Remus… what a change of character. He went from a complete and incompetent imbecile to a smart and composed stoic. His change of character is indeed a bit sudden if you just attribute it to character-development, so I have some real suspicions that that skull-guy has something to do with it. He probably either zapped, possessed, took control, brainwashed or did something else with the guy that made him change so much, probably taking advantage of how useless the guy found himself. I mean, those fancy magic flashes had to be there for some reason, right?

This episode mostly deals with the ship that Guin and the others decided to board: it’s a pirate ship. In a way it makes sense, since any other ship would probably recognize Linda and Remus, or ask too many questions, but in return they did get attacked by the pirates in the middle of the night for bringing a woman on board. But then again, with Istvan’s and Guin’s strength they do have the advantage.

Something really weird happens in the middle of the episode, though. A ship of light appears right from out of bloody nowhere, takes Guin away without any hint of what happened to him (we really don’t see him for the entire rest of the episode). And when you thought that that wasn’t sudden enough: a minute later the ship gets hit by lightning…

So yeah, the pirates were a bunch of stereotypes and acted like a herd of potatoes, but it still was a very enjoyable episode. Istvan too is starting to notice that something really weird is going on with Remus, which could prove to be very interesting for the future of this series. Especially since Remus isn’t stupid anymore, so he might have some tricks up his sleeve to avoid suspicion.

Linda on the other hand is now starting to look like the useless one here, as she keeps getting captured and complaining, but you can still see the strong side of her personality throughout the episode. It’s just that she’s never really been in real danger before the attack of the Mongols, so she’s never learned to defend herself or pay attention to her surroundings. Also, is it me or is Istvan developing a crush on Linda? Perhaps not a romantic one, but she’s definitely on his mind: he wants to be the one to protect her and starts to dislike Guin because he’s the one on her mind right now.
Rating: * (Good)
There seems to be no end to the character-development. Yay!

Meh, this episode was a step down for this series. It had good intentions, definitely, but the CHEESE. This episode wasn’t WMT, it was just a random episode that the creators decided to stuff in. The summary of this episode is a bit shorter than usual because it turned me into a bad mood.

So this episode starts with Anne arriving late at school because Noah chose the wrong time to relief himself. In classes meanwhile, Randolf is screwing up again and the girls are laughing about him. Anne then arrives and demonstrates how well she’s been learning when she was taking care of Noah. Randolf then thinks it’s funny to throw a chalked blanket on her, and he then gets scolded by the teacher.

Bert meanwhile runs into a rich guy who is yelling at one of the poor people who owes money from him. He turns out to be Randolf’s father. After classes, Randolf thinks that Anne was laughing at him, and starts yelling at her. That evening, he’s trying to study even though he doesn’t understand the material, and instead starts playing with the cows on his farm. And turns into a completely different person while doing so, until he gets called (or screamed) back by his father who stubbornly orders him to continue studying.

The next day the teacher gives the assignment for the children to write down their ambitions for their future. Anne obviously wrote up an incredibly moralistic dream inspired by Robert Browning, while Randolf didn’t write down anything. When Anne reads her own piece, Randolf can’t take it anymore and starts making fun of her right in front of the class and the two starts fighting until the teacher takes them apart.

That afternoon when classes are over, Randolf’s father drops by the school and yells for his results. In the meantime, it turns out that Randolf and Anne live quite close to each other, and that’s where they run into a bunch of the cows on their farm that decided to wander off. At this point, Randolf changes character again and starts talking about how it’s his dream to be like his father: he started out incredibly poor and managed to build an entire farm and became one of the richest people in town from pure scratch.

So yeah, as it turns out Randolf wanted to be like his father, who worked hard as a farmer and achieved all of his success on his own. His father meanwhile wishes to forget those days and wants Randolf to grow up with a solid future, so that he doesn’t have to go through the same pain he did. So yeah, once they talk this out, they understand each other and everyone lived happily ever after: Randolf gets to chase his dream (although he does have to study for it), Randolf and Anne become friends and Randolf even develops a crush for Anne (yugh). And the episode ends.

I’m feeling really blegh about this episode. Not only was it a cheese-fest that SO doesn’t belong in the WMT, it also destroyed my suspense of disbelief and forced me to take critical look on the rest of the series, and I’m starting to understand what Windy meant with how this series isn’t as good as the previous WMTs.

The first arc is fine. While it had its rough edges, it was a roller-coaster of emotions, that definitely brought out the best in Anne’s character and shaped her to become like that great character we came to love. The Marysville arc however is different. I’m not bothered by the fact that it’s much lighter. It’s a nice change of pace for the darker parts of the story that are yet to come.

I’m only very much bothered by the fact that it’s a complete rip-off from Emily of the New Moon. Eggman and Henderson combined give Mr Carpenter. Mildred? Well, if it isn’t Lorna, the stuck up princess. Perry, Teddy and Ilse can be compared to Anne’s new posse of Randolf and Sadi (who by the way completely disappeared in this episode… wtf?). The thing is that Kaze no Shoujo Emily really was an amazing series, but when all of these things get taken out of context, they lose all of their meaning. Carpenter was an honest critic: he was there for the characters when they needed support, and he was the one who motivated everyone to keep chasing their dreams and aim high. Here, Eggman is a nice grandpa who lost his daughter (I just realized… we’re going to get an entire episode devoted to that one, aren’t we?), while Henderson is an idealistic feminist who does nothing but praise Anne over and over.

Mildred as well. Lorna and the girls were annoying, yet amusing, but the whole formula only worked because Emily too could be a bitch at times. Here, it’s simply the good Anne who gets bullied and teased by her evil and stuck-up classmates. Bitch-fights like these aren’t fun when one side is clearly in the right and the other clearly in the wrong. On top of that, the most memorable thing of Lorna was her grown up self: seeing how she grew out of that stuck-up character of her. Konnichiwa Anne however, is not going to travel that far into the characters’ lives. How are the characters going to develop her without making it look the same as Randolf’s?

The way this show stands out is in the research it did. According to Wikipedia, the creators went to actual Nova Scotia to study how kids live there, and it shows. Kids really behave like kids here, especially during the slice of life parts and that’s what makes this show so memorable but I’m starting to see that in terms of storytelling, the creators of this anime fall short, especially when compared to the other World Masterpiece Theatres.

There is one point about the realism in this series that bugs me a bit though, but I’m not sure whether or not the creators are accurate on that matter. Henderson has really set herself apart as a teacher who keeps praising the ones who do a good job, while ignoring the ones who are just average. On top of that, the top students are all looked up to in awe by their fellow classmates. This is really something typically Japanese, because it sure as heck doesn’t happen in the Netherlands at least. I’m just not sure what the standards for this are in Canada, and especially the Canada of 100 years ago. Any Canadians here to fill me in on that?
Rating: - (Disappointing)
A rather boring cheese-fest about Randolf

This review is going to be different from usual. Solaris has written up an in-depth essay about the themes and characters of the Rozen Maiden series. There are quite a few spoilers though, and near the end there are also some manga-spoilers, so be careful with that.

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Alice Game and Rozen

Rozen and Alice roots were cleverly untold by the authors. We got only suppositions and random clues about them. That helps the reader immagination to build his own explanation about that matters like it happens in Haibane Renmei anime. Rozen and Alice are meant to support the anime’s topic which is the relation net between the dolls plus Jun. Rozen and Alice are only plot devices and not the central topic of the anime. So, everything works well even by lightly developing them.

Given that the personal relation among the dolls are fairly more interesting. They are coupled and for every couple one doll is given a thesis and the antagonist doll has got the antithesis.
Themes developed are ideal and imperfection with Shinku and Suigin Tou, Conflicting identity of the gardener twins, personal growth and delaying into childhood for Hina and Kanaria.
There’s also the theme of the imitation that longs for self awareness in the story of Barasuishou. Those themes are the real focal point of the show. There’s yet another doll to be developed, but her story came abruptly to an end due to manga being quit. Lucky enough they started another serie of Rozen Maiden. I hope to read more about it.

Manga has much less fillers than the animated serie and it comes out really more dramatic. Events flow better and there are many less humor breaks, that were added in the anime to lighten the mood. Indeed Rozen Maiden is Noir.

If you read the manga you’d catch many hints about Alice Game. They tell us in vol 2 each Rozen Maiden has a fragment of a single Roza Mystica. The goal of the Alice Game is to rebuild that Roza Mystica. The winning doll may be then achieve perfection, that is to say become Alice. It could literally mean the winning doll would be changed into a human girl, but I’d rather think that outcome is more symbolic. Alice Game is a metaphor of the life and its goal is death of the other dolls, that is, Alice is a trascendental simulacrum of transformation, or trepassing life into the realm of pure ideal. In other words if you just win the Alice game you die and become a happy angel. That is. Beware my dear Shinku, beware! :)

Furtermore there’s this enigmatic Rozen fellow. We have many hints about him, but his identity is yet undercover. He’s hidden, but watches the Alice Game from afar, not yelding any interference with his own presence. People associated him to a kind of godly figure for the dolls, but think about it: Doesn’it just resemble the setup of a kind of mystical experiment where Rozen is the master and the dolls are the specimens? An Occult scientist, an Alchemist.

As a matter of fact, in the 5th volume of the manga, they suggested Rozen could be the Count of Saint Germain. He was an enigmatic man, supposedly alchemist, surely a fake, but is told he really discovered the long life elixir. It’s also told he’s still alive today. Of course he’s a legendary figure right now, but there are some philosophical theories are inspired by him. Theosophia, is the science of manipulating natural phenomena by the study of the divine. It’s aim is to enhance human towards perfection. Uhm, doesn’t this sound a bell? Does Alice game resemble a Theophysic ritual doesn’t it?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors really took inspiration by this Count of Saint Germain to build up the Alice Game. That’s a really interesting mix of religion, alchemy and mystichal scence.

But that is not all. There’s another enigmatic character with uncovered whereabouts: Laplace Demon. He’s the controller of Alice Game. He interacts with the dolls or Jun, in the place of Rozen. The Demon has full power over the world dream and can open dimensional doors at will. His names comes from the Math Scientist Pierre Simon Laplace, the one who made up the well known Laplace Transform. Laplace was a determinist*, that is to say he believed science to be exact, or that you can calculate everything by the means of mathematical analysis. Given an infinite accurate representation of reality and an infinite amount of compute power, it is possible to calculate future and past by the laws of classical machanics. Laplace Demon is such an automaton who posses such capacity of calculus. Therefore he knows the past and can predict future, has the knowlege and power of destiny. It’s uncasual he’s the perfect arbiter for the game of the doll’s destiny: Alice Game.

Laplace Demon is clearly alike to Lewis Caroll’s White Rabbit. Lewis Caroll was another Math Scientist, and novel writer, as we already know him. Rozen Maiden took a lot from Lewis Caroll’s Alice fantasy story. N-Field or Dream World is the modern version of the wonderland, a place where physcal laws are bended and leave infinite possibilities (aka infinite destinies). The fact Laplace Demon used to speak by quizzes and his words are to be interpreted leaves no question: The dream world is the place where one can defeat his own destiny and long for an higher ideal of self, but also on the exact contrary, it is possible to loose oneself and be doomed to insanity. The issue is to choose the right door, the right possibility. Thus the Laplace demon will always present you with two alternatives. To wind or not to wind, your is the choice, as the Laplace Demon already knows the infinite implications of both choices.

Thus said isn’t Alice game really a setup for a kind of mystical experiment where the stage is the Dreamworld, Rozen is the observer, Laplace is the controller and the dolls are the specimens?

Btw read the articles about St Germain Count (and Theosophya) and about Laplace on Wikipedia.

Dolls Stories

The dolls always repeat that it is possible to meet their father after the completion of the game. But what does it mean to end the game? In a Christian world that means to die and be granted to eternal life in the glory of God. So Alice game is the game where you long for death to transcend ones self towards an immaterial ideal of perfection. Brrr scary!
You really can’t ask a novel more than character development. It’s too easy to build up unchangeable and static chars. On the other hand it’s hard to make chars so dynamic they look alive. I said before the dolls come in pairs, so here’s how.

But let’s leave the game for now. How do the dolls face their deadly destiny? They spend most of their time in daily life, completely disregarding the game and its implications. Most of the dolls are just happy playing with each others and fear the game the most. The real meaning of the Game is uncovered only at the end of the second series, with the occasion of the fake final. Jun, that is the external spectator of the sad play suffers and is mad about all the death those pityful beings had to suffer. What was it for? What was the meaning of that? And Rozen’s answer was that was not the only way. The answer is not in death, but rather in life. At the end the real meaning of the alice game may be not to play, or play another life, but eventually play a life. Cause playing means to live to a doll, an artifact made for playing. That’s a positive meaning I suppose people didn’t think about. Everybody is mad cause the authors never said much about Alice Game and we fan are fantasizing over it, but that game is really an unimportant aspect of the show. What is really important are the personal stories of the dolls.

Shinku vs Suigin Tou

Rozen and his game are only a stage for the doll’s play. Some play to become a complete being, being pushed by a great sense of inferiority. On the other hand some other fights for making sure of her superiority, which is everything but a simulacrum of ones solitude. Shinku is doomed to be the best of the five dolls, thus not knowing what exactly means to be the best. So she continues to fight and look everybody with despise and superiority. Shinku and Suigin Tou are two opposite entities like images in the mirror that cannot understand each other and thus they hate.
But this is only the incipit. The development comes rather unexpected by pairing the two dolls with their nemesis: Jun is a rather unperfect human. By interacting with him she will find her place and her family. On the other hand Suigin Tou watches all the other dolls being completed and happy. She suffers from that and despises everybody. By being paired with a ill girl she will learn she’s not the only suffering soul in the world and will grow.
This will maybe lead to a reconciliation of the two archenemies.

The story of the mirror twins

With respect to Shinku and Suigin Tou, who are in open contrast being two complete opposite, the twins are built alike. But that’s the only surface. The twins girls resemble the faces of a coin, alike but different, sister yet deadly enemies. Every aspect of a doll is projected in the mirror on the other one. Yet they cannot be separated, they seem to share the same life, the same power. Their power is also complementary. The Gardener Scissors are useless without the Magic Watering Can and viceversa. They’re doomed to be together forever, but yet to fight cause of the Alice Game.

In Rozen Maiden the natural harmony between the two images at the mirror can’t be left unperturbed. The alice Game, which is the natural destructive aim to perfection, is also matter of the twins. How do an absolute command like fight is related to the complementary twins? How can one twin kill the other without self destructing herself? Action and reaction. The two faces of the mirror still reflect two opposite choices about that. One, taking over the couple’s armony above all, refused to fight, but the other, responding to the absolute command, longs for the fight. But that’s fake, cause the real desire moving Sousei Seki is to break from the chain of the twin life in search of self awareness.
Sousei seki and Suisei seki also appear different at the start of the story. Sousei Seki appears righteous and fair, the true strong one of the twins who protects her sister twin. Suisei seki appears wicked, spoiled and pretty evil. She’s mischievous and appears weaker than the sister. But that’s still a wrong image, like a fake mirage you see above cold lakes in north winter lakes. The image appears high in the sky and upside down (Morgan Fairy effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)). Twins image is really “puidedown”! Jun is a catalyst that let the dolls discover their true self and feelings.
And so, beyond the fake righteous and selfsacrifice tendencies of Souseiseki you find a soul that struggle to let her inner self prevail. She’s burning for love and hate toward her sister’s unconditioned and overwelming love. Suiseiseki, on the other hand is the true strong pair of the twins couple. She’s not evil, but sweet loyal and strong! And it’s all thank to Jun if she could awaken this side of her char. She loves her sister so much she sacrificed the ideal of Alice that is her (and any doll’s) imperative categorical.

Grow or not grow

Hina and Kanaria are the last couple of dolls having antagonist feeling about something. This something is life and growth in their situation. Look how the two dolls are introduced. Hina is a selfish doll eager to play to death. Her behaviour is that of a little girl who doesn’t know anybody else to play and when she found one she attached herself to him/her in an obsessive manner. Hina is completely closed into herself and fears the world outside her own box. She’s also doesn’t trust humans and fear abandon. She has a reason to fear it, as she was abandoned by her former handler, maybe cause of the WWII. We know that from the manga, where we also meet a descendant of Hina’s former handler who claims possession over her! After Shinku defeated Hina, she was forced to live with jun’s family. Hina never appreciated this life. She was a scared crybaby, but being forced out of her own shell let her grow up as an individual. Hina comes to like (or love) Jun as well and undestands she has to grow stronger for her and those who love’s sake. There’s a very nice filler episode that shows up this: In an episode Hina wants to send a love letter to jun. She has to move out of the house in the world that she doesn’t know and fears. She will gain strength and walk outside and deliver the letter. That was a touching episode, narrated from the point of view of the child Hina. So a normal walk outside becomes a real adventure for this childish doll. A first walk in life outside the boundaries of one’s know world.
On the other hand Kanaria is extremely scared of the Alice game. She knows she has to fight, but she’s so unwillingly doing it. All of her behaviour is a game that shows insecurity and fear. She’s so nice when she attemped to inflitrate Jun’s house without much convinction and always finds herself scared away :). Once again she’ll find security and stength in Jun’s group. So, the theme of these two dolls is clear: they represent the fear to grow and to relate oneself toward the others. Hina represents the positive path in life: fight and struggle to grow rather than Kanaria indulges herself into childness and play.
BEWARE HUGE MANGA SPOILER: She will be forced to grow when she will remain the last doll fighting on Juns side against the dreadful Kirakishou.

Barasuishou and Kirakishou. (MANY SPOILERS)

These two last dolls are the “last bosses” of the anime second serie and of the manga. Kirakishou is depicted as a white goddess of death. She has no body but an astral body. She lives in the NField and she’s very powerful. Barasuishou is the fake doll who fights to prove herself a doll better than the original Rozen Maidens. The theme is stil perfection here, but it’s seen in a different way than in the case of Shinku and suigin tou. Barasuishou longs to surpass the perfect bodies of the rozen maiden, while kirakishou is the perfect rozen maiden herself. Barasuishou would be the Kirakishou she could never be! Kirakishou is a perfect ideal of the Rozen Maiden, but she has got no soul nor body. If you put it with the alice game, Kirakishou has the power to wipe out all of the Rozen Maiden and become Alice, but somehow she winning the game doesn’t look right. Kirakishou is complete evilness and has no emotions. How can she be the perfect Alice being? She lacks something that all of the other dolls acquired by living: feelings. Kirakishou has never lived herself other than in the Dream Field. She hasn’t lived any experience. Even Suigin Tou has grown up with experiences, thus should be more suited as a potential Alice than Kirakishou. But this cold hearted doll is going to win it all at the end of the manga! What it will be of the alice game is yet to be told. Hope the sequel of the story by Peach Pit will be published some day.

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As for my own comments, I’d probably rate Traumend around 85/100. The depth of the cast of characters is really something that you don’t find in many series, but it does suffer from some pacing issues: the first season was perfectly paced and kept you on the edge of your seat. Traumend instead has one relative light part with lots of slice of life that takes up about eight episodes, which is then followed by a really dark part. It could have been mixed a bit more, although I also see that the fillers are also crucial to the dolls, showing them as they try to play and resist the Alice Games.

Princess Lover

Short Synopsis: Our lead character… wait, can’t you guess by the title?
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way in hell)
I mean, with a title as Princess Lover, is there anything else you can expect from this series? This premise is so blatantly obvious, it definitely has been the worst show of this new season for me. We have this guy whose father and busty mother get killed, he then manages to save a busty princess with the most pathetic security team ever, he also gets picked as the heir of a rich businessman with a busty maid and gets engaged to a busty noblewoman who is also a tsundere and excellent at sword-fighting. Granted, this series has a big budget, but aside from that it’s just another one of those harems with every cliché possible thrown into it, it’s full of jiggling breasts and the creators also couldn’t resist to throw in some of the most overused boob-jokes. There hardly is anything original or creative, and it just feels like just another Zero no Tsukaima. This is SO not my kind of series.

Kanamemo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character loses her grandmother and starts working at a newspaper store.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way in hell)
Ah, I guess that this is where the bad shows this season went to. At first sight it may seem like an interesting premise for a slice of life show: a bunch of girls working at a newspaper store, just living their lives and bringing around newspapers for their daily jobs. Unfortunately, the execution sucks; in the end it turned into just another generic and badly written series with too much moe. The big problem with this series is something that Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou managed to avoid so well: it’s too forced. The creators striked me as if they were really desperate to be funny, so they threw in just about every joke they could think of. This leads to a couple of amusing situations, but mostly just forced jokes that were taken from other series and just aren’t funny, like the drunk girl who keeps groping everyone, or the klutzy girl who keeps crashing into everyone, or the shoujo ai, and let’s not forget the six year old girl who somehow is more mature than all of the other characters combined. If you’re one of those people who hates moe with passion, then stay faaaaar away from this one. If you have no problems with moe… then there are still much better series this season.

GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class

Short Synopsis: Our lead character follows art design classes.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Not in this season)
There really is lots of moe this season; in fact, every series has had it so far. Still, in this case I don’t really mind: the previous seasons have already shown us a wide variety of mature series, and the series this season are a welcome change of pace, and surprisingly good at times as well. Just do expect me to start whining when this trend continues in the upcoming Fall season… In any case GA is another one of those moe slice of life shows, but thankfully unlike Kanamemo it’s really enjoyable. It’s actually a series that hits quite close to home for me, because this series discusses the power of signs, which happened to also be a subject that I followed in a Visual Design class that I followed about half a year ago. Aside from that though, this series stands out in its creativity: there’s always something going on that doesn’t feel copied from every other moe series (not even Hidamari Sketch, which also was about art students). Out of all the series that premiered during this season, this one made me laugh the most due to a few priceless scenes. My only problem with this series is that silent blue-haired girl: her voice-actress feels like a bit of a one-trick pony. I feel like I’ve heard the exact same voice in fifty other shows, with the EXACT SAME personality. That really gets boring after a while.
Edit: ah, the director of Les Miserables, Cromartie High School, Kodomo no Omocha and Digi Charat. This guy is a true eccentric that can really take the best out of this series