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)
With Uzume having started to understand the situation she’s in with people stalking her and the acquisition of several cards that allow her to call forth the dolls, she’s in the midst of some serious training now to figure out how to survive using them. For a middle school student, one that doesn’t seem to be all that active in general, even just summoning the cards proves to be a difficult and winding task, one that leaves her a bit breathless at the end of it. But as the others tell her, this is just the start of the training and being like this isn’t something that’s really all that encouraging for them when it comes to their master. You have to feel a bit for Uzume, but you also know she’s got the pluck and willpower to overcome adversity since she is the heroine of the series.
Uzume’s starting to adjust to having all these personalities around and because of their nature, they certainly are always around since she’s got her phone on her. They’re often making sure she’s doing things right, including eating healthy, but that just leads to some amusing conversations while she’s trying to get to school. The various dolls are getting their time in the spotlight here, but only briefly as we see them all interacting with her, and each other, in different ways. Often with comical reaction shots while enjoying their drinks. There are some strong personalities within the mix of the cards and they are pretty clear in making sure Uzume knows that they’re displeased with aspects of what she’s doing, especially when Sasara goes after her over how she’s treating her friend Manai.
While the show does work through some of the middle school social pressure issues with Uzume, it also throws her into some really difficult material as she gets caught up in a trap over the cards and basically isn’t able to handle it, which is sort of welcome to see as she just collapses in the midst of the attack as she’s not mentally capable of handling it. Not surprisingly though, she does manage to get a save and works towards dealing with the problem and that helps to reinforce the bonds between all the girls and Uzume. And that leads them to a place where Uzume is able to gain a new card, which helps to bolster her abilities overall for the larger game, which is still relatively indistinct and not altogether that interesting yet.
In Summary:
With the second episode of Fantasista Doll, we’re getting a pretty predictable show here that isn’t showing any sparks of uniqueness or personality. Uzume is a decent but fairly bland kid so far and the various other girls that have come into play have done so too quickly, not allowing anyone to really stand out much beyond Sasara, and she’s not exactly the poster girl for characters you want to really wrap your head around at this time. It’s playing to familiar patterns but hasn’t etched out a place of its own yet, or a proper hook that makes it unique and not like a dozen other shows that we see every couple of years. Like all of those, it has potential, but it’s stumbled out of the gate and doesn’t look like it knows where to find its footing. It’ll be curious to see if it can make you start to really like and know the characters and care about what happens to them, but I suspect it’s got a lot of work to do there for that to happen.
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.
