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Rozen Maiden is a series filled with toys, whether those toys be the Rozen Maidens themselves as the little bisque dolls—no, Kitagawa Marin is not in this series—that are involved in the Alice Game, or the toys that litter Sakurada Jun’s bedroom. Jun’s perspective on life effectively mirrors how he treats the various boxes, toys, or “goods” strewn about – something that is not worthy of holding onto, and casting away anything that could tie him to those things. His bedroom is thus a place of hikkikomori withdrawal from the world. He is, in essence, toying with the rules of the cozy little reality he has crafted for himself, where he is master of all, especially in regards to his mastery of returning things by the cutoff date for the money back guarantee. His behavior is just as thrifty as it is infuriating, in no small part thanks to the rather thankless way he treats his caring sister Nori.

Jun’s closed-off heart gets violently shaken from its safe bounds by the arrival of Shinku, a doll imbued with life and magic. A most-unwelcome addition to Jun’s household, she is not merely the harbinger of the Alice Game and its deadlier consequences; she is the bringer of a kind of counter-brusqueness to Jun’s own brusqueness. Impatient and commanding, she has her own fair share of worries, for which she must be mindful. Especially considering that the players in the Alice Game are already trying to hunt her down, she must make a pact with Jun to become his master, and he her servant so that she can make the most of her powers.

Shinku’s presence, as well as the other caravan of dolls that enter the fray (if not through Jun’s window by crashing into it violently), both bring the action to the story and provide enough digression to allow things to settle down for a brief moment and breathe. The Rozen Maidens are a blend of aristocratic panache and childlike—if not outright childish—intrigue and enthusiasm. While they may be there primarily to fight, not every moment in the series can be chock full of action, and the action moments that do exist within it are working with some animation limitations. Therefore, Rozen Maiden allows more slice-of-life mini-plots and the occasional running gag to dial things back. As the cast expands ever larger and all occupy Jun’s room for themselves, it’s inevitable that such personalities would butt heads over things.

(While the slice-of-life moments may not progress the Alice Game plot, each dialogue gradually gives Jun the chance to become at least a little more sociable, even if his manners take a little longer to polish themselves up. An entire episode of petty arguing and over-the-top roughhousing makes for one of the show’s best time-outs)

But it’s only a matter of time before the battles reassert themselves as the intrusive element. Though rare skirmishes take place in the Sakurada house itself, most take place beyond the natural world and into the more supernatural settings. The so-called N-Field, where most of the battles for the Alice Game take place, manifests as a warped and rather delightfully perverse dreamscape of the characters. Reflecting either the contents of their hearts, or realms where dreams and hearts intertwine, each Rozen Maiden essentially risks their entire sentience and powers on whether they win or not. These areas convey the tone of putting everything on the line, baring souls before one another and seeing whose resolve is stronger both in magic and mind.

(The trips into the dreamland and surrealist N-Field allow for some occasionally solid backdrops and incorporations of the environment for action. It’s not the most harmonious marriage and does shortcut some choroegraphy, but it also demonstrates some creative fun with the space and concept)

But whether it be through the series’s brand of slice-of-life or the action-based Alice Game, interwoven through it all is Jun’s own apprehensions, or more specifically, the apprehensions of the cast as a whole. Underlying many of the motivations is that of abandonment. As a concept, abandonment comes in many forms – it is not restricted merely to people outright leaving you of their own volition, but just as much the people or things that you yourself cast aside. The feeling that it can leave behind is, depending on the circumstance, anything but pleasant. It can perhaps be such to the point where you would rather look away from the feeling altogether, if not outright insist to the contrary that everything is fine. The dolls, who themselves are the main vehicle to help teach this lesson, are themselves not immune to the folly, either. It levels the playing field for Rozen Maidens’s thematic throughline, allowing both human and doll, action and non-action, to push it along.

As the material makes clear however, nearly everyone houses something within their hearts that they would rather look away from or not confront. With each new battle in the Alice Game, a little more perspective on all these matters unveils itself. One cannot run from their problems forever, otherwise they themselves could find their entire happiness or outlook akin to an abandoned or broken doll; any beauty that there might have been within is faded and unrecognizable. Hence why Nori so laments what Jun has become, and despite her mindfulness of needing to give him space, she acquiesces with an enabling hospitality that Jun frankly doesn’t deserve in the hope that he may, finally, return to the happier self he once was. It might be tempting to blame Nori for making things worse, but she never could have expected to effectively function as a surrogate mother.

(The idea of discarding things, or the fear of being discarded altogether, colors the cast’s characterizations. Much of the drama is fueled by the antagonism between these characterizations and the natural friction that results from the colliding of the real with the supernatural)

The key though (not the kind that you plug into the Rozen Maidens’ backs) is that all the building blocks for that shift back to the happier Jun are placed early. As withdrawn as Jun was from the world around him, his purchasing of “goods” and getting as much value out of them as possible before returning them does demonstrate an innately curious outlook for the strange and bizarre. Granted, it’s for a vice that’s feeding an unhealthy habit, but the primordial sensibility still exists. Between that and swinging an old lacrosse stick Nori brings him to try and coax him out of the room, his arc reaches its catalyst in a note that offers a simple choice, posed by the question: “Wind up? Don’t wind up?” Though he may have done so with his eyes metaphorically rolled in the back of his head and disbelief that anything like what was promised could happen, his barren heart begins to turn. And all the while, the dolls themselves undergo their own changes, even if in herky-jerky motions that are not as ball-and-joint smooth as they could be.

(Rozen Maiden’s attempts to try and tie the concepts of dreaming, abandonment, and the closing of hearts is not handled in the cleanest, most-pristine manner, even taking into account that this is only a first season of a multi-season property. However, the sentiment is sufficient for what the narrative is trying to accomplish)

Underneath that not-as-clean exterior does lie a series that has its heart in the right place, and despite the occasional shortcomings of both the narrative and the presentation, Rozen Maiden still manages to produce fun senses of both comedy and drama. A colorful little toybox of a series, it plays with its cast in amusing ways by cobbling together some disparate or disproportionate parts into a new whole by having fun with its own brand of plastic. Not every series has the longest shelf life or the most thorough reach, but I was happy that I saw it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Detective Kun-Kun is on!