Tale 8

Key Events

Kirakisho waits patiently as she watches the older Jun build her ‘second’ body.

Jun continues life as normal, slowly building the new doll, helping out Saitou with her theatre group and doing his best at the shop.

He runs into trouble at the shop where the stock is wrong and the manager pushes the blame on Saitou. However Jun made a note on everything so he can easily correct it.

Later at night after Jun goes to sleep, Suigintou checks the doll and realises something’s wrong.

Finally, the last day of Shinku’s stay has arrived. It’s also the day of Saitou’s play and Shinku ‘forces’ Jun to take her along. And just as well as the theatre group forgot their doll prop, so Shinku ‘makes her appearance’ and they decide to borrow her.

Suigintou’s also nearby, not wishing to miss out on Shinku’s ‘death’. She also brought the doll that Jun was working on, so she can lure out Kirakisho.

Thoughts

Yeah, the ‘trap’ doll was indeed for Kirakisho so she can take centre stage. I guess it was obvious when the younger Jun pointed it out, but still, it would’ve been nice if older Jun made a new Rozen Maiden, as impossible as that is.

I think this was a nice episode focusing a bit more on Jun’s characteristics and emotions again. We can tell he’s a hard worker, even in a job that dull he’s able to learn from previous criticism and mistake and make sure not to do it again. And he had the persistence to keep at it, like with keeping a note on everything, that’s hardly going to be useful 99% of the time, but that 1% is worth the perseverance. He’s obviously very careful with everything and ‘complete’ about doing his work, but I guess that comes from his designing talent where detail is everything. But again, he always looks at the negative side of things, especially when Saitou was complimenting him. Accept the compliments, take them for what they are, forget the insults but of course remember helpful criticism too, just not the kind that only insults you and doesn’t help.

The week is up and there’re no dramatic changes. Well I suppose this isn’t a shounen, you can’t suddenly become a brand new person with new powers or something in a few days, but hey, at least he’s improving.

Looks like I was over thinking about the theatre group’s doll prop then. It wasn’t anything Rozen Maiden related, well sorta was as it was a plot device for Shinku to be able to take the stage.

Funny how Jun tried to hide that he likes dolls like Shinku, still scared what others will think of him by the looks of it. But hey, I hope this’ll help him see that he’s living in the adult world now where no one really cares what you do in your private life and interests like dolls and frilly dresses for a guy are alright, in most places. Maybe not in a country like Japan. I know for a fact that gay people are still shunned in society over there. But I trust they’ll catch onto the modern society soon enough.

By how things are going, Shinku looks like she will die on stage. The story has gone rather slowly and a bit too ‘calmly’ I have to say. But I’ve still enjoyed it and now I have a feeling that this stage may be the final stage and will host the battle to decide the winner of the Alice Game, though I don’t think the manga has ended yet… but who knows, anime could be different again.

It has been an interesting slow build up, this episode definitely was. It has concentrated on Jun and his slow developments through a boring adolescence. Though I still can’t see any big improvements yet… but soon I hope. He’ll definitely have to think fast when the battle begins and finish everything before Shinku ‘dies’, or get her ‘life’ back before her temporary life is depleted, but at last, the battle will start again soon hopefully. I’m looking forward to seeing the other dolls again, lovely to see Canaria again, I hope that she’s also another sign of something big to happen soon.