~Rozen Maiden~ Swear to me on this Rose Ring.

Hikikomori, dolls, battling, and finding oneself. What is this you ask? This is the premise behind Rozen Maiden. Sakurada Jun has dropped out of middle school and spends his time buying dolls on the internet and then returning them before he has to pay for them when one day he inadvertently orders a strange doll by placing a response in his desk drawer.  Enter Shinku the adorable Fifth Doll of Rozen Maiden.

Possible spoilers after the jump as this is a review.  I don't have many screen shots for this show since I watched the majority of it on my Archos 43 media device thingy and the aspect ratio got screwy when I tried to take them on my computer..forgive me desu~

I found the story of this first season of Rozen Maiden to be quite interesting and surprisingly deep for a show that focused on extremely cute dolls battling for the right to attain perfection and meet their "Father" creator.  Jun dropped out of middle school because of the bullying and taunting from his classmates after he broke down and failed the entrance exam to a top middle school in the country.  Withdrawing from social life and barricading himself in his room, he becomes a hikikomori and spends his time online.  For Japan the prevalence of hikikomori is a rising trend and a developing social and economic problem as more people take up this lifestyle.  I would suggest reading the Wikipedia page on this if you are unfamiliar with the term and its applications.

Elegant Shinku sipping tea from her very own teacup.

Sakurada Jun's life takes a sharp turn for unknown waters when he unknowingly agrees to "wind up" a Doll of Rozen Maiden.  Shinku the Fifth Doll of Rozen Maiden offers Jun the chance to become her servant in return for her protection of him from the threat of death in the form of a proxy doll controlled by the main antagonist doll Suigintou.  Of course in such a situation he quickly agrees without knowing fully the full scope of his actions.  Slowly over the course of the series Jun and the viewer gradually grasp the full extent for the doll's existence and why some of them are so willing to fight and kill their sister dolls.  It is the pursuit of perfection, the perfect doll form by the name of Alice desired by their Father and Creator.  It took a while, perhaps too long to finally reveal the entire reason behind Suigintou's antagonism with Shinku.  Of course you must wait until the final episode to find out the true reason for Suigintou's motivation to win the Alice Game. The pursuit of perfection in any story seems to always lead to the path of destruction for its seekers.

Throw more rocks desu!

Without spoiling too much, Jun and Shinku befriend three other Rozen Maiden dolls, the short and adorable Hinaichigo and the twin sisters Suiseiseki (desu) and Souseiseki grow in friendship and subtle undertones of a devotion between Jun and Shinku develop, But it is left to the viewer to decide the actual extent and type of relationship they have between them.  My personal opinion is that of love; but I am sort of a hopeless romantic in these situations, I love seeing romantic happenings even if the characters are a magical doll and a middle school dropout. The ending, our protagonists prevail over Suigintou, but it is a bittersweet ending as we find out the true reason behind Suigintou's motivations as she burns to death.  Good prevails over evil, but as I interpret Shinku's line about Suigintou is that she was misguided and had simply taken a different path and methodology for fighting in the Alice Game.  Her love for Father may have been the purest of all the dolls.

Petal power! and she can fly!

The story is fantastic in my opinion, it is light enough on the outside with the antics of all the dolls, the repeated gags and the magical aspects that balance the deeper ideas behind the existence of hikikomori and the lengths that some will go for attaining perfection.

Desu!

The numbers.

-Story- 8/10
-Animation- 8/10 Older style but the dolls are beautifully drawn and detailed.
-Music- 7/10 OP was fantastic and everything else fit the story.

-Overall-7/10 It was good, I enjoyed it and will watch the second season of it soon. Suiseiseki is <3 ..desu!

So cute!