Anime: Rozen Maiden (2013)

I always had a weak spot for the doll simulacrum, the symbolism behind it, that almost human figure. It's a strong one, recurring in several mediums, especially visual arts: the doll is half kids toy, thus it has an aura of innocence, half divine idol, thus there's something mystic about it, and its anthropomorphic nature lends itself well to being used for suggestive, even unsettling imagery. Remember the mannequins from that scene in Blade Runner? Or all those dolls in horror flicks? Mark Ryden's pop, surrealist paintings?

Being also kind of a sucker for Neogothic art movements, their style and themes, Victorian dolls is where my "spot" is at its weakest. No wonder then that when Rozen Maiden first came out almost 10 years ago (God, time flies) I ended up falling in love with it. The anime wasn't admittedly that ambitious nor it strove to be really artistic, it was very mediocre and childish at times, but with that imagery as its nucleus plus a fairly strong, charismatic and characterized cast, it definitely managed to pull out a certain charm, and back then it was quite the hit with the general public too, as those characters became for a while extremely popular.
The manga it was based upon (I have some fond memories of it, heh: a raggedly looking metalhead dude like me in the comic store buying these uber cute books about dolls... oh, the priceless, puzzled looks I did get from the clerks!) was definitely more ambitious, Peach Pit's best try at finding a dimension of their own instead of just being, as they had been 'till then, little more than a Clamp clone. Yet it too ended in a much unsatisfying way just like the anime, apparently losing its direction mid way never knowing where it really wanted to go and what it wanted to achieve.

The whole franchise eventually faded out into memory, and even when much later Peach Pit announced the upcoming sequel it hardly managed to stir up new hype, the whole thing now feeling old, out of date, and I myself didn't bother to keep too much of an eye out for it. Now that we finally got a new anime adaptation, though, I couldn't help but grab it as soon as it finished airing, breaking that little whimsical habit of mine of only watching dvd/blu ray releases as I'm usually tired of having to put up with hastily put together episodes to follow often too demanding airing schedules, or with random tv censorship.
I wasn't very optimistic, to be honest, as I didn't expect much more than heated up soup for old fans. And while I've got to admit it literally isn't much more than heated up soup, it sure turned out to be different enough from the old production to be fairly enjoyable, and at times solid and fresh enough to stand on its own feet, despite some very questionable direction decisions, and the persisting feeling the authors are still just beating around the bush even after all this time. A new, definitely more mature approach to the same old themes probably is its strongest point, an approach that encompasses most of the production elements, from visuals to storytelling.

Speaking of which... let's get down to the dissection.

Art & Animation

The old series was sorely lacking in this department. Not that it looked bad for the time, but it was very generic and bland when compared with the strong, stylish visual personality of the original source. This time the design is closer to the manga (with a couple of straight paper to video transfers), though still not as... featherly; character designs look much more like their manga counterparts than generic anime females like they did in the previous series, and while it's no Shaft work they do try at times to be quite artsy here and there. While these attempts never really reach great artistic values, they neither are failures, and some little touches here and there (like the picture book intermissions, or some nice pastel backgrounds) do sport some personality of their own.
Following the new storytelling direction, visuals too try to convey a bit more maturity, being overall quite bleaker than what we were used to, and we find some nicely crafted combinations of the strongly color coded characters with more desaturated, fleeting backgrounds and props.

Production values aren't that high across the board, and there's no Shinbou at the helm, thus you don't exactly ever stumble upon anything jaw dropping or extremely distinctive, but the whole experience is quite solid and satisfying. It will never be called a memorable piece of art in the industry whatsoever, but it has some backbone, and it isn't too derivative. Plus, and it's a very important detail, it has enough taste to play on the adorableness of its characters looks without ever really falling into cheap moe appeal.
Overall a nice surprise, for a product that didn't really seem to have a much encouraging premise.

Sound

Ali Project are back for the opening, and while I'm personally not too much of a fan of their oddly dissonant, kinda quirky but nevertheless suggestive tunes per se, their unique style lends itself very well for shows such as this. The ending is a bit more anonymous, but still in line with the tone, keeping the right atmosphere.

BGMs are quite modest and often go fairly unnoticed, though when they do come in the foreground more they aren't bad at all, verging on being genuinely interesting once in a while, though they fade back into nothingness too quickly to ever take the reins of the narration. They do their job decently enough, but they indeed could have been much more in a show that would (and should) lend itself to a strong artsy identity. Yeah, well, long story short my wet dream has always been Yuki Kajura setting Rozen Maiden into music, and this is leagues behind that kind of dream, but it comes off as an honest enough effort.

As for the voice acting, most, if not all seiyuus are the old ones (did Suiseiseki have that same voice back then? It seems so, but... how come I loved her desu-s back then while they feel so obnoxious now? Too much time and too many desu ridden anime characters have passed since then, maybe?), so character continuity is preserved. I honestly don't remember the old series well enough to do a comparison about how they sound now, but overall there doesn't seem to be much to complain for nor to praise in particular. For a good two thirds of the season only Shinku and Suigintou keep us company, anyway, thus several of the other dolls don't really end up being in the spotlight long enough to leave a lasting impression of their respective voice acting. The "adult" Jun is well handled though (for being the kind of gloomy character he is), and in a couple of instances when he is meant to show more emotion he had me nodding in approval of his performance.

All in all, the sound department has very little that sets this show apart from and over the competition, but neither there is too much to complain. There is some feeling of missed potential, but as long as you don't set you expectations too high you shouldn't be disappointed.

Story and character

The plot is a direct continuation of the old one, though it is tackled from the perspective of a what if scenario, in the parallel world where Jun hadn't "wound it" (AKA he never got the dolls when he was a recluse in middle school) and where he now is an university student still at odds with the world, his own role in it, his complexes and sociopathy, as he never benefited from the healing relationship with Shinku and her sisters.
The first episode is actually a complete mess, an awfully and bluntly assembled recap episode that machineguns together several cuts without any sensible rhythm; it is meant to recap the events of the previous series (with a few important differences, as it is based on the old manga rather than the old tv show), but it only manages to be confusing and pointless, to the point a couple text messages by phone in the next episode do in 10 seconds a much better explanation than those 20 minutes of pure randomness. Basically, anyway, the original Jun is trapped alone in the interdimensional space between worlds, and has his alternate self build a temporary body for Shinku (trapped herself somewhere in the N-Field) where she will migrate her conscience in hope of finding a way to thwart Kirakishou's evil schemes. Suigintou will soon join the team, and the plot goes (slowly) on from there towards a predictable development, but this time we are at least spared what basically was the harem build up we had in the past.

As stated, this time the storytelling goes for a much more atmospheric, somber tone: the old Jun is quite the broken individual, but not in the extremely cliched way his young self was. He isn't your stereotyped anime shut in kid, and his troubles with fitting in and interacting with society are tackled from the point of view of a more believable person that does indeed live in the real world: he has to go to work and face his good for nothing but arrogant boss, he does go to school even though he keeps to himself, and he feels unmotivated and always disheartened, struggling with a quite decently depicted inferiority complex that camouflages itself as a superiority one, as it often happens in real life. There's a particularly poignant dialogue where Jun's boss comes off as surprisingly insightful and biting when he ruthlessly guesses right how those unexpressed (and paradoxically repressed) judgmental and hateful thoughts he has are nothing more than yet another mask for his inferiority complex.
This older Jun manages to really be a quite interesting character, and while he indeed is all things considered pretty much the usual shut in stereotype that will be redeemed into a useful member of society through the old motivational, patronizing catharsis, the whole thing is managed with enough taste to never have us grow bored to death and nauseated by him as it too often happens with this kind of characters.

The plot proceeds very slowly in the first 7-8 episodes (not that it does by any means become fast paced later on), focusing relatively little on the dolls themselves, while keeping this bleak tone that ends up enhancing a lot those - this time quite far and inbetween - brief comic relief moments between the charas. This is a very welcomed change from the old series that relied way too much on the overused and stale slice-of-life comedy filler episodes: now, when suddenly a little sketch between Shinku and Suigintou or between them and Jun comes up, it comes off as genuinely entertaining, and it never overstays its welcome. These cute intermissions don't feel intrusive, and thus the adorableness of the dolls isn't something that's forced unto you as it was before; they are fleeting insights on the characters' little and funny quirks, shortcomings and eccentricities, which help fleshing them out and making them feel more alive, as opposed to the old model that only managed to further stereotype them.

This being said, while the atmosphere and general direction feels more solid and mature than the old series, the whole scope of the plot is much more contained, and even when things are done and done you don't feel like you've sit through a long, epic or extremely fulfilling journey. Doesn't help that after what more or less really is the "ending" in ep. 12 we are given a 13th epilogue episode which is pretty much there just to be a cliffhanger introduction to what will come in the future (if an anime sequel following the rest of the manga will ever come, of course, which is open to speculation). A very anticlimactic choice, really: even if a second season was already meant to happen in the upcoming future, they could very well have ended this in a less shameless and more fulfilling way, instead of this Adam West's Batman cheap trick. As odd as it sounds, the show works kinda better if you watch it from ep. 2 to ep. 12.

Anyway, all told the story works well enough with a good, personal atmosphere and fairly solid, entertaining characters that don't rely too much on rehashes of stale, old interactions. Which honestly is more than what we probably were inclined to expect, and the aftertaste we are left with is all things considered fairly good.

Value & Enjoyment

I admit I've enjoyed it quite a bit, and with my fair share of HNNGG moments, though part of this comes from the fact my expectations really were quite low. Aside from the inevitable throwing of tantrums at the embarrassingly bad first episode and cheap last one, it was a pleasant watch and a nice dive back into a setting I had - and still have - a lot of fondness for.
It's a creature of his own and different enough to arouse some newly born fondness, and as such I believe it should have a fairly good value for any old fan. Unfortunately, I fear the messy and confusing introduction can be a serious obstacle for a new potential fan, who isn't offered any decent way to acclimatize himself with the setting: he could go and watch the old series, but they are a bit too different in tone (and in actual plot inconsistencies) to be the good starting point; or he could go and read the manga, of course, but it's not a merit when you need to read the book to understand the movie. An adaptation should be able to stand on its own feet, and this one stumbles quite a bit when it comes to accessibility.

As enjoyable as it was for me, though, I'll keep going with my wet dream of a Rozen Maiden anime made by Shaft, directed by Shinbou and orchestrated by Yuki Kajura. What can I say: we all want the best for the toys and dolls we love.