Rozen Maiden ep.8-9

January 27, 2005 | 2 Comments

I'm sorry for the lack of update lately. I've had a rather lousy week. First, there was the bandwidth thing, and then yesterday, I lost my house+office keys. I spent at least one day searching for it. :( Thankfully the security at my office found it. Anyway, I figure, I should just catch up with an older title first before I do any recap of new episodes. So I'll start with this series' two-parts arc involving a new doll. Unfortunately, the new doll is rather bland, personality-wise. So what could have been a spotlight on the character ends up becoming something else entirely. It's not a complete lost though because that 'something else' turns out to be good character development for both Jun and Suiseiseki.

The episode begins with a Rozen Maiden doll in blue outfit flying around in a white, vacuum space. The doll talks to herself how there's nothing in the area. Before she can do anything else, however, a voice calling out for "Kadzuki" startled her and forces her to return to a vortext in the sky. The vortex connects the white space into a room containing an unconscious old woman. As the doll watches the old woman sadly, an old man barges into the room and immediately hug the doll, asking her where she has been. It seems the old man doesn't like it if the doll goes out of the room. The next day inside Jun's house, Shinku, Hinaichigo, and Suiseiseki have pissed off Jun by ruining his favourite model car. So he proceeds to chase all three of them downstairs.

Suiseiseki and Hinaichigo decide to hide inside the room with the big mirror and while doing so, notice that the mirror starts to display what seems to be a temporal time ripple they called 'N-Field'. The result is that the mirror begins to display the time when Suiseiseki and the doll in the blue suit, Souseiseki, had a fight that caused the two to part ways. It seems Suiseiseki didn't like the subservient way that Souseiseki shows to her master, the old man that appear before. Suiseiseki is disturbed to see the painful memory being relieved in front of her again but before she can do anything, Jun appears with Shinku. Suiseiseki pretends as if nothing is wrong but both Shinku and Jun suspect that this is just an act.

Shinku tries to ask Hinaichigo about this, Suiseiseki's evil eyes threatens Hina so Hinaichigo decides to shut her mouth for now. Meanwhile, the old man who turns out to be a watchmaker, receives a visit from one of his clients. When the client gives him a food, the old man thanks her and tells her that the food is his son's favourite. Upon getting out, the woman talks to another woman how it seems the poor old man seems to be in denial about his son's death. The truth is, the old man seems to believe that Souseiseki, is actually 'Kadzuki', his dead son. That night, Souseiseki receives a visitation from Suigintou who pretends to sympathise with Souseiseki's problem. Suigintou believes that Suiseiseki's watering can can help the old man and offers to take it away from Suiseiseki.

Meanwhile, thanks to Hinaichigo's carelessness, Shinku and Jun finally manage to find out about Suiseiseki's problem. That night, however, Suiseiseki sneaks out of Jun's room and goes back to the room with the big mirror. When she sees an eerie reflection of herself, she quickly tells Suigintou to stop the game because she knows that Suigintou was the one who caused the 'N-Field'. So Suigintou decides to show Suiseiseki how miserable Souseiseki's life is these days. It turns out Souseiseki has been forced by her master to sleep outside her box. Suigintou believes that if this continues, Souseiseki may lose her identity sooner or later. Suiseiseki falls for the bait, hook, line, sinker and decides to use the mirror to take Souseiseki away from the old man's place.

Once the two end up in some kind of a dream world, Suiseiseki tries to persuade her twin sister to join her at Jun's because Shinku and Hinaichigo are also there. It's here that Suiseiseki reveals that despite what she often says about Jun, she seems to care a lot for the shorty. Souseiseki is happy to know that her twin has found a good person to stay but she refuses to come with Suiseiseki, especially after she hears her master calling out 'Kadzuki' again. Suiseiseki is unhappy about this and decides to force Souseiseki to come with her so the two start battling each other using their water can/gardening scissor. Because Souseiseki refuses to fight Suiseiseki, she is quickly overwhelmed by the tree root that Suiseiseki creates from her watering can.

At the same time, Suigintou visits the now depressed and lonely old man. Suigintou tells the old man that she knows of a way to keep 'Kadzuki' forever. Back to Suiseiseki, she seems to be unable to persuade Souseiseki to join her. So in the end she has no choice but to run back to Jun's house in sadness. Meanwhile, Souseiseki returns to the old man's house only to find the old man looking more crazed and possessive than usual. That same night, Jun wakes up to go to the bathroom but instead find Suiseiseki sobbing in the corner of his room. He tries to comfort the doll but ends up being blamed by Shinku and Hinaichigo for causing Suiseiseki to cry. Not long after this, however, Suiseiseki hears a noise that indicates the opening of a door to someone's dream.

Continuing from the previous episode, episode 9 begins with Shinku, Jun, and Hinaichigo coming with Suiseiseki to the old man's house to investigate the noise. Upon getting there, they find the old man lying lifeless in the floor while on top of him there's a vortext with black feathers falling out of it. All of them decides to go into the dream world and ends up in a world full of broken clocks. Shinku believes that this is the reflection of the old man's heart. After searching for a while, they eventually manages to find Souseiseki uncosncious and trapped inside a giant clock. After setting her free, however, they realise that Souseiseki has lost her artifical soul called Renpika. Suigintou then appears to let the others know that she know has Renpika.

She also informs the others that Souseiseki was the one who opened the door to the old man's heart despite knowing that the old man was trying to seal her in it. Anyway, realising the dangerous situation, Shinku orders Suiseiseki and Souseiseki to take Jun out of the dream world while she and Hinaichigo take care of Suigintou. So the twins and Jun head out of the old man's dream world into an area with a large tree. Suiseiseki tells Jun that the tree connects the heart of everyone in the world, allowing them to travel between hearts. So the three have an idea to travel to the unconscious old woman's heart. But as usual, they find nothing but white, vacuum space. Suiseiseki thinks that if they can find her tree, she maybe able to heal her heart.

However, just when they're about to do this, an imagery of Kadzuki appears and tries to persuade them to stop it because he believes that his mother likes it there because the place is safe and contains nothing but her memory of him. Jun, however, tells Kadzuki that while the wife is doing that, her husband who is still alive is miserable. Jun thinks what Kadzuki's mother is doing is shutting oneself in a safe world and escaping from reality just like himself. This genuine advice seems to have an effect on 'Kadzuki'. Unfortunately, in the old man's world, Suigintou manages to escape from Shinku and Hinaichigo's attack. As a result, when the twin dolls and Jun returns to reality, they find Suigintou in reality as well, ready to attack using Renpika.

Suigintou then begins to attack Suiseiseki, forcing her to give up her artificial soul, Amethyst Dream. At the last minute, however, Jun manages to shield Suiseiseki from the attack although Suigintou's attack seem to prove strong for him to handle. Grateful by Jun's concern for her, Suiseiseki has no other choice but to give up her artificial soul to Suigintou. Meanwhile inside the dream world, Shinku and Hinaichigo is set free by Kadzuki who asks them to tell his parents that his okay. In the end, the dolls are reunited with each other again although unfortunately Suigintou manages to escape with Amethyst Dream. The old man is then awake and is surprised when he finds his wife recovers from her coma. The episode ends with the old man accepting the fact that his son is dead and Souseiseki is not his son.

Impression:

Awesome episode that demonstrate how easy it is to be trapped in one's own denial. In Kadzuki's father's case, it's mostly because he has no one else to tell him that he's in denial. However, as soon as his wife wakes up from the coma, he has no choice but to accept the fact that the talking doll in front of him is not his son. There is now another human being who can refute the fact that Souseiseki is not Kadzuki. Anyway, it's interesting how this story about Souseiseki is different from the manga. In the manga, the story is actually fairly recent (appeared in November 2004 issue of Birz) and the old man is actually filthy rich and has his own butler. To top it off, there doesn't seem to be any kind of interference from Suigintou. In fact, unlike the anime, the manga doesn't seem to subscribe to the rule that Suigintou is the main source of problem for all of the Rozen Maiden dolls.

© memento 2003