Rozen Maiden – 10

Now in Christmas Vision

…I sincerely hope that all of the dolls don’t see the world filtered through the colour of their eyes like that. That seems like it would be really distracting. …Not that they would know anything different if they were born that way. Anyways, important things happened this episode.

…Words cannot describe how sad I am about how they took all of the jokes about Jun’s sudden popularity out. They kept in Suigintou and Shinku’s stares about Jun er, handling Souseiseki, but there were way more in there in the manga before. I mean, Kirakishou being ready to kill or whatever at a moment’s notice aside, Jun had 4 girls vying for his attention. That’s almost galge territory there. I’m sure they took those out though to make things more serious and whatnot, but the stuff they took out was kind of funny. Or maybe they took it out for other reasons. The Rozen Maiden have always had this ambiguous position between being actual females or just ‘things’ that I’ve always found interesting. I mean, the OP gets away with showing Hina Ichigo completely naked at one point, but Shinku and the rest act really human, and it can be hard where to draw the line at. Maybe this is another reason why they made the dolls so small in this anime, since it takes away some of the sense that the Rozen Maiden are ‘real’, making the clothes-less dolls they’ve had in here slightly more acceptable. …They kept in all of Kirakishou’s more questionable parts this episode (though she IS the crazy one in the family), so who knows.

So, Suiseiseki had her reasons. Souseiseki is back, and she’s totally in one piece with no ill side effects from Kirakishou borrowing her body. I imagine that any Rozen Maiden can be revived this way, provided that they got their original Rosa Mystica back. Souseiseki and Suiseiseki are special due to being twins. How Suiseiseki knew that this could be done is beyond me, since I was under the impression that none of them have ever really taken a Rosa Mystica before Jun wound, but these are supernatural dolls with a seemingly infinite amount of things their powers can do. I’m not going to press the issue too hard. Plus in the manga, wound Jun encountered Souseiseki in his dreams a couple of times way before the events in the unwound Jun’s world, so that was more of a hint that Souseiseki could be revived. It kind of makes it difficult to foresee an actual winner to the Alice Game though. Not that a lot of dolls are really playing it at this point. Shinku at least seemed pretty content with living with her sisters with wound Jun.

Jun meeting Jun was rushed, but they kept in the part about Jun finally believing in himself (obviously). …This whole anime thus far would have felt fairly pointless if they didn’t have this in here. The dolls helped improve Jun’s life, but a lot of his situation before was due to him boxing himself in. He could have changed himself at any time, but his own negative views kept him from doing it. At least now, he realizes that he’s capable of a lot more than he thinks he is. This is what Shinku’s comment from the beginning of the play (of Jun’s hand being able to accomplish more than what he thinks) and Jun offering to make the contract was all building up to. Er, I guess the entire part up until now was building up to this (like that part with his manager saying that Jun was terrible for judging others, and saying that he was happy with his own life, despite Jun seeing him as pathetic). It was even better seeing all of the buildup once again in the anime after knowing that this was coming. There’s just something satisfying in seeing Jun grow from who he was at the beginning of this anime into the mindset he has now. I just love his whole revelation about how talking about how pathetic life is isn’t what he wants his middle school self to know about things in the future.

For a second time, I’m glad that they only skimmed over the events of the first manga. Kanaria is waay more tolerable in the events of this arc (and even afterwards; she has some sisterly bonding with Suigintou that’s absolutely adorable in the events after this). Probably because she’s actually doing things as opposed to trying (and failing) to infiltrate the Sakurada house what seems like 3 times a day. Her comedy skit with unwound Jun this episode was pretty funny too. If only Jun could have sarcastic remarks to go with Suiseiseki’s ‘desu’ as well.

The characters aren’t quite in the clear yet though. Unwound Jun’s pretty much been kicked out of his world since it finally decided to get rid of all the anomalies, and Shinku is almost destroyed. At least they finally managed to deal a rather big blow to Kirakishou. The fact that she’s hiding in illusions should say a lot (or I guess, the fact that she needs to hide). Now the main problem is finding their way back to their worlds and saving Shinku.

Things are wrapping up even faster than I expected. I guess it’s better than just leaving the wound Jun wandering around the N-Feild at the end of the season, but the last of unwound Jun’s story should be told way before the final episode. It should take maybe 2 if they make an entire episode about Jun’s daily life again. …Which they should do anyways, just to fully show how his perspective of the world has changed so much. The talk with himself wasn’t quite as touching as the manga, since they skipped a bit of the conversation of each Jun kind of noticing things about the other and some banter (they kept some of that in though, and really, it was only like, 3 or 4 lines that they took out of that), but they definitely did well with the main part of that conversation.

At least wound Jun is wandering through a fairly interesting-looking part of the N-Feild.

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.