Wednesday 7 March 2012

Review: MeroMero

This is the machine released after Me Her Jyoshi and uses Essence’s special ‘platinum sheet’. (Kinda shiny/pearly printouts. MeroMero is メロメロ in Japanese which they have tweaked to be xoxo in the logo…
P1040704
The inside is pretty standard with big circle lights and touchscreen.
P1040664
Your course choices are Milky Pastel or Honey Vivid. We went for the vivid option.
P1040666
In the backgrounds you have normal back grounds, pattern/aura backgrounds and ‘play’ (asobi) backgrounds. There are some nice ones under asobi with unusual shapes like the heart and playing cards in the bottom left…
P1040668
P1040669
P1040670
First you take four square shots then you get the choice of portrait shots or more square shots. I totally meant to tap the portrait one for more variety but in the heat of the moment I somehow tapped the square one. I did wonder if you got extra backgrounds but you just get the same ones.
P1040671
Like many Make machines you get to take a collage after your six shots. Some of these change as we took purikura on Valentine’s Day and there was a valentine collage.
P1040674
Then we move to the decorating screen.
You choose your own pictures to go into the collage instead of the machine choosing them at random. Be careful not to have doubles!
P1040675
You can enter your names for special stamps, this machine gives you the choice of entering pair names or a group name (club, workplace etc). If you are more than two people but not a special group you could just enter the name of the city instead!
P1040676
This machine puts your names into the collage and you can’t change the order so if you end up sitting the wrong way round you’ll have to switch seats or write each others names. You enter in hiragana but you can adjust the alphabet afterwards. A button will appear next to the alphabet section as soon as you enter a hiragana character.
P1040677
I’m sorry for the stroby pictures, I kept trying!
Name stamps are split into names and pair names:
P1040678
The three long ones in the top right are rolling stamps so if you don’t lift the pen off you can draw them like a chain. I love the S&M ones in the corner but that’s just because of our initials Winking smile
P1040702
The stamps for anniversaries also have your names in them. There’s a few things you can do here.
P1040680
P1040680 02
Names also pop up on the 予定 (plans) section. I like this section, but I wish all the icons had matching labels. There’s a film icon but no word…
P1040681
You can make your own stamps on this machine. Just choose a frame, and tap it on the purikura and it will save the image as a stamp you can use on other purikura. Be careful as I don’t think there’s a way to replace/delete them once you’ve saved them. Names are here as well.
P1040682
Names pop up (again!) in the one touch decoration section. They are kinda meh…
P1040683
Overall the stamps and message are pretty generic or have already been used on other machines. Some examples:
P1040684
P1040687
P1040694
P1040693
There are a few cute ones I guess. I like the comic style PEACE and “Girls be ambitious” never gets old.
There’s a graphics section too. I decided to make a teeny graphic this time: photo
P1040697
The print layout is split between two people. You each have two sections to choose layouts for. One section for regular purikura. If you choose a layout with the grey square you can choose which picture is bigger. On the right-hand section you can either choose to have the collage or to get extra copies of the regular purikura.
P1040703
One of the selling points for this machine is the platinum sheet which is the same as Essence. I tried to take a photo but it really doesn’t show up. It’s a sort of pearlescent sheen which looks quite nice in pastels but doesn’t really work for the vivid course.
I have to say I wasn’t very impressed with this machine, I took it once just before Christmas and didn’t like it but I thought I’d give it another chance for the review and my impression hasn’t changed much. The platinum sheet isn’t great, the stamps and decorations are ok but not amazing and I have a couple of issues with how we look. Well, first here’s the pictures we took:
IMG_0514
IMG_1763
IMG_6129
IMG_6621
IMG_8530
IMG_3048
IMG_4268
I think the skintone is all over the place with weird contrasts and pink patches. I thought maybe it was just my freaky white skin but my friend has the same thing. Especially in the last picture. I also think it changes the eye shape in a strange way. It’s not just enlarging, it’s a different shape in some of them. It’s weird. Here’s some of the ones from the other time I used this machine:
IMG_3718
This doesn’t look like me, not even the cute purikura version of me.
IMG_3714
Weird eyes, and my hair is red… wtf? I used this as my facebook profile just because it’s so far from how I look!!
I think I have finally found a machine that I don’t like! I would  probably only take this again if I didn’t have much choice… even then I’d think about it!

2 comments:

  1. I always love your posts! I think I like this machine, we don't have very complex ones like you do there in Japan!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some of them here are getting too complicated! Simple ones can be better sometimes!

      Delete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...