Rozen Maiden opens up with some grainy flashback footage of a privileged young girl with a doting father. It seems she is given an extraordinary doll as a gift, but later on the girl is shown with an expression of fear as she locks the doll away in a box. Flash forward to the present as we meet Sakurada Jun, a troubled boy who is verbally abusive to his older sister Nori, and refuses to go back to school. Something bad apparently happened to him recently, and it seems their parents are overseas on business. Nowadays Jun spends his time buying into silly cursed object scams and similar online buying. When he finds a strange letter, he circles the “Agree” option and immediately finds a well-made doll inside with a key. A quick wind-up brings the doll to life, and she introduces herself as Shinku, the fifth Rozen Maiden.
However, this doll is not like the usual meido, naked apron kind. She quickly slaps Jun for handling her inappropriately and basically talks down to him. He’s forced to take all this and even swear allegiance to her when a clown doll comes looking for blood. By kissing her rose ring, he is given a similar ring and becomes her medium; in other words, Jun is now Shinku’s portable battery pack. Fortunately, this power source is wireless, and so there are none of those embarrassing Evangelion snafu’s. Shinku lays the smackdown and tells Jun that she knows he has a hole in his heart, but that his dolls know that he is a good person. Jun takes the advice and is slightly less mean to his sister.
I really enjoyed the first episode of this series, and it looks promising. There was humor, a little bit of action, mystery, and even a hint of creepiness mixed in. Shinku is a great character, and I almost died when she couldn’t reach the door. Jun seems like a jerk right now, but the way that everyone else treats him suggests that this is a recent transformation due to a traumatic event. I liked the music in the series overall, except for the OP, which is like a more annoying version of the Noir/Avenger OP. Production values seemed fairly high. Overall, this series seems very promising.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
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