My, the things you can mail order, you’d never believe it.
Rozen Maiden (2013 edition) is the third installment of the series (fourth if you count the OVA). I don’t know if you are familiar with it (you should, I reviewed it) so have a summary. Jun Sakurada somehow manages to order a living doll named Shinku. Shinku comes with many things, and unfortunately, one of those is troubles.
Let’s be honest, the first thing you notice is that goddamnit this is prettier than the first season. I really, really like the improvement in terms of art. (On the other hand, Ali Project still sounds the same, that is, terrible.) The seiyuu too are still the same, you cannot not love Miyuki Sawashiro as Shinku. (I’d go as far as to say that you cannot not love Miyuki Sawashiro in all her roles.)
Unfortunately, well, the plot too is still the same. The first two seasons were about the Alice Games, in which all the dolls made by Rozen had to fight against each other for the privilege of becoming the one ultimate doll and go back to their creators. And this is exactly what this third season seems to be about. Which is something I expected but I still wanted to be surprised.
But honestly I wasn’t, the first few minutes seems like just a remake of what was already done (except prettier) and this bores me to death. Get me interested goddamnit! I already had a hard time finishing the first few seasons, do not give me an excuse to drop the new one. From there on I fast forwarded.
Even fast forwarding I noticed a big problem: explanations, where are my explanations? I already had a hard time understanding everything in the first season and even having watched those (not too intently and a bit long ago but still), I do think they jumped into actual business a bit too fast.
As an obvious collateral of the previous statement, do I need to explain how character development is something that barely exists? At the very least in the first season I have somehow gotten interested in Shinku and her interaction with the outside world and with in particular but nope, not really, so many things happen, how would you like them to devote proper screen time for character development. Seems to me like they want to keep viewer watching by not boring them out of their mind in the first episode, but to me it did the anime a disservice.
In short, it’s too much too soon and not different enough from the first seasons which I didn’t like enough to sit through a third one. Dropped.
(Even if I was happy to see Suingintou again. And even prettier than before.)
