Series: Rozen Maiden: Traumend - Volume 1
Release date: 12th July 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 150 mins
Director: Kou Matsuo
Starring: Asami Sanada, Miyuki Sawashiro, Masayo Kurata, Natsuko Kuwatani, Noriko Rikimaru
Genre: Anime
Studio: MVM
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Rozen Maiden Träumend (translated as Rozen Maiden Dreaming) follows on from the original series with the introduction of further Rozen doll characters, whose differing philosophies result in a dramatic finale to the twelve episodes of this series.
In the first series, the boy Sukurada Jun discovered the secrets of the Rozen Maidens, dolls created by the mysterious puppet maker Rozen. After suffering a traumatic incident at school, Jun refused to return there and became withdrawn from society. His discovery with Shinku, one of the most dominant personalities among the Rozen dolls, led to him regain his confidence, emerging from his isolation to return to school.
In this second series, the emphasis has shifted from Jun’s personal crisis to the conflicts between the differing philosophies of the dolls living in Jun’s house, and those outside Shinku’s circle of influence. Jun’s house is home to three other dolls as well as Shinku – the twins Suiseiseki and Souseiseki, and the more infantile Hinaichigo. All three bow to Shinku’s superior guidance, and know that their destiny is tied up in some way with the perilous Alice Game – a game foreseen by their creator, Rozen, in which one doll will kill all the others, possess their inner power (Rosa Mystica), and so become the one idealised girl, personified as ‘Alice’...
Shinku refuses to fight with her sisters, but there are other dolls who do not share her qualms, threatening the equilibrium of the peaceful tea-drinking, TV watching existence within Jun’s household. One of Shinku’s strongest opponents is Suigintou, who was also an adversary in the first series. Desperate to obtain the approval of their ‘father’ (the dollmaker), Suigintou is willing to stop at nothing in order to win the Alice Game.
Greater complications ensue with the introduction of a further character, apparently the seventh of the Rozen maiden sisters. However, all is not as it seems, and deception and counter-deception are played out, culminating in a battle to determine who will win the ill-fated Alice Game…
The strongest aspect of the series is the artwork for the opening titles. The silhouetted shapes are reminiscent of European woodcut prints, a style suitable to the Brothers Grimm Gothicism of the subject matter. Beautifully sombre tones and swirling lines suggest an unhealthy vitality to the forms of the natural world, like an Arts & Crafts print imbued with some vampiric life force. This quality is carried through with the Lolita-esque designs for the dolls’ outfits. The most striking of these are the classic Victorianism of Shinku’s stately maroon bonnet and rose ornamented ruffles, the cold blue and purple tones and spiky Gothicism of Suigintou and her black-feathered shoulders, and the crystalline amethyst hues of the supposed seventh doll, with the horror of one empty eye socket incongruously obscured by a mauve rose.
The quality of this design is not carried through to the anime as a whole, unfortunately. While the backgrounds of the fight sequences are often atmospherically drawn, the quality of animation of the action is poor, and it doesn’t convey a proper sense of the peril facing the embattled dolls. The human characters are drawn quite blandly – the discovery of the true identity of one character is meant to come as a revelation, but lazy drawing means that even Scooby and Shaggy would have seen through this cunning disguise.
The ideas being explored in the anime sound encouragingly sinister, but the anime fails to live up to this promise. We watch the process of the dolls being created, the blankness of their initially lifeless forms, and the carelessness with which the puppet maker discards those that are imperfect (apparently all). The concepts of trying to please a seemingly implacable parent/creator, and invest life with some form of meaning, clearly hold the potential for layers of metaphor and significance.
The promise of the anime’s concept is undermined by the poor quality of the animation and music, and the cloying sentimentality. The younger-acting dolls are presumably there to provide some comic relief, and to up the kawaii (cute) element of the anime. But the whining and shrieking of Hinaichigo, Kanaria and Suiseiseki would give earache to bats, and the protracted demise of one of these characters could hardly fail to harden the softest heart. The appallingly cheesy music makes every appeal to the emotions even crasser, with fulsome piano music swelling out on cue at the merest suspicion of sentiment. The bizarre opening music sounds like a Eurovision-styled mashup of The South Bank Show theme with someone falling down stairs clutching a Casio keyboard.
There’s been much debate about the predominance of the kawaii factor in Japanese culture, and whether its portrayal of feminine helplessness and infantilism encourages the persistence of female subjugation. Granted, this is an anime for children, but the cloying fixation of the dolls on gaining the approval of a male figure, and the implicit approval of infantile behaviours, such as referring to themselves in the third person, is quite disturbing. In contrast, both Shinku and Suigintou can demonstrate dignity, self-determination and power, but these quieter voices are drowned out by the predominance of the kawaii dolls, meaning that the prevailing tone of the anime is overwhelmingly the juvenile shrieks of those that are most helpless. The creative duo who devised the manga, Peach-Pit, are clearly talented artists, and aiming their product at a younger female audience, but the idea that the level of sophistication offered by this anime is the most that audience can expect or deal with is fairly offensive.
The anime’s sinister Alice In Wonderland overtones, promising subject matter and intermittently fine artwork is undermined by the low production values and inappropriate use of music. Its mixture of dark Gothic mysticism and sickly sentimentality seems aimed to appeal to a wide age bracket, but is unlikely to please at either end of the scale. KR
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