Fantasista Doll at a Glance

Girls like Skittles.

One of every color, bright as can be, tropical Skittles, it seems. Well, Fantasista Doll wasn’t something I’d originally intended to watch, but I was drawn by the bright colors, so I guess the folks behind it knew what they were doing. Hell, that’s also why I watched two-thirds of Karneval – all the bright colors. When you get down to it, we don’t really change much from when we’re toddlers, do we?

Fantasista Doll is basically Rozen Maiden crossed with Yu Gi Oh. Uzume, an ordinary middle schooler (aren’t they all!), who actually wasn’t always so ordinary, tries to avoid getting sucked back into card games that she excelled at when she was a touch younger, only to… well, she’s not quite sucked back in yet, but you know its coming. No, instead she finds herself with a magical cellphone-looking device full of monochromatic girls who can do battle with girls that other people have in their magical cellphone-looking devices. And, of course, there is at least one other person so far who resolutely does not want her to have this device – but, hey, Uzume’s first magical sprite kicks this other girl’s magical sprite’s ass, so its all good.

If I sound a bit unenthused, that’s because I mostly am; I nearly dropped the episode about halfway through since nothing was really happening. But then the battle started, and it wasn’t all that bad, the animation ticked up a bit, and it was mildly entertaining to watch. And Uzume showed some surprising pluck a few times in the episode; a few male, former classmates of hers attempt to bully her, she calls them childish and tells them to stop, and… they actually do. And during the battle, when she is nearly pinned down by the other girl’s magical sprite thing, instead of cowering uselessly, she headbutts her, giving her an opening to get away. She’s still got some of the usual flighty qualities of many young, female characters in anime, but things like this are encouraging.

I’m a mite bit curious about where this all goes, enough to at least check out the second episode, although my hopes remain low. I could see it developing into the sort of fluffy entertainment that seems so well-suited to summertime, which is perfectly fine, but I don’t predict that this is one we’ll recall in a couple of seasons.

By the way, I’ve been seeing people claiming this is a shoujo title, and, uh, its not. It airs in the middle of the night, and all of its related manga material (adaptation, and spin-offs) runs in seinen magazines. I think you can do the math, folks.