Dec 28, 2023
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!
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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