Fantasista Doll Episode 5
What They Say:
Uzume joins her friend’s card club, but the person who tried to take her cards, Totori Kagami is there. Meanwhile, the dolls start to work part-time jobs as they cannot have Uzume buy them snacks since she’s run out of allowance…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a few changes in the first couple of episodes that has managed to nudge Uzume in the right direction, she’s now decided to join her friends card club and be a part of something. This brings her into contact with Kagami, a freshman who has a stern look at first but a really great smile and friendly nature that makes it easy to become a part of things. For Uzume, it’s all part of trying to grow up and be something more now that she’s gotten involved with all the girls that are part of her “collection” – a collection that most assuredly loves snacks and makes it complicated for Uzume in trying to make sure they get what they need, though it’s mostly done for humor’s sake. Of course, as Uzume learns, the friendly nature of Kagami is just a ruse and what she thought of as a potential friend is just going to be trouble for a bit as she tries to understand her.
This results in some awkward time at the start of Uzume’s club experience, enough so that she even tries to get out of being in it for a bit by having to be elsewhere. Not surprisingly, she gets tied to Kagami for other events though, which involves watching one of the girls, Katia, who has opted to take a job in her spare time as a delivery girl. That has Uzume all concerned and brings her and Kagami to investigate what’s going on, but there’s plenty of little hassles along the way as the two of them try to get along with each other while trying to not step on each other’s toes. Which isn’t too hard overall since they’re both decent kids, but when you have someone like Kagami being mildly abrasive, it’s difficult to keep a happy tone.
Katia’s time as a delivery girl is pretty fun as it ends up involving Uzume’s sister for a good part of it as they come across each other. Of course, Katia reveals herself and her powers pretty easily and that should make for some awkward moments, but the wide eyed innocence of youth allows it to be ignored in favor of just the good fun that comes from it all – and the money that Katia can acquire to get more snacks. That’s the dominating arc of th episode, but we also get some time to see how Kagami handles herself in battle as she comes across an opponent with dolls and the two get into it a bit, though most of it takes place off screen which is unfortunate as it doesn’t help to solidify Kagami any further.
In Summary:
Fantasista Doll continues to move along in fairly predictable ways but it’s also just becoming less interesting as it progresses as well. I continue to like the designs overall and it has some nice animation at times, but the story is weak at best at this point in time and the characters just aren’t do much to draw me in. The cute gags are there with the snacks, Katia gets some extended time here as she goes to work, but it suffers from the same thing. She’s a flat, one dimensional character that doesn’t give you much to latch onto and enjoy outside of the basic archetype. And within the context of the story, she doesn’t contribute much either overall. Uzume is pretty much a minor character here, which isn’t bad, but there’s not much for her to really do here either when it comes to Kagami, leaving the whole thing to feel just kind of bland.
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.