily due to clothes and sun. Thus it is very important to store the doll adequately and to colourfast its clothes. The body shown on the left is a SBH body sized 27cm and with small "S" bust. Its torso is made from soft material and can still move the waiste.
The boy body is available in 21 and 23cm and for the man body there is a slim "regular" version and a muscle man.
The 11cm child body also depicted on the left is unisex.
Additionally there is at least one woman body that's 60cm tall but there isn't enough information and available offers around to say more. There are various Asian merchants on Amazon who offer bodies in 48 resp. 50cm and in 60cm, with and without heads and in both skintones. Whether one is measured including the head and the other without and thus both are the same I cannot say. This 1:3 series is extremely hard to get your hands on in these parts.
Btw, the bodies are never as tall as their size implies since the height is always for a doll with a head.
Furthermore, there are variously shaped heads. Some heads have holes for glass eyes, others can be painted or use special water slide transfers on. They are also available bald or with rooted hair and depicting various ages.
This way everyone can build their dream doll.
Additionally there are sets of hands, e.g. open hands, clenched fists or hands that can hold items and there are also feet with build-in magnets to give the doll invisible hold on a display.
Obitsu also produces some accessoires like shoes, as far as I know they don't produce clothes though and leave it up to you to find fitting clothes from other doll brands. Obitsu shoes are made of plastic and some have build-in magnets (at least the Japanese sandals with socks do). There isn't much variety. Apart from these sandly I only know various sports shoes and flat slippers, most of them for ladies. The black trainers on the picture are for men, though.
Obitsu also offers loose packs of hair to allow experienced dollmakers with the right tools to root the bald heads themselves. Alternatively there are specialized shops like Mimiwoo who sell ready-made wigs too or heads that are already rooted with hair. Often they even have finished heads or complete dolls which are of course handpainted and one of a kind.
Obitsu is very popular because the bodies offer varied bodyshapes as well as high posibility and good quality. They are also quite easy to use as replacements for the bodies of Pullips or similar doll lines. Although regular Obitsus have "normal" sized heads (scale is 1:6 like for the bodies) the bodies are sturdy enough to hold up the high weight of a modern Pullip head.
The bodies come ex factory packaged with several plugs for the neck which can be exchanged with very little effort to use the body directly with doll heads of other brands.
A complete Obitsu doll is not exactly cheap, especially since many parts are only available directly from Asia (from a German perspective, at least) and thus have extra cost in form of postage and customs. At least European collectors can buy most body sizes and some simple girl heads, hair and shoes from Plastikpop.
In the end, what you get is an extremely well posable doll with the desired body shape. In my opinion a custom doll should be worth the little extra money to a collector.
The photos below show - from left to right - the difference between small, medium and large breasts for a SBH body of 27cm height, the difference between "white" and "natural" skintone and last but not least a type3 Pullip that has just been transplanted onto a "natural" Obitsu body with medium breasts. Her old body is shown for comparison.
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These photos show from left to right a 27cm woman body, a 23cm girl body, a 23cm boy body and a man body. The photo on the right repeats the boy and man bodies, while also showing the nice selection of hands they come with.
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The online shop of Mimiwoo also lists the likewise Japanese brand Parabox as matching Obitsu. Sadly I couldn't find any info about this brand and its relation to Obitsu. However, Parabox produces very cute heads, even with pixie ears. These heads are available in the original Obitsu skintones. Here is an example for the pixie child head. At first I couldn't decide between using it on the 11cm child body or the 23cm boy body, but in the end I settled for the smaller body. Like the soft torsos of the SBH bodies this head if made from very soft plastic and I was able to paint it with colour pencils just as well as with acrylics. (The reason the doll is cross-eyed is that sadly the glass eyes don't have evenly made pupils.)
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My opinion on Obitsu:
I would have loved to buy a 1:3 Obitsu (60cm) to own a really big doll but these are always sold out at Mimiwoo, not listed at Plastikpop and extremely expensive on Amazon. So I don't hold much hope to get a really tall doll without the strings of a true Ball Jointed Doll one day.
Although Plastikpop offers a few 1:6 bodies for Obitsu they only carry extremely bland heads with almost no features. Overall I'm only interested in the pixie heads from Parabox and a few nice heads for adult men and women but sadly they don't match the rest of my doll collection. Pullips have those massively oversized 1:3 heads and Monster High & co also have oversized heads. So right now I can't get myself to start yet another line of dolls, especially since the $ is so strong lately that I can order next to nothing from Asia anymore without having to pay customs on it, and due to the high travel costs to the customs office and the amount of time that takes it's just not possible at the moment.
Problematic about these heads is also getting fitting glass resp. acrylic eyes since this size is seldom on sale and the colour options are small. Still, I find these dolls very interesting and as things slow down considerably in the Pullip department (I own more than enough characters for Dolltopia!) it's not unlikely that one day I'll fulfill a few of my dreams for the showcase.
My own Pullips only get a body transplant in emergencies since I like to keep them in their original outfits and the female Obitsu bodies are quite a bit fuller and the clothes usually don't fit. I'm less prudish about the Make It Own sets with blank dolls, so I can add a few big-busted, taller or smaller ladies to the ranks of my Pullips. One day I also want to transplant my two Bratzilas to Obitsu bodies, so they get decent bodies. I'm not very excited about the male body since it's very, very slim. While I like slim men overall I'll probably use this body for a teenager and make Isul a bit older. I might buy a few additional bodies for sculpted heads of my own, though.
The quality of the bodies is - in my opinion - undeniably good. They barely wear out, even when posed all the time. The only thing I don't like about Obitsu are the tiny and somewhat chunky feet. That isn't obvious when they wear shoes though, although I do keep wondering why the feet are that wide since they almost never fit the shoes of my other dolls despite their small size. What I like about them, on the other hand, is that they're not especially made to fit shoes with high heels. I'm not a fan of high heels at all and it's the one thing that annoys me most about Monster High. It's still possible to squeeze them into heels if the situation calls for it - they at least fit some Barbie shoes.
Since I slowly get the urge to sculpt my own heads to add some more variety and older characters to Dolltopia I'll certainly buy more than a few Obitsu bodies in the future, female as well as male.