Rozen Maiden

Traumatized by school, Jun Sakurada spends his days at home as a shut-in, purchasing things online, only to send them back before the free trial period ends. So when a note appears on his desk, asking whether or not he would wind something, he assumes it was something he ordered and carelessly circles "yes," changing his life forever.

A box arrives with a wind up doll inside, but this is no ordinary toy: after Jun winds her up, she begins walking and talking as if a normal person. With a haughty attitude, she introduces herself as Shinku, the fifth doll in the Rozen Maiden collection, a group of special dolls made by the legendary dollmaker Rozen. These sisters must battle each other in a competition called the Alice Game with the help of a human to ensure victory. The winner becomes Alice, a real girl who is worthy of meeting their creator.

As more sentient dolls end up taking residence in Jun's house, and a foe from Shinku's past makes her appearance, Jun's life becomes far more complicated than he ever thought possible.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Rozen Maiden
Sequel:	Rozen Maiden: Träumend
Other:	Rozen Maiden: Meitantei Kunkun - Duell Walzer
Alternative version:	Rozen Maiden (2013)

Ootori, Yoshino
Japanese

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Staff

Nakamura, Shinichi

Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue

Producer

Takahashi, Takeo

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Matsuo, Kou

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Kinjirareta Asobi" by ALI PROJECT

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Ending Theme

"Tomei Shelter" by refio + Haruka Shimotsuki

Reviews

Jan 19, 2024

ZNoteTaku

Recommended

*Rozen Maiden* is a series filled with toys, whether those toys be the Rozen Maidens themselves as the little bisque dolls—no, Kitagawa Marin is not in this series—that are involved in the Alice Game, or the toys that litter Sakurada Jun’s bedroom. Jun’s perspective on life effectively mirrors how he treats the various boxes, toys, or “goods” strewn about – something that is not worthy of holding onto, and casting away anything that could tie him to those things. His bedroom is thus a place of hikkikomori withdrawal from the world. He is, in essence, toying with the rules of the cozy little reality he ... has crafted for himself, where he is master of all, especially in regards to his mastery of returning things by the cutoff date for the money back guarantee. His behavior is just as thrifty as it is infuriating, in no small part thanks to the rather thankless way he treats his caring sister Nori.

Jun’s closed-off heart gets violently shaken from its safe bounds by the arrival of Shinku, a doll imbued with life and magic. A most-unwelcome addition to Jun’s household, she is not merely the harbinger of the Alice Game and its deadlier consequences; she is the bringer of a kind of counter-brusqueness to Jun’s own brusqueness. Impatient and commanding, she has her own fair share of worries, for which she must be mindful. Especially considering that the players in the Alice Game are already trying to hunt her down, she must make a pact with Jun to become his master, and he her servant so that she can make the most of her powers.

Shinku’s presence, as well as the other caravan of dolls that enter the fray (if not through Jun’s window by crashing into it violently), both bring the action to the story and provide enough digression to allow things to settle down for a brief moment and breathe. The Rozen Maidens are a blend of aristocratic panache and childlike—if not outright childish—intrigue and enthusiasm. While they may be there primarily to fight, not every moment in the series can be chock full of action, and the action moments that do exist within it are working with some animation limitations. Therefore, *Rozen Maiden* allows more slice-of-life mini-plots and the occasional running gag to dial things back. As the cast expands ever larger and all occupy Jun’s room for themselves, it’s inevitable that such personalities would butt heads over things.

But it’s only a matter of time before the battles reassert themselves as the intrusive element. Though rare skirmishes take place in the Sakurada house itself, most take place beyond the natural world and into the more supernatural settings. The so-called N-Field, where most of the battles for the Alice Game take place, manifests as a warped and rather delightfully perverse dreamscape of the characters. Reflecting either the contents of their hearts, or realms where dreams and hearts intertwine, each Rozen Maiden essentially risks their entire sentience and powers on whether they win or not. These areas convey the tone of putting everything on the line, baring souls before one another and seeing whose resolve is stronger both in magic and mind.

But whether it be through the series’s brand of slice-of-life or the action-based Alice Game, interwoven through it all is Jun’s own apprehensions, or more specifically, the apprehensions of the cast as a whole. Underlying many of the motivations is that of abandonment. As a concept, abandonment comes in many forms – it is not restricted merely to people outright leaving you of their own volition, but just as much the people or things that you yourself cast aside. The feeling that it can leave behind is, depending on the circumstance, anything but pleasant. It can perhaps be such to the point where you would rather look away from the feeling altogether, if not outright insist to the contrary that everything is fine. The dolls, who themselves are the main vehicle to help teach this lesson, are themselves not immune to the folly, either. It levels the playing field for *Rozen Maidens’s* thematic throughline, allowing both human and doll, action and non-action, to push it along.

As the material makes clear however, nearly everyone houses something within their hearts that they would rather look away from or not confront. With each new battle in the Alice Game, a little more perspective on all these matters unveils itself. One cannot run from their problems forever, otherwise they themselves could find their entire happiness or outlook akin to an abandoned or broken doll; any beauty that there might have been within is faded and unrecognizable. Hence why Nori so laments what Jun has become, and despite her mindfulness of needing to give him space, she acquiesces with an enabling hospitality that Jun frankly doesn’t deserve in the hope that he may, finally, return to the happier self he once was. It might be tempting to blame Nori for making things worse, but she never could have expected to effectively function as a surrogate mother.

The key though (not the kind that you plug into the Rozen Maidens’ backs) is that all the building blocks for that shift back to the happier Jun are placed early. As withdrawn as Jun was from the world around him, his purchasing of “goods” and getting as much value out of them as possible before returning them does demonstrate an innately curious outlook for the strange and the bizarre. Granted, it’s for a vice that’s feeding an unhealthy habit, but the primordial sensibility still exists. Between that and swinging an old lacrosse stick Nori brings him to try and coax him out of the room, his arc reaches its catalyst in a note that offers a simple choice, posed by the question: “Wind up? Don’t wind up?” Though he may have done so with his eyes metaphorically rolled in the back of his head and disbelief that anything like what was promised could happen, his barren heart begins to turn. And all the while, the dolls themselves undergo their own changes, even if in herky-jerky motions that are not as ball-and-joint smooth as they could be.

Underneath that not-as-clean exterior does lie a series that has its heart in the right place, and despite the occasional shortcomings of both the narrative and the presentation, *Rozen Maiden* still manages to produce fun senses of both comedy and drama. A colorful little toybox of a series, it plays with its cast in amusing ways by cobbling together some disparate or disproportionate parts into a new whole by having fun with its own brand of plastic. Not every series has the longest shelf life, but I was happy that I saw it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Detective Kun-kun is on!

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Dec 28, 2023

sure-why-not

Recommended

This is my very first MAL review. I've had this account for years, but this anime left SUCH an impact on me that it made me break my silence. I hope that impresses upon you, dear reader, how much I adore Rozen Maiden. I apologize if this is too personal, but this anime just hit so close to home, I had no choice but to make it personal. If you want to skip what basically turned into my life story (again, Rozen Maiden is VERY personal to me...), skip to the tl;dr at the end.

*sigh* Okay. Here goes!

I've wanted to watch Rozen Maiden ever since ... I was a little girl and I saw clips of it on Youtube. Back then, the idea of it appealed to me because I had a collection of ball-jointed dolls, which I have since given to my niece. I adored those dolls (more about that in a second), but I never knew much about them. My aunt gave them to me (seems to be tradition to pass this on from aunt to niece!) and, well, she passed on shortly after that. She was not herself towards the end of her life, so she did not do a good job of explaining how these dolls... uh.... worked? I guess you could say? That might not make any sense, but from my tiny eight-year-old perspective, these antique dolls (coincidentally, I had seven of them) were a mystery. I almost never "played" with them in the way I played with my other toys. Part of that is because I was never very much of a doll girl, but what dolls I had, I RUINED with my hyperactivity and carelessness (think "Weird Barbie" from the Barbie movie). The other reason was that they seemed almost too PURE to be touched. As a result of the enigma they seemed to carry, I sort of subconsciously imbued them with a life of their own in my mind. Playing with them almost seemed like I was subverting their (imaginary) agency. Instead, I started making up stories with them in my head while I laid on my bed and stared at them, sometimes for literal hours on end. Later on, I would even write these stories down in a journal (which later got found by my bullies, but fortunately, none of them could read English as I was living in a foreign country at the time. but they destroyed it nevertheless...). The little Native American one and the Victorian lady in a pink dress were friends. The one in the yellow dress was a bit of a tomboy and she was in love with the one with the lovely red velveteen gown who did not reciprocate her affection (a foreshadowing of my own story as a shy and timid little lesbian girl growing up up with unrequieted affections for all the pretty girls in my class who only had eyes for the boys...)

Okay, I got off topic. My point is, this anime is VERY personal to me. And I'm glad I finally watched it, despite the fact that part of me feels I would have enjoyed it even more had I watched it as a little girl. On the other hand, I am glad I waited this long because at the time, I wouldn't have been able to look back on my own story and how it paralleled Jun's in many ways. As odd as that sounds!

Oh, let's talk about Jun.

Jun's character arc (and it's a REAL character arc! I love seeing that in anime!) is the other reason this anime hit SO HARD for me. When I was Jun's age, I was living in a foreign country whose language I was not confident enough in to actually speak. I was effectively mute even though I could, myself, understand the vernacular (French) pretty well. The kids in my class just saw me as the weird, too-small-for-her-age American girl who couldn't speak French but had a notebook full of anime-style sketches. As a result, from the ages 9 until 14, I was basically a complete loner. My bedroom and the lovely countryside my dad would take me on adventures and fishing trips in were my only friends. My terrible rural Canadian internet connection was enough to get my fix of AMVs and godawful fanfic, but I never really made friends online during that era. Jun's arc sees him progress from a shut-in who had been bullied to a motivated individual who seeks to rehabilitate his social skills (the same way I had to after moving back to America with my mom). This resonated with me a lot, but what also hit hard was his relationship with Shinku.

Jun and Shinku I think has to be the most underrated part of this show. It is so STINKING sweet that it hurts. The fact that this bitter and kind of bratty preteen boy could develop such a bond with this pretty little Victorian doll with a haughty attitude is very sweet to me. Shinku's façade of arrogance breaks down in the moments she shows Jun an ounce of vulnerability and we see that she is just as vulnerable as he is. See, they're so much more than an odd couple - we soon find out that these two characters have more in common than we might think! They're both hiding from their past and their future. In the final episode (I won't say what happens because this is spoiler free), I was so touched by the love he showed and by her vulnerability that I was actually SOBBING. And let me tell you, I am NOT a person who is very prone to tears from a piece of media like this. I didn't even cry during the end of Titanic. My eyes watered a bit when I watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica. But that last episode of Rozen Maiden had me ugly crying. That's a BIG deal for me.

Conclusion (AKA, the important, non-rambly part. The tl;dr.):

Overall, Rozen Maiden is just perfect in almost every way, especially the first season. That rating might be a little too personal, so you'll have to judge it for yourself, but I really do think it has something for everyone. I know that most people who watch this show do not watch it for the reasons I did (for instance, I have noticed that the male side of the fanbase seems to not love Shinku as much as I do, which is fair I guess), which doubtless contributes to why I regard Rozen Maiden as an actual masterpiece. Nevertheless, I do think it has something for everyone. There's humor, there's romantic tension, there's drama, there's fighting, there's actual STAKES (which many anime lack) and there's cute dolls acting on their own agency. Lord knows, I am a sucker for cute things with agency (see also: my fascination for PMMM and Made in Abyss...). If any of these things appeal to you (or if you grew up with a certain kind of antique doll!), do yourself a favor and give Rozen Maiden a shot! I think it's criminally underrated and even if you don't end up with the same kind of love I have for it, there will at least be more Rozen Maiden fans for me to share my fangirlishness with.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to procrastinate on writing my thesis for a bit longer by shopping online for fabric I intend to make a Shinku cosplay with. I'm actually in the lab RIGHT NOW, ostensibly cataloging samples. Do not tell my professor I'm writing a MAL review about a stupid anime about dolls!

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Jan 15, 2022

HelixHeart

Mixed Feelings

I will say I am bias to the art style, so it gets a +1 from me.

Overall it is an average anime nothing super interesting and that's fine. I found it to be a nice middle ground of not a very super happy anime but not something too dark like made in Abyss, it is just neutral.

Since the story doesn't really require you to put on am extra large thinking cap to analyze every scene it is perfect watch over the weekend. if nothing else I do recommend listening to the opening theme song.

Things I didn't like about this anime. It doesn't really help us ...

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Poll: Rozen Maiden Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 ) aero - Jun 7, 2008	60 replies	by Archean-Return »» Feb 21, 6:53 PM
Poll: Rozen Maiden Episode 11 Discussion aero - Jun 7, 2008	28 replies	by Archean-Return »» Feb 21, 5:43 PM
Poll: Rozen Maiden Episode 10 Discussion aero - Jun 7, 2008	31 replies	by Archean-Return »» Feb 21, 4:48 PM
Poll: Rozen Maiden Episode 8 Discussion aero - Jun 6, 2008	25 replies	by Archean-Return »» Feb 21, 2:31 PM
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