Rozen Maiden Zurückspulen
Episode 3
Getting back to my comments on the show again. I really liked the scene earlier in the episode where it transitions from Jun going to bed to winding up in the pile of doll parts.
hosannainexcelsis does a really good job of detailing that scene in his comments post about episode 3 so I'll just link to it for people to read:
here.
--I don't think anyone mentioned it but when I commented about scene transitions using similar imagery, honestly the detailing you see on the bottom half of the sliding window out to the balcony reminded me of the colour and look of the pile of doll parts. The kind of thing that's not too uncommon in a show or movie where someone might see some regular object in the room they're in and their mind distorts that in their dream. Maybe it's not intentional again but that's just something I thought of. This episode also seemed to further reinforce about Jun distancing himself from his sister.--
Speaking of Jun, his seiyuu,
Ryota Ohsaka, seems to be another up and comer who's appearing in a lot of shows recently. I first heard him as Yuki in
Tsuritama and just recently he's been doing the voice for Haruto in
Valvrave, Sugune in
Gatchaman Crowds and someone else who I can't remember.
Looking at some other staff,
Branduil has already mentioned that the composer,
Shinkichi Mitsumune, already worked on the previous entries in Rozen Maiden but worked on the music in
Utena as well. The animated character designer,
Kyuta Sakai, also worked on
Sankarea so you might notice some similarities there. Another DEEN show worked on was
Higurashi no naku koro ni and two non DEEN shows were the animated designs for
Steins;Gate and
Humanity has Declined (which I haven't seen yet but would like to).
--I also just wanted to quickly point out that the girl you see here detailing what the class will be doing is not just some random person. For those that never watched the first series or had forgotten from the first episode, this girl is named Tomoe. She was the human master of Hinaichigo.--
Talking about characters and designs, the other big scene I liked was that of Jun's backstory and why he's shut in. Maybe I'm misremembering details but in the first series it was something more like Jun usually did well on tests and then one test came up where he got more of an average grade and other kids started picking on him that "he's not so special after all." The idea of more looking at gender associations and such I thought was much more interesting and makes a better case for Jun's condition. The way the fabric was kind of used as a visual bookend to that scene both leading into and out of it was nice.
The way the rafters in the gymnasium have that visual similarity to aid in the scene transition was also a nice effect. I liked how initially the rafters are the first thing shown at that part. It works as a nice scene transition to lead you from one location to the next but they also sort of look cage like as to imply Jun is trapped and to give you a sense of what's coming. Very well done episode. I think it was about here that I thought the show was going to be pretty good after all with the technique and skill shown off after these first three episodes.
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