YMMV / Rozen Maiden

• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • The death of Hinaichigo in the second season of Rozen Maiden. There was a whole episode dedicated to her winding down to her eventual 'death' where she spent the day with her old owner, complete with stuttered movement and speech during her last moments.
  • Her death in the manga, however, was horrifying: Kirakishou used her rose vines to destroy and consume her from the inside out. Still sad.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Rozen
    • Rozen as an terrible excuse for a father-figure, rather than the figure of utter adoration he is to the Rozen Maidens. That further breaks down into two sub-interpretations.
    • Rozen as a sadistic individual who takes cruel pleasure in watching his "daughters" fight each other to the death for his love, and only intervenes as neccessary to make the game more interesting, such as giving Suigintou her Rosa Mystica after she proves willing to claw and scratch her way to hell and back in search of him, or to ensure they don't decide it's pointless and simply stop it.
    • Rozen as a callous, indifferently child-like individual who regards his creations as simply that; dolls, and so fit only to do whatever he wants them to do and for his own amusement. He never finished Suigintou because he decided she wasn't interesting enough, and he makes them fight the Alice Games because it's fun and, hey, they're only dolls, what does it matter if they kill each other?
    • This attitude has more or less vanished, thanks to The Reveal from the manga that Rozen basically went off the deep end before he set up the Alice Games, but has since regained his sanity and wants to stop them... but has lost so much power that he basically can't do so.
  • Nori also gets this regarding her bizarre ideas of what boys Jun's age should be interested in. Within the fanbase, this leads to assumptions of Brother–Sister Incest regarding her feelings on Jun.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: Studio NOMAD's 2004 anime adaption. To people in and out of the fanbase, it is Rozen Maiden even though it is an entirely different story compared to the manga it supposedly adapts. Studio NOMAD wrote a new louder, action-packed story compared to the quieter, introspective manga.
• Broken Base: The animated adaptation of Tales, Zurückspulen, has pretty much torn the fandom in twain: between those who like the new but less colorful and much slower, melancholic, and introspective atmosphere of Zurückspulen, and those who prefer the colorful and magical girl-esque tone of the first two Rozen Maiden series. This, despite the fact that Zurückspulen is actually more faithful to the manga than the first two seasons.
  • This is partially caused by the fact that Zurückspulen is produced by Studio DEEN instead of Nomad, who made the original anime. Detractors of the new anime hate the fact that what is widely regarded as The Scrappy studio of the entire anime industry took over the show, while supporters firmly believe that Zurückspulen in itself has managed to redeem Studio DEEN. This in addition to the style differences mentioned above.
  • The sentiment that Rozen Maiden is in any way colourful, bright and a kind of Magical Girl series is also completely off-mark. This is a series where 7 sisters fight across the entire multiverse in a free for all battle to kill each other, just to appeal to a god-like father figure.
  • In general, manga canon vs NOMAD anime canon tends to be this. The two are so inherently different it's like comparing apples to oranges.
• Continuity Lock-Out: The franchise spans 3 manga serializations, 4 lightnovels, 2 anime adaptions, and countless other forms of supplementary material. Ignoring NOMAD's anime adaption, starting at anywhere but the original manga is incredibly prone to this happening. The biggest example is the 2008 manga and Studio DEEN's anime adaption of it, as in both cases it is required to have read the original manga to understand the story, as both pieces of media directly continue that story.
• Discredited Meme: Suiseiseki ending most of her statements with "desu" was interpreted by Western fans as a funny Verbal Tic, which led to Voice Clip Songs of her just saying "DESU" over and over, but it is actually a standard Japanese copula that makes a statement more polite.^note However, most people will say it with the "u" quickly clipped off at the end, so it typically sounds more like "des"; pronouncing it as written and using it as much as Suiseiseki does is still unusual enough to qualify as a Verbal Tic. As the Occidental Otaku community became more familiar with Japanese grammar in general, the meme quickly fell out of favor.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Suigintou, especially regarding the 2004 anime continuity. Fans latched onto her Freudian Excuse of being incomplete to handwave some of the violent actions she's inflicted on other characters. It seems even some members of Studio NOMAD itself had this reaction to her character, as the OVA turned her into a woobie and turned Shinku into the Designated Villain.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Suiseiseki reached memetic status with her "desu" Verbal Tic, and became one of the main reasons a lot of people even watched the show to begin with.
  • Unwound!Jun's boss, Yamaguchi, is this for some fans. In particular, the scene where he asks Jun to forgive him for all the responsibilities he's piled on him after Yamaguchi overhears the regional manager considering replacing him with Jun is a minor meme. He's even had fan-made merchandise made of him.
  • Tefuko. She's the first doll in the series to have a Japanese-oriented design and she has a cute, semi-sentient personality. She easily had the most art made out of all the characters who debuted in Rozen Maiden 0.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: This is basically the plot in a nutshell: A deific father figure creates seven children and then vanishes, leaving them to fight over the vague promise of his love and physical perfection.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Detractor Nickname, rather; due to her Sugar-and-Ice Personality behavior and somewhat pompous attitude, Shinku has been known around the 4chan boards as "Tea Bitch", a reference to her Trademark Favorite Food: tea. "Stinku" has also been thrown around.
  • The dolls tend to be nicknamed by their respective verbal tics or Catchphrase. "Desu" for Suiseiseki, "Boku" for Souseiseki, "Janku/Junk" for Suigintou, etc.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Shinku and Suigintou have this going on quite a bit. Special mention goes to the opening of Ouverture opening song with the lyrics "is this hatred or love", while showing their hair swirling and knotting together.
  • Kirakishou and Suigintou in the manga, with Kirakishou showing signs of a sister complex and even offering Suigintou her Rosa Mystica. Though it could just as easily have been a ploy to capture Megu.
  • Kira even plants a kiss on Hina-Ichigo, though it was more for the purpose of gaining her body.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Kanaria calls Barasuishou "Bara Bara", which is Japanese for "break apart". She dies by having her body completely torn apart.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Suiseiseki was voiced by Nana Mizuki in the Drama CDs. Natsuko Kuwatani is The Other Darrin and better known for playing her. Both of them plays characters from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Nana Mizuki is Fate Testarossa who has Arf/Alph, played by Natsuko Kuwatani, as her familiar (a beast guardian).
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Jun, despite being just 14, has been shipped with nearly the entire cast it seems. There's Shinku, Suiseiseki, Souseiseki, Tomoe, Suigintou, Megu, and Kirakishou as usual examples.
  • Souseiseki is usually shipped with her twin sister, Suiseiseki, but has been shipped with a good chunk of the rest of the cast. She's been shipped with all of the rest of her sisters, both Juns, Hana, and most of her other masters.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • If you haven't already noticed, "DESU!", desu. Suiseiseki's Verbal Tic is widely known to be one of the earliest (if not the earliest period) anime memes to gain popularity on the global internet, with "desu" spam being recorded on various forums and imageboards around 2004 when the first anime was airing. The meme is also fondly remembered for being the first to widely spread thanks to the shenanigans of 4chan, a solid two years before the website got its infamy as a troll breeding ground cemented.
  • The various other verbal tics of the dolls also qualify, often times being called by their respective verbal tics.
  • Referring to Kanaria as a "maidenly thug" after a particular Fan Sub of the 2013 anime had her refer to herself as such.
  • Unwound!Jun's boss, Yamaguchi, is a meme within the Japanese fanbase specifically for the scene where he asks forgiveness from Jun. The pose he makes while saying this is often redrawn and parodied.
• Moe: Elegant Gothic Lolitas with Verbal Tics and various anime cliché personalities? So very moe!
  • Suiseiseki won both the 2006 Anime Saimoe tournament and the 2006 Korea Best Moe tournament.
  • Souseiseki was the runner-up of the 2005 Anime Saimoe tournament.
• Nightmare Fuel: How Kirakishou takes Hinaichigo's body in the manga.
• The Scrappy: The manga version of Megu is seen by many as an extremely callous and manipulative bitch. This really started after it was revealed that she was working with Kirakishou by her own free will because Suigintou keep her promise to kill her, her speech to Jun about how he's worthless, attempting to break Tomoe as well by guilt tripping her over the death of Hinaichigo (which she had no control over), and her generally awful treatment to her nurses before she even left the hospital.
• Toy Ship / Cargo Ship: Between the dolls. And sometimes, Jun and one of the dolls. Especially Shinku.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Rozen Maiden 0. The beginning sets up an interesting premise regarding the mystery of a Zeroth Rozen Maiden doll and another mystery involving the kidnapping of children. The 24 chapter length of the manga compresses a lot down and dampens the emotional impact of events. Character interaction and introspection also takes a backseat when it was so important in previous Rozen Maiden manga.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: It is a fairly colorful, seemingly magical girl-esque manga about seven living dolls in various styles of Elegant Gothic Lolita clothes...and rated seinen, because it contains life-or-death battles, themes of abuse and Parental Neglect, and generally offers a surprisingly bleak outlook seeing how the dolls eventually have to kill each other because There Can Be Only One. There is however, a Shōjo spinoff called Rozen Maiden: Dolls Talk, but it's a Lighter and Softer comedy series.
• The Woobie:
  • Suigintou in Ouverture, Suiseiseki in Träumend.
  • Kirakishou. She is, as much as the other dolls, a victim of Rozen's blind desire for Alice and maybe she had it worse; Rozen just made her as an astral doll without body, unable to ever get a master or even get out of the N-Field and abandoned her as he did with the others, but she was completely alone and that make her insane, to the point of not even caring about her own Rosa Mystica and the Alice Game at all.

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