Rozen Maiden 12 (END)

Jun goes off to search for Shinku's arm and runs into Suigintou. He's stuck in the muck of his "spring of memories", where all those bad memories from the past come back again.. Suigintou seems to have him, but Jun's gotten stronger and breaks free as Shinku arrives. Somehow, Shinku's arm is reattached by Jun.. that's something that only "Father" should be able to do..

Shinku, back at full power, kicks some Suigintou butt. There's no way Suigintou can win without a medium... Suigintou burns, not able to become complete, not able to have Father's love.. she was an incomplete work, and her feelings of wanting to be complete alone were enough to move her even without a medium...

In Jun's dream, light has started to come through the clouds.. Jun fixes up Shinku's bonnet and brushes her hair as they talk (Shinku kawaii~~~!). There might be times when rain falls, or things don't seem like they can be done, but you have to keep on fighting, as Jun's learned.. And Shinku disappears in front of him..

He wakes up from the dream world, but the rose ring is gone. Shinku and the rest are gone as well.. But Jun decides to go out and take a walk, after changing clothes of course. Outside, he walks without being scared of being seen and talks to Tomoe.. And when he comes back.. Hina's drawing on the floor and Shinku's reading. Suiseiseki and Souseiseki come flying in as well. The ring has come back as well.. thanks to him getting stronger, Shinku and the rest were able to come back. So it's back to the usual rowdy days at the Sakurada house. And as Jun takes Shinku downstairs to watch Detective Kun-Kun (Shinku's favorite show), the last thing we see is Jun's school uniform.

---

A nice ending to things this time. And man, Shinku was super chou-kawaii there for a bit (I definitely prefer her hair down). She's definitely better than Suiseiseki :P

It was pretty clear what kind of story Rozen Maiden would be telling in the beginning -- it would be about Jun growing up and overcoming those fears he had. Jun's character was very well done in realistically portraying those fears I have to say. Like I said before, I can understand some of what he went through pretty well. But Jun overcame all that with Shinku's guidance and encouragement, showing so much more strength in believing in himself and also believing in others. Shinku herself is probably my favorite character of the bunch this season. She beats Jun and calls him a useless servant sometimes (very hilarious) and has that ojou-sama attitude, yes, but she's really a very kind person despite that. The rest of the dolls were interesting as well, though I don't know why so many people like Suiseiseki (*cough*Kabitzin*cough*). Shinku is so much better ;) I also really liked the character design of each the dolls.

Technically speaking, animation and such was well done, though I had to watch the pan and scanned (evil) 4:3 version of the show and not the beautiful 16:9 widescreen version that's on BS-i. Can't say any of the music especially stood out to me, but it wasn't all that bad. Anyways, all in all a great show to watch (though some things were left unexplained, like who "Father" is, or why Jun can fix dolls, so on). Nice balance of not so serious fun stuff and serious, with characters I got attached to pretty quickly. Well done :)

btw, Garten has the limited edition of Rozen Maiden 1 (lucky dog), so go over there for pics and such :) I might get some of the manga. Have to see how much I can afford to spend on things first, though ;)