(Belated) Christmas Anime Roundup: Rozen Maiden

[redwoodalchan]

My God, this is long overdue [Sigh].

 

So, “Rozen Maiden.” I first encountered “Rozen Maiden” when I was about sixteen or seventeen years old, and I actually started watching it in the spring of my senior year of high school. Then I dropped it for awhile and now it's made a comeback as a Christmas show.

 

The story of “Rozen Maiden” begins with a thirteen-year-old boy named Jun (voiced by Mona Marshall), who never leaves his home. He's scared to get out and go to school owing to a humiliation he suffered there, and so he spends his time ordering occult objects online and ignoring the worried pleas of his sister Nori (Minx Lee). One day, he receives a letter asking if he will “wind,” and when he answers yes, a chest containing a living doll in Victorian dress appears in his room!

 

This doll is named Shinku and is one of a set of Rozen Maiden dolls, created by a mysterious man named Rozen. There are seven Rozen Maiden dolls altogether, with five introduced in the first season and the remainder introduced in the second. These dolls can talk and use magical powers on account of something called a Rosa Mystica—if that's taken away, they become ordinary dolls with no voice or magical powers. These dolls, including Shinku, vie for each other's Rosae Mystica in a battle known as the Alice Game, with the last doll standing becoming a perfect girl known as Alice (an obligatory Alice in Wonderland allusion, and yes, there is a rabbit character in the second season), and being reunited with Rozen. At least in theory.

 

That's basically the plot. The show is technically divided into three seasons: the original “Rozen Maiden,” “Rozen Maiden Traumend,” and “Rozen Maiden Ouverture.” I just happen to own a nice convenient box set that contains every “Rozen Maiden” episode ever licensed in English, so I was able to watch the entire thing. The first two seasons follow chronologically from one another, with the first season introducing the characters, setting the scene, and explicating about the Alice Game; the second season being darker and more plot-heavy, where all seven dolls get together and the Alice Game begins in earnest; and the third season, which is much shorter than the other two, providing a bit more information about some of the dolls, including the backstory of Suigintou, the first Rozen Maiden doll.

 

One thing I noticed as I watched “Rozen Maiden” was that it contains certain similarities to “Madoka Magica.” Both shows are dark magical-girl shows which are aimed at masculine audiences for no readily-discernible reason, and both feature a team of magical action girls, each with her own weapon and color scheme. Also like “Madoka,” intelligence is not “Rozen Maiden's” strong suit. Interestingly enough, the same dubbing company as worked on “Madoka” also dubbed “Rozen Maiden,” and there's even a certain level of overlap: Cristina Vee, who was Homura in “Madoka” (as well as playing Nanoha) provides the voice of one of the Rozen Maiden dolls, and Christine Marie Cabanos, who was Madoka's voice actor, appears in the third season, where she plays Shinku's previous owner.

 

One other interesting bit of voice-actor trivia is that every single main character in this show is voiced by a woman. Jun is the only male character of much real importance until the second season, and he's voiced by a woman on account of being a little boy.

 

Of course, no discussion of “Rozen Maiden” would be complete without a discussion of its dolls.

 

The first Rozen Maiden doll is Suigintou (voiced by Karen Strassman), whose name is derived from the Japanese word for Mercury and commonly translated as Mercury Lamp. Suigintou seems to be designed to look albino, as she's got pure white hair and purplish eyes; and her outfit is a somewhat traditional-looking elegant gothic lolita dress in black, dark-blue, and white. She has black feathered wings, which she uses to attack her opponents, and she can also use a sword. Suigintou is something of a villain in the first season, as she keeps causing trouble for Jun and holding him hostage to pressure Shinku to fight her to the death in the Alice Game. In the third season we learn that while Suigintou was the first Rozen Maiden doll to be created, she was not fully assembled. Because of this, she lacks an abdomen until the second season and doesn't even have a Rosa Mystica when she first runs into Shinku (the sheer overwhelming force of her will to see Rozen enabled her to move without one), meaning that Shinku had to teach her everything about being a Rozen Maiden doll from scratch. She resents Shinku's attempt to help her because she thinks Shinku looks down on her, but Suigintou displays a softer side to a dying girl she later befriends.

 

The second Rozen Maiden doll is Kanaria (voiced by Cristina Vee). Kanaria is named for the canary bird, and she fights using the sound waves created by a violin. Her outfit is red and yellow, and she has green hair. She also seems to have a taste for omelets. Kanaria isn't introduced until the second season, where she spends most of her time trying to sneak up on the other dolls and steal their Rosae Mystica to no avail. The other dolls belittle her abilities, but she is shown to be capable of holding her own in a fight. She calls herself the brainiest of the Rozen Maiden dolls, but nobody really buys that and it likely isn't true—in fact, in many respects she doesn't always seem that confident, and she tends to stick an unsure-sounding “y'know?” on the end of her sentences.

 

Suiseiseki (voiced by Rebecca Forstadt) is the third Rozen Maiden doll. Her name seems derived from the Japanese word for “jade” and is commonly translated as “Jade Star.” She's a little valley girl who's got long auburn ringlets reaching to the floor, mismatched eyes, and (true to her name) wears a flowing green dress. It's possible she's meant to look like some sort of maid, since she's a gardener (her weapon is a watering can) who wears a maid's bonnet (there's even a scene in which she wears a frilly white apron to bake cookies). Suiseiseki might be the most famous of the Rozen Maiden dolls, since her Japanese verbal tic (“Desu”) has become a meme in its own right. That said, she was probably my least favorite doll until well into the second season, because more often than not she's just obnoxious. She picks fights with Jun and bullies the sixth doll, Hinaichigo, for no reason. But she stands out by also being completely unwilling to play the Alice Game and constantly trying to dissuade her sisters from fighting each other—particularly Souseiseki, the fourth doll, who's her more tomboyish counterpart. She also sometimes displays greater maturity in helping Jun and the other humans work out their issues. It's suggested that she is in love with Souseiseki, which I'm pretty sure is incest but there you go.

 

Souseiseki (voiced by Julie Ann Taylor) is the fourth Rozen Maiden doll and a counterpart to Suiseiseki. Her name is translated as “Lapis Lazuli Star.” She's the most tomboyish of the dolls, wearing a little boy's blue uniform and a top hat. Like Suiseiseki, she has red hair, but it's cut short to look more like a boy's. Her mismatched eyes are also opposite those of Suiseiseki. Souseiseki is calm and controlled, and takes fighting in the Alice Game, where she wields a pair of gardening shears, very seriously. It's revealed in the third season that she once didn't even consider the possibility that she could be friends with the other dolls, instead preferring to concentrate on fighting them. Throughout the series it's demonstrated that she considers her duty, both to Rozen and to the other humans in her lives, to be of paramount importance, which frequently causes conflict with Suiseiseki, who just wants the dolls to be friends. In the end, she's the first doll to lose her Rosa Mystica.

 

Shinku (voiced by Mela Lee) is the fifth Rozen Maiden doll and the closest to a central protagonist of all the dolls. Her name is translated as “Pure Ruby,” and she wears a dark-red dress and bonnet with rose trim. She has blonde hair. Shinku arrives at Jun's house in the first episode, and from there on out makes him her personal servant, asking him to bring her tea and generally bossing him around, much to his annoyance. However, it's clear that she cares about Jun, and as time goes on she grows closer together both to him and to Nori. Shinku is an avid fan of Detective Kun-Kun, a dog puppet who has a show on television, to the point that Jun can sometimes win arguments with her using Kun-Kun dolls. Although Shinku seems to believe that she's the most worthy of becoming Alice (a sentiment that seems to be shared by at least one or two other characters), she doesn't want to have to take her sisters' Rosae Mystica to do it. Suigintou considers her a personal enemy.

 

The sixth Rozen Maiden is Hinaichigo (voiced by Sherry Lynn). Her name means “Little Strawberry,” and true to her name she wears a light-pink dress and a pink bow. She's the smallest and youngest-looking of the dolls, and consistently acts like she's about four years old. But what's interesting about her is that occasionally she'll show herself capable of using more mature diction than you would expect. Hinaichigo's power involves using strawberry vines to bind opponents. Her favorite food is strawberry rice cakes, which she refers to as “unyuu.” She doesn't get along with Suiseiseki, who refers to her as “Puny Ichigo” and steals her food for no reason; and Shinku tends to boss her around; but she's pretty good friends with Kanaria. In the beginning of the series Hinaichigo belonged to a girl named Tomoe (Dorothy Elias-Fahn); however, she was forced to leave her behind after she used up too much of Tomoe's energy in a fight with Shinku.

 

The seventh Rozen Maiden doll actually differs a bit depending on whether you're following the anime or the manga (I've never actually read the manga, but I've read up on it a little). In the anime, the seventh doll is named Barasuishou (voiced by Tara Platt), whose name combines the Japanese words for “rose” and “crystal.” Barasuishou has white hair, and she wears a light-purple dress and a matching eyepatch with a rose on it—though actually she has both eyes, and the patch is purely decorative. To attack, Barasuishou conjures sharp crystals, and she can trap her opponents inside of crystals. We later learn that Barasuishou is not actually a Rozen Maiden doll, but was created by Rozen's apprentice, Enju (Jason C Miller), to see if she could defeat the other dolls and steal their Rosae Mystica, thus proving Enju to be the better dollmaker. Kirakishou, who looks a lot like Barasuishou but is actually missing an eye, is the true seventh Rozen Maiden doll, who actually does appear in the anime but doesn't say or do anything. In the manga, though, she, and not Barasuishou, is the villain for that particular arc.

 

So, as you can see, the Rozen Maiden dolls are quite diverse. However, one truly interesting thing that they all have in common is that every one of them acts childishly, in at least some respects. Kanaria and Hinaichigo obviously have childish and naïve worldviews, Suiseiseki acts like a pushy and fearful child more often than not, and even the dolls that appear to be more “mature” have their moments. For example, Suigintou consistently refers to Shinku as a “dummy.” Shinku herself comes across as a child who is desperate to act like a proper lady and get her way, because she thinks it makes her look mature. However, it doesn't stop her from consuming tremendous amounts of sweets or watching cheesy shows about puppet dogs voiced by Keith Silverstein (who, interestingly enough, stars alongside Mela Lee in “Blade of the Immortal”). Barasuishou, being a mysterious villain, has the fewest chances to be childish, but even she comes across as a “daddy's girl” when she seeks approval from her creator. On the flip side, there are moments when even the more childish dolls display more maturity than you would expect they would—such as in Suiseiseki's more sympathetic moments and, most shockingly of all, Hinaichigo's death scene, where she even gets to give a tearful farewell speech to her old owner Tomoe (something I was not expecting to happen)!

 

One final character that I should spend some time talking about is Jun's sister Nori. Since the kids' parents are overseas for work (which basically functions as an excuse for how Jun and Nori can get away with whatever they want without interference) she's the one who's in charge of taking care of the house and trying to help Jun stay out of trouble. She's super mature and good at all manner of housework and cooking—but there are moments where she doesn't appear to be quite sane. She talks to the vegetables at the grocery store, mistakes a guy getting her a gift for a door-to-door salesman, and never once seems to realize how weird it is that the house is getting overrun by talking dolls (only Jun seems to find it the least bit strange).

 

In terms of both plot and characterization, “Rozen Maiden” leaves something to be desired. The first season is mostly a bunch of funny episodes with some drama involving Suigintou added in, but the humorous slice-of-life scenes that make up most of the first season and a good portion of the second get boring fast. The more linear plotline involving the Alice Game, which comes to a head in the second season, is more engaging, but it was broken up quite a bit until the very end of things. The characters were mostly fairly simplistic, though Suigintou was probably the best; apart from her, only Jun and Shinku and maybe Nori seemed to experience any real development over the series' run. Basically, the characters in this show have about the same level of depth and complexity as those in “Madoka Magica”--adequate, but nothing special or noteworthy. That said, I did enjoy seeing a story about talking dolls that weren't, for the most part, evil—it made it much easier to appreciate how cute they were. Furthermore, I consider it an accomplishment on the part of the story that it made you care about the fate of dolls whose behavior did not aversely affect humans in general in any major way (all their fighting takes place in the N-Field, a dimension vaguely reminiscent of the witches' labyrinths in “Madoka Magica” and which changes depending on the psyche of the dolls hiding there).

 

And there you have “Rozen Maiden,” a story of a boy and his dolls. If you like dark magical-girl stories involving cute characters you might consider giving it a watch, but it's probably no great loss if you don't. When all's said and done, I did enjoy it as a piece of Christmas fluff. If nothing else, the Rozen Maiden dolls have got to be some of the best-looking anime characters I've seen in a long time.

 

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