Slow down, you're going to scare the new people away!
It's been a while since I've touched the manga so I might be misremembering, but like I mentioned in my preview guide for this season, there was a pretty good drop-in point at the beginning to the reboot/continuation for new people where the series spent a little time restablishing the rules of the world and the characters before jumping back into the storyline from before. I'd assumed that this series would start there, but nope. We're getting that next week. Instead, for whatever reason, the premiere episode took a page from the Zetman school of adaptation and condensed eight volumes worth of content into a little over twenty minutes.
I can't imagine that this was anything but completely confusing to people who had never experienced the series before. While it did hit on all of the big moments, the strain still shows; there's a moment where scrolling text is put on the screen in lieu of any further background explanation about the dolls. Jun's character arc is completely thrown out the window, and it's not even mentioned that he's a hikikomori. Instead, he acts as a straight man who is either baffled or annoyed by the dolls that keep flying through his window every few minutes. Also, since everything happens so quickly, there's a lack of emotional attachment to anything that's going on. Hina Ichio goes from "Tomoe don't leave me" to "Kirakishou ate me" in a few short scenes. The same happens with Souseiseki, going from "fight me" to "here, have my Rosa Mystica" in a matter of seconds.
If you are completely new to Rozen Maiden, then I suggest to either treat this episode like a Cliffnotes primer on what happened in the alternate universe, or just skip it completely and start with the second episode. If you were familiar with the anime version but not the manga, there are some key differences laid out here that you'll need to be aware of going forward (Barasuishou is not present since she was an anime-original character, for instance).
While I'm surprised at how they decided to start things off, I can't deny that this recap was a good refresher for me, and the art direction got me excited for how the rest of the series will appear. It's much closer to Peach-Pit's original depiction in the manga, something that I appreciate. Newer CG techniques are used in this episode as well. My favorite was the rendering of the feathers on Suigintou's back. It's also not afraid to get a little more stylistic. The soundtrack was a great mix of haunting yet beautiful melodies, and I look forward to hearing more of it throughout this cour's run. Hopefully the show won't need to go through content this fast ever again, and us viewers can stop and appreciate the atmosphere a little more.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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