Akeruka was known for its semi-regular group gifts of both male and female Bento mesh heads. All you had to do was join the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150, and keep your eyes peeled for announcements. In fact, if you had joined the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150 three years ago, you would have picked up no less than nine fully-featured, fully-adjustable Bento mesh heads by now before today’s announcement—which works out to less than L$20 per head! Now that’s what I call a deal!

Well, Akeruka has just announced that there is a new, tenth group gift, a Bento, Bakes on Mesh compatible female head now available for only L$1: the Akeruka Advanced Head W08 (Version 3.0). (I wish they would give them names rather than designations like “W08”; it makes it sound like a brand of motor oil …)

Here’s the SLURL to take you to the vendor panels in the women’s section of the Akeruka store. Just right-click and pay one of the three panels underneath the large poster which say Server 1, Server 2, or Server 3, pay one Linden dollar, and receive your group gift! Even if you have to join the [AK] Heads News & Support group for the first time to pick up this gift, paying L$151 in total is still a bargain!

Here’s what you get in the package:

The package includes a starter shape and eyebrows shaper, the head itself, with separate teeth, eyes, and neck fixes, plus a main HUD, an animations HUD, a separate HUD to control the teeth, and an Omega HUD. There’s even a face light included!

Please note that, unlike previous Akeruka group gifts, this is intended to be a Bakes on Mesh head, so there are no skins or skin appliers included in this package.

I went and located the Bakes on Mesh skins that came with the Akeruka group gift just previous to this one, the [AK Advanced] Bento Head V2.6 Limited Edition head, and tried those on this new head. This is skin tone 5 of the Limited Edition head skins, on the new W08 head, with zero adjustments to the default body shape and eyebrow shaper included in the package:

The eyebrows do need a bit of adjusting, but overall this is a very pleasing look! You can control the colour of the included mesh eyes using the main HUD (there are also separate left and right unrigged eyes included in the package).

Here’s the complete final look. I paired the W08 head with the Altamura Juliet body (which requires an Omega system kit and a separate Bakes on Mesh applier to be BoM compatible). I used the eyeliner and lipstick settings in the included HUD.

All in all, I am very pleased with this head! If you are already a member of the Akeruka group, spending that extra Linden dollar and picking up this latest group gift is a no-brainer!

Obviously, the Bento head wars in Second Life have changed the situation from when Akeruka first began giving out group gifts three years ago. Since then, we have quite a few releases of free mesh heads, from the likes of Catwa, Genus Project, and now LeLutka! So you could be forgiven for thinking “why spend L$151 on this head, when I have free ones from other big-name brands already?”.

However, I still think this is a beautiful head, and you may want to plunk down your hard-earned Lindens and pick this one up anyways! It’s still a great deal, in my opinion.