Fantasista Doll Episode 8
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)
As things settle down a bit overall with the way the group has bonded together, the show shifts to some more general fun for a bit with a culture festival event at school. And with Uzume being a part of the Card Club and having a few friends there, they’re able to throw together a pretty fun project and set up a nice area while also being able to investigate other clubs and enjoy the festival. This leads to some comical scenes early on as we see a variety of different clubs and how they handle their festival setup, including one boys club that has them all in just maid aprons and little more as they do their own maid cafe. That actually weirds out a few people who end up trying to get out of there. But the silliness of it, even for a few seconds, works nicely to spice things up a bit.
The show spends a fair bit of its time going through various aspects of the culture festival and just allowing Uzume to have a decent time with some of her friends. Others are focusing on other things that are cropping up such as Miko showing up and Kagami keeping an eye on her and the curiosity of where others may be that have come to see the event rather than stay away as Uzume likely told them to so they wouldn’t cause any trouble. There’s some cuteness to all of it and it has some nice designs and appeal to it as it plays out, at least until it gets to the action side of the episode.
That comes with the cute “ka-ching!” girl, who had been stalking the grounds for awhile looking for Uzume in a rather cute fashion and is now set with her little horde to cause some problems. Amusingly, it’s Kagami she runs into and is quickly and soundly defeated for awhile. That then leads into another shortened little encounter that has Uzume at the lead, but it’s all so light and fluffy in a way that it feels like there’s no meaning. When you have attackers coming into it that are quickly scared away and literally run away while practically crying, it may fit the age of some of the characters, but it makes you just feel kind of sad about the whole endeavour.
In Summary:
School festival episodes are typically weak by their general nature since they’re such a trope and commonality in the last decade or so that you can see where most of it will go. We don’t get any new answers here about the mysterious dream organization that’s after Uzume or anything but we see a few more mentions of them as they insert themselves a bit more into the story. Mostly we just get some silly and admittedly amusing moments among the characters as they deal with the festival, but so much of the episode is largely forgettable that it’s just another tiny piece in the larger puzzle that few will remember or look at.
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.