Rozen Maiden is Surprisingly Dark for an Anime About Dolls

This is what it’s come to on AJnet Magazine.

First we reviewed Peach Girl, and now I’m reviewing an anime about dolls.

Not giant killer robot dolls or anything cool like that, either. I’m talking about little Victorian-looking dolls wearing frilly dresses, drinking tea, arguing with each other, and living in the bedroom of a young boy.

I swear I still watch manly shit too, guys.

Rozen Maiden follows Jun Sakurada, a middle school shut-in who spends most of his time locked in his bedroom ordering crap off the internet. One day he receives a mysterious letter asking him to choose “yes” or “no,” and after choosing yes, a case containing an elaborate doll named Shinku arrives at his house. Jun winds her up, she comes to life, and he becomes her “medium,” supplying the energy she needs to use her abilities. Shinku is one of seven dolls created by a legendary dollmaker named Rozen, with each doll possessing something called a Rosa Mystica that gives her life. The dolls are supposed to compete in the Alice Game, fighting one another until one collects all seven Rosa Mysticas and becomes Alice, the perfect girl worthy of meeting their beloved “Father.”

Given that description, it would be pretty easy to dismiss Rozen Maiden as some anime for little girls. It has cute dolls, fancy dresses, tea parties, and a bunch of tiny girls running around a house yelling at each other. Little girls probably could watch and enjoy a lot of it, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a kids’ show. The manga is considered seinen, meaning it was aimed primarily at adult men.

That brings up the obvious concern.

Anime has a long and unfortunate history of taking characters who look like little girls and finding ways to make things creepy, so I went into Rozen Maiden half-expecting it to eventually pull some weird sexual shit. Thankfully, it never really stoops to that level. I’m sure there were guys watching this series for, um, ulterior reasons, and I guess you could argue that Jun technically has a harem considering how many female dolls eventually live in his house, but the show itself doesn’t really sexualize them.

There is one throwaway gag too where Jun’s older sister Nori talks in her sleep and says something along the lines of “No Jun, we can’t. You’re my brother.” I’m willing to chalk that up to somebody taking liberties with the subtitles, because otherwise I have several questions I don’t want answered.

The dolls themselves are easily the best part of the show. They’re adorable without becoming so aggressively cute that you want to throw them into traffic, and each one has a distinct personality. Shinku is bossy and dignified, Hinaichigo is childish and energetic, Souseiseki is calm and reasonable, while Suiseiseki is an obnoxious little shit who spends a good chunk of the series tormenting Jun.

Suiseiseki is also responsible for Rozen Maiden’s contribution to ancient internet culture: DESU.

For anyone who wasn’t wasting their life on 4chan in the mid-2000s, “desu” is a Japanese verb commonly used at the end of polite statements. In extremely simplified terms, it serves a grammatical function similar to forms of “to be.” You normally wouldn’t use it as punctuation after every insult you scream at somebody.

Suiseiseki didn’t get that memo.

She ends sentences with “desu” constantly, including while she’s yelling at Jun and calling him an idiot. Once you actually start listening for it, hearing this little doll scream an insult and then emphatically punctuate it with “DESU!” makes the whole thing ten times funnier. It became a huge 4chan meme back in the day, usually accompanied by pictures of Suiseiseki, and a piece of that meme still survives because 4chan uses “desu” as a word filter if you try to type “tbh.”

Depending on which English subtitles you watch, you might not notice it. The version I watched didn’t include the “desu” in the subtitles, so you have to actually listen to what Suiseiseki is saying.

Then there’s Suigintou, who’s basically doll Sephiroth.

She has long silver hair, black wings, dresses almost entirely in black, acts as the intimidating primary rival, and carries herself like she’s about to descend from the ceiling while One-Winged Angel starts playing. At one point she’s even reduced to having only one wing. Give this doll a seven-foot katana and Square Enix might have grounds for a lawsuit.

Suigintou also helps illustrate how dark the Alice Game actually is.

These dolls aren’t just play-fighting for bragging rights. Losing your Rosa Mystica means losing the thing that gives you life, leaving behind what is essentially an ordinary lifeless doll. Several of the Maidens don’t even want to fight each other, but they’ve spent centuries being told that becoming Alice is the only way they can finally earn their father’s love.

Which brings us to Rozen.

What a fucking scumbag. This asshole created seven sentient dolls, gave them emotions and individual personalities, convinced them that he was their loving “Father,” then set up a competition where they’re supposed to destroy each other so one can become his perfect daughter. Some of these dolls genuinely see each other as sisters, but Rozen has them convinced that they’re fundamentally incomplete unless they murder the competition and become Alice.

Suigintou in particular is completely obsessed with earning his approval, and a huge part of her hostility comes from feeling like she wasn’t good enough for him. Rozen basically created an entire family and then gave all of them centuries worth of daddy issues because he was obsessed with creating the perfect girl.

And the cherry on top is that the prick never really gets what’s coming to him.

I got curious after finishing the anime and looked into whether the manga ever has Rozen answer for any of this, or at least call him on his bullshit. Nope. There’s more context surrounding Rozen and the Alice Game, but you never really get that satisfying moment where his daughters collectively realize that Dad is a fucking lunatic and beat him to death.

Enju isn’t much better.

In the anime continuity, Enju manipulates the dolls into thinking he’s Rozen so he can test Barasuishou, his bootleg Rozen Maiden. Unlike Rozen, Jun does eventually call this jerk-off out on his bullshit, and Enju’s plan falls apart when Barasuishou absorbs more power than she can handle and literally crumbles apart. But beyond that, there’s no real accountability. Enju and Rozen both cause enormous amounts of suffering because of their own egos, and neither really has to answer for it.

All of this makes Rozen Maiden sound considerably darker than it usually is. There are fights and genuinely sad moments, especially once the Alice Game starts becoming more serious, but this isn’t an action-heavy anime. A lot of the show is comedy, character interaction, Jun dealing with his own problems, and the dolls slowly developing relationships that make the idea of them fighting each other increasingly fucked up.

I think that balance works pretty well.

The characters are cute without being annoying, the story is interesting without becoming needlessly complicated, and there’s enough darker material underneath the adorable exterior to keep things from feeling like a glorified toy commercial. I went into Rozen Maiden expecting the novelty of living dolls to wear thin pretty quickly, and instead I ended up genuinely caring about these little idiots.

Overall, Rozen Maiden is a pretty decent series. It’s not full of intense fights or giant set pieces, but it has a good story, memorable characters, some genuinely funny moments, and villains who are easy to hate even when the show doesn’t give them the ass-kicking they deserve.

Don’t let the dolls and frilly dresses put you off. Give Rozen Maiden a watch, desu.

AJ’s rating: 8/10

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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