Fantasista Doll Episode 3
What They Say:
Uzume Uno is an ordinary junior high school student nothing special to mention about school grades or in the field of sports. However, one day, her destiny is significantly changed. She happens to find mysterious cards from which dolls therein with special abilities come out to real life. Uzume becomes the “Card Master” and executes contract with these characteristic dolls. Soon or later, she somehow finds herself in a position to fight not just for her own town, but to save the whole world….
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Getting to know her new friends better in the last episode a bit more, Uzume was fleshed out just a touch, but we do once again get a series where there’s seemingly nothing really to our lead character in terms of interests or personality. This keeps her little more than a cipher that’s easily adapted to being used by the dolls that are now a big part of her life, having agreed to the contract of sorts. That brings a lot of new people into her life, with a range of personalities to be sure, that she’s now able to interact with and grow with. But I still come back to that simple problem that when you have characters that exist in a vacuum like Uzume does here prior to the series, it keeps you from getting invested in her and the others all that much.
Unlike a lot of episodes that open slow, this one picks up where we left off as Manai is seemingly under someone else’s control and is on the attack when it comes to Uzume and her friends. That sets an amusing bit of commentary about the kinds of friends Uzume has, but it also opens the door to something bigger as Manai is “helped” out of her problem and she and Uzume realize they really are on the same side and are both involved in this strange card game. This helps to ease some of the tensions between them, but Uzume has her own problems to deal with in addition to this. While the girls are all now a part of her life, some are more interactive with her than others, especially when it comes to pointing out mistakes in her school work, which completely frustrates her in a big way.
There are some interesting things to come from having Uzume and Manai together, especially in that the dolls can cross-access when close to each other and spend time together (and create a massive group of people in one place), but the show also spends its time with more action than a lot of shows like this deal with. With Uzume and Manai together, but with Manai’s dolls in recovery and out of commission, it’s up to Uzume with a handful of dolls that are afraid of the water to deal with a special attack that’s been set up for them. The action for it fits into the cute and fun style and feeling, which works nicely, but it also has some background material going on as well with a bit of thievery occurring that will lead into the larger storyline of the season. It’s nice to see the seeds developed and worked on early on here, but it’s also something that needs a bit more to it before it becomes interesting.
In Summary:
Fantasista Doll continues to move along much as the first two episodes did, spreading out a bit of interesting material here and there with how the girls work and this background subplot that will grow as the episodes go on. It also works to reinforce the relationship between Manai and Uzume, which is useful since Manai gets taken in rather easily and is turned aggressive towards Uzume due to the cards and her lack of understanding of things. But as the show goes on, there still doesn’t feel like a lot of meaty material here and we’re doubling up on the characters involved with the dolls that Manai has now, making them even less worth remembering their names since they flit on and off screen so easily. It’s just too populated, too quickly.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.