Nightmare is a Japanese Visual Kei band, even if you may not recognize the name of the band if you watch anime there is a fair chance you have heard their music as it has been featured in such series as Death Note and Claymore. Earlier this year, Nightmare released their eighth studio album titled SCUMS then did the beautiful SCUMS tour to promote the album. Groove has partnered with Nightmare to do a set of dolls based upon appearances of the members of the band.

Despite the fact that Groove actually managed to put together some pretty amazing looking dolls, they kind of skimped on photos of the set and released only a single promotional photo of the entire set. Pullipstyle was lucky enough to get some of the dolls in stock recently; they contacted me and asked if I would like to borrow some of the Nightmare dolls so that the dolls could finally have some photos.  I received Isul Yomi and Taeyangs Ruka & Ni-ya as loaner dolls from PS. Since sending me the dolls they have sold out of the whole Nightmare set but they still have a small quantity of Isul Yomi and Taeyang Ni-ya remaining (as of this writing).

Isul Yomi is the first up for review here before he begins his journey back to Pullipstyle. Why Yomi first? Well he is the lead singer of the band!


Yomi in the box. Isul Yomi’s stock consists of t-shirt, arm band, overalls, sneakers, scarf, two belts and fingerless gloves. He comes with the usual card and stand but I left those in the box as I was trying to minimize possible destruction of his box as he is a loaner. These days for dolls going into my personal collection I normally toss the boxes so I don’t really care how messed up the box gets in the deboxing process.

To prevent staining from his stock he was wrapped almost entirely in plastic, basically  the only place he wasn’t wrapped in plastic was from the neck up so the first thing I had to debox him was strip him naked and remove some of the plastic at least where it would show in photos anyway.

Yomi has one of the most dramatic face ups seen on an Isul so far. I absolutely love his eye make up, it’s so intense I’m not the biggest fan of the yellow eye shadow under the eye but the rest of the eye make up is so amazing I’ll forgive it. His lips are really nicely done too.

Yomi has a total of four ear piercings, one on one side and three on the other. I particularly like the solitary piercing on the one side as the earring on that side is shaped like a lock. To the best of my knowledge he is the only Isul with any piercings.

Stock quality is really nice in general, it’s very detailed especially the overalls. My only complaint is the gloves which seem to be in self-destruct mode. There is a single double-stitch as the separation between thumb and fingers take care when removing or putting them on.  Manufacturing something as tiny as the gloves if probably nightmarish (ha!).

Unlike his band mates, Yomi is the only band member of Nightmare represented by an Isul rather than a Taeyang. It makes sense if you look at any pictures of the band, Yomi seems to be fairly petite in real life at least compared to the rest of the band and I personally think Isul’s facesculpt suits him best.

I think the Isul is a fairly faithful adaption of Yomi. His outfit is pretty well dead on to one that Yomi has been photographed in for promotional materials related to their newest album.

With my new favorite photography prop ie. Pullip Myra’s chair.

I have to say that he is probably my favorite Isul released so far as he’s so unique but if I had my choice of any of the Nightmare dolls I would go for Ruka in a heartbeat  (Yomi would be a close second). I guess I just prefer Taeyangs to Isul even if this particular Isul is amazing.

Tons more pictures of Yomi on my flickr, reviews of Ni-ya and Ruka will be up in the next few days in addition to more fun with MIO (Make It own) review stuff also hopefully something completely non-related to dolls this weekend as I’m feeling a bit of dolly overdose. If you decide want your Nightmare dolls, you can still get Isul Yomi  and Taeyang Ni-ya on Pullipstyle.

Special thanks to Pullipstyle for loaning me Yomi and his bandmates for photos ❤