Rozen Maiden – 03
Not exactly the ideal place to wake up in.
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…Dolls are creepy, aren’t they. I honestly don’t remember Rozen Maiden being this creepy, and everything that happened here happened in the manga as well. Oh well, the darkness is making this interesting. |
So Jun has a fairly good reason for not going to school when he was younger. If Jun had been female, maybe the class might have made fun of the fact that he made dolls clothing, but it certainly wouldn’t have been as bad as it was since Jun was male. Society has a weird aversion to guys having anything to do with women’s clothing. Maybe with not professional designers (guys working in clothing shops seems to commonplace enough, provided that it’s not a lingerie shop), and his sister didn’t think anything of it, but obviously in a room full of immature middle school students, there are going to be issues. It was probably tough having society think that what you like doing as a hobby is strange. He knew exactly how his classmates would act if they found out too, since he purposely lied to them about it too, but he kept doing it and drew that design because he liked doing it. Maybe this was part of why unwound Jun started skipping school/work to work on Shinku too. He’s skilled at making things and he liked doing it enough (provided that nobody else knew), so maybe this was him reclaiming some of that.
The flashback that happened this episode wasn’t present at this point in the manga, (since it had already been covered in the first season with the wound Jun), but I think it was a good choice to include this here. So yeah, you probably couldn’t tell from the first episode, but this is what Jun has been dealing with and why he stays home all day. He’s pretty traumatized. Of course, it doesn’t help that the teacher who put up Jun’s design like that also makes house visits (to the middle school Jun) and tells him that everyone wants him back in the class too. Jun’s had to deal with a lot of stress in his life due to his hobby, and that’s why Jun feels even more crushed by society when he comes out of that slump, only to find that the rest of society sucks too.
…Which brings us back to the divide between the wound and unwound Jun. The wound Jun has had is life changed by the Rozen Maiden (not that you can tell from the anime, where it just looks like he was compliant and willing to help magical dolls that appeared on his doorstep from the beginning), so he’s just a tad bit more optimistic than unwound Jun. …Plus he hasn’t had his life crushed by society even after he stops being a hikkikomori, but that’s a different story. Anyways, you can definitely tell that there’s a difference in personality. Where the unwound Jun thinks that putting effort into anything is a waste of effort because it never results anything, the wound Jun even says that he’s capable of anything. And in the end, that’s what let’s the unwound Jun be able to recreate Shinku in a hopeless situation. So really, he helps himself in a weird dimension-breaking way. There’s more of this in the future, but the wound Jun really helps his unwound self out.
It just wouldn’t feel right any other way
Shinku is back! …And the episode ends right after that, so there’s not a lot to say about that. I’m kind of wondering if Jun only followed the picture in the book or what to recreate her clothing (or maybe the other Jun gave him instructions), but he got it spot on. I wouldn’t doubt that Jun could do it just from looking at the book picture, since he’s pretty skilled at clothing (due to his past and all). Anyways, despite the unwound Jun being so uncaring about life in general, it’s the Rozen Maiden dolls that get him moving again. They seem kind of like a negative thing in Jun’s life at the moment, since making Shinku has influenced Jun to skip work and school, but they aren’t necessarily a bad influence. I guess they’re more like a force of nature or something. They’re not purposefully looking to harm people (well, minus Kirakishou, but this anime hasn’t gotten to what she does with human mediums yet), but they have their own goals and ambitions that they absolutely want accomplished. …Though some dolls are worse than others in this respect. Anyways, the episode ends off with a complete Shinku and Jun still stuck in the N-Feild.
So after shoving 7 books into a single episode, Rozen Maiden seems to be taking things one chapter at a time now. This is working pretty well for atmosphere, since the episodes have been pretty creepy and the slow pacing helps that. On the other hand though, there’s no way they’re going to get past the unwound Jun’s arc here. The wound Jun becomes the main protagonist in chapter 30 something and we’re currently sitting at the beginning of chapter 3. Unless they skim over things again, there’s no way we’re seeing all of the stuff that happens after that. However, I think it would be perfectly fine if they wrap up the unwound Jun’s part here and end the season with that. They’ll still have to condense things a bit to finish all of this up, but I’d say that’s the perfect place to end this season. They could always make another season later for what goes on with the wound Jun after this.
…You know that cut in the middle of the episodes where Miyuki Sawashiro narrates the story of some girl on a boat? Yeah, I have no idea what that’s supposed to relate to. Maybe it’s some grand metaphor story symbolizing Jun’s relation to the Rozen Maiden or something, but as it stands, I have no idea what they’re including it for. If it was ever part of the manga, I’ve definitely forgotten about it. If it has no meaning, maybe it’s supposed to lend to atmosphere or something. Speaking of atmosphere, I’m really liking the camera angles that they’re choosing for some of the scenes here. Also, some of the filters they put on the animation (like that scene with Shinku sitting with her hair down) lend to the atmosphere as well. The quality is waaaay better than I expected and it’s the little things that are impressing me. …If Rozen Maiden (and actually, Hakkenden is looking really nice as well) keeps this up though, I won’t be able to make fun of DEEN anymore… Anyways, things are still going slowly this episode, but things should pick up now that Shinku is back.
Or at least, they should get more interesting since the dolls are coming back. I don’t know about things going faster.
About Karakuri
University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I’m kinda put off by the fact that Shinku’s eyes just magically appeared. You wanna up the creep factor? Make Jun dig for ’em.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
HAVE HIM LOOK FOR EVERY INDIVIDUAL STRAND OF HAIR.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I really enjoy this series. I don’t quite get from this show that Jun is *so* defeatist about life. It seems more that he’s just got no motivation and nothing to really live for, so he just plods through life, not really being involved.
And hooray, Shinku’s back! 10 seconds of her was great, as well as the tendrils from Kirakishou, really made a nice sense of menace. I did think the “her foot is here, so her head must be nearby” part was dumb tho, I wouldn’t see why that would have to be true at all.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
Hmm, maybe I’m carrying things over from the first season of the manga, where the wound Jun didn’t want to do anything at first and it took him 7 volumes to become the somewhat happier person he is.
…Yeah. Animelogic there I guess. I thought the same thing, but LOL plot convenience.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
That could be the case with his mindset, I just wasn’t getting that out of this show so far.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Between his high school life and now, I wonder what happened to Jun during that period. From my point of view, he lives like someone who’s lost someone very important to him and he isn’t trying to move on. No matter the aspect whether at his home or workplace, he always wears the same expression.
So Shinku is more of a spirit that needs a body to jump from place to place. The younger Jun should have warned the older one about that third piece of information. Not a minute after her transfer and he gets a slap to the face. If both Juns are the same person, why didn’t he already have in his possession instead of having to make a new body for her?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Hmm, I think that might be conflating too much from other stories in this. I don’t think that Shinku can really jump from place to place. Without Jun specifically, when Kirakishou killed her and took her Rosa, she’s just dead. It’s that Jun has a special skill that can recreate a doll that she can possess.
And they’re not exactly the same person. Other Jun didn’t get Shinku’s case until after he said he would wind, so when older Jun said he wouldn’t wind, she never came to him. The body got destroyed somewhere else, and he had to recreate it.
POWUH: Meta Team and Megane-chan with 3214 comments
They said the last episode that Jun never actually completed high school or something, so I have no idea. I don’t even know how he got into college to be honest.
Uh, kind of? The Rozen Maiden dolls can do pretty much anything. And they should say this next week at some point, but when Jun chose to not wind, the world made it so the Rozen Maiden dolls never existed in that world. I don’ know how or why, but that’s what happened.