Rozen Maiden – 12

Saying “farewell”…

…Or not, since this has another episode to it. This was a really good wrap up to this… section(?) of the plot here though. The supernatural part of the plot with the dolls has all been brought to a rather nice conclusion. Now we just need the conclusion to the part of the plot that was about unwound Jun’s life.

So to answer a question from the first episode that I didn’t really need an answer to: no, the first episode didn’t happen in the span of 48 hours or whatever. It was just an extremely abridged version of what happened in the wound Jun’s world before the plot moved on to the events happening now. Okay, Hina Ichigo might have annoyed me in the long run of when she was around in the first part of Rozen Maiden, but she was ridiculously cute here. As you can probably tell, she’s one of the dolls who was never really into the whole idea of the Alice Game. She was more concerned with being friends and playing since she was just so ronery. If I remember the manga correctly, it’s because her last medium (the one before Tomoe, aka the girl who appeared in the first episode) kind of just abandoned Hina Ichigo and that kind of traumatized her. I think even more so, since Hina Ichigo has the mentality of a child. So it makes sense that she would willingly give her Rosa Mystica to Shinku and help protect her body like that, since Shinku was her friend. Hina Ichigo truly cared (cares? I guess she’s technically still around…) about Shinku.

Of course, this whole thing is all new for Suigintou though. Like her little monologue said, she thought that the only way to win the Alice Game was to kill all of her sisters. Hina Ichigo provided an interesting alternative. Of course, her pride keeps her from saying that she might have been wrong, but this was eye-opening for Suigintou. Well, maybe she hasn’t entirely given up, since she basically tells Souseiseki that she’ll be back. At least this way, we get to see more of Souseiseki. She had a tragically small amount of time in the plot of the first season before she was taken out, so it’s nice seeing more of her here. …Or at least, we’d see more of her if the anime wasn’t ending in an episode.

I’m not sure if the part with Suigintou having more memories of her time with Megu was really necessary, since we got the gist of it with that other flashback they had near the beginning. However, I guess this ties in to the next part of the story. Hopefully this means that they plan on making more of the Rozen Maiden manga into an anime in the future. Obviously Suigintou’s part of the plot isn’t over, and the fact that the white vines were coming out of that doorway means that Kirakishou isn’t gone at all. …Though I guess I’ve been said that she’s not really gone since the last episode.

So maybe having wound Jun recover Shinku’s body and bringing it at that moment was very… convenient. However, the parts with Shinku saying goodbye to Jun were great. There was the mention of little girls eventually outgrowing their dolls, and really, that fits so well with the situation here. This Jun has grown up. He doesn’t need to rely on dolls anymore, he can get by in life without their company. Shinku knows this, and like a doll, she’ll just kindly watch his growth from afar. This is kind of what she was getting at too with that speech she had a couple episodes ago about how it’s not important to leave something behind, but the important thing is the moment itself. It was such a nice touch too in the story with him handing his wound self the key. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference as to who actually wound Shinku at the time, but it was the unwound Jun acknowledging that he made his choice a long time ago, and he wouldn’t go back and change it, since he likes his life now. Having each Jun walk up a different tree branch was great too in the same effect.

As far as goodbyes go , this hit all of the right notes with me. It was really touching, and was a good balance between “it’s sad to see Shinku saying goodbye to unwound Jun” and “d’awww, look how much he’s matured; he doesn’t need Shinku now and she totally understands that”. I might be spoiling things here, but unwound Jun does get to meet up with the dolls again farther down to plot (not that he knows it’s coming, but still). So it’s not like this is a permanent “goodbye”, but more of an acknowledgement that unwound Jun doesn’t need them to support him constantly in life. The ending with Shinku in front of the mirror would have been an excellent place to end the series at, since we already had some closure with Jun seeing the end of the play/ the effects of his wish. The play actually looked really interesting, I wish we could have seen the whole thing… However, we get even more of a conclusion with the wrap up of unwound Jun’s new perspective on life the next episode. Bonus!

It should be a good watch. I’m still curious about the book narrative thing they have going on, so maybe this will all tie together.  …Somehow.

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.