Recap: Shinku’s old rival Suigintou turns up in the apartment.

Zigg’s Thoughts: This episode feels like it’s going to be a big deal but then sort of fizzles out into nothing. Suigintou is one of the most important parts of the Rozen Maiden story but her introduction is sort of underwhelming and we’re not really given too much clarification on the nature of her relationship with Shinku. Yes, it’s clear that they’re rivals, but the tone struck is much more of a comedic, haughty competitiveness rather than the angry, hateful relationship that underpins their interactions. At least Rie Tanaka is back, giving Suigintou wonderfully haughty voice, and her performance definitely enhances the clashes with the more refined Miyuki Sawashiro as Shinku.

There’s also the odd decision to pile on backstory for Suigintou in this episode. Her relationship with her ‘partner’ Megu is a fascinating and often pleasingly unsettling one, but I’m not sure it makes that much sense to spool it all out for us in one sitting. They’re trying to establish a motive for Suigintou to be in this world (and how did she get here?) but I feel it might have worked better if you’d teased the motive rather the showing it off immediately. The net result is that Suigintou is rapidly shown to be actually a big softy at heart rather than any sort of threat, which makes her less intimidating. Granted, Suigintou is not the actual villain of the piece, but a bit more ambiguity regarding her precise role would not have gone amiss.

There’s also the first opportunity for us to get a good look at the mysterious Kirakishou, the seventh doll who appears for all intents and purposes to be the major villain of the show. Her motives for ‘kidnapping’ Megu are unclear, although it’s clearly done to get a rise out of Suigintou. We don’t know much about Kirakishou, merely that she has no physical body (existing only with the N-Field) and that she killed Souseiseki and Hinaichigo, the fourth and sixth dolls respectively. You’d presume that her motive was the same as all the other Maidens, namely to deafeat the others and win the Alice Game. Not sure how kidnapping Megu aids that, but I hope we’ll find out in time. In the meantime, that eerie voice and the masses of vin-tentacles certainly make her a creepy presence.

Otherwise, this was an episode of entertaining and interesting bits that felt very unstructured. That’s been the big issue with Rozen Maiden thus far – there’s clearly an interesting story to be told here, but it’s been told in a very disjointed way, with plot points flying haphazardly all over the place. As the dolls continue to arrive hopefully some semblence of structure can be found.

Random Observations

• Shinku attempting to read the paper is really, really funny to me for some reason.
• It’ll be interesting to see why the ‘How to Build a Girl’ magazines have resumed arriving. Could this be a gambit from Kirakishou to gain a real body?
• The bizarre mid episode interludes about the little girl are revealed to be extracts from a book titled ‘A Doll in the Palm of my Hand’. Still no idea what they could mean, but there’s only one little girl important to the mythology – Alice, Rozen’s dream child who all the dolls aspire to become, and after whom the game is named.