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Category:    Home > Reviews > Anime > Animation > Comedy > Harem > Magic > Fantasy > Adventure > Japan > TV > Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite - Complete Collection (2004/Sentai DVD Set)/Rozen Maiden: Zuruckspulen - Complete Collection (2013/Sentai Blu-ray set)

Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite - Complete Collection (2004/Sentai DVD Set)/Rozen Maiden: Zuruckspulen - Complete Collection (2013/Sentai Blu-ray set)



Picture: B-/C+ Sound: C/B Extras: C/D Episodes: A-/B-



These latest Anime reviews have us revisiting previous releases...



Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite - Complete Collection


Taro just found out he is the heir to the Hanaukyo fortune and now lives in the Hanaukyo Mansion, a paradise with hundreds of maids ...all ready to serve him anything he needs. Now Taro lives daily with maids learning how to handle the various eccentric departments, personnel and department heads. And that not to mention his crush on the Head Maid Mariel. Does Taro have what it takes to be the Master of the Hanaukyo Maids?


Taro was just an ordinary middle school student until he found out his grandfather left a fortune and mansion to him with a whole army of maids for his own personal use. Hundreds of maids in each department all wanting to service their master (and wanting his personal affections). Taro has hundreds of maids he will never need, but he could never let go or fire them because they have no else to go.


This is your typical harem anime, a boy's wet dream to be surrounded by hundreds of pretty girls in maid outfits. All the maids serving their 'master' with body and soul. Sound and image are about the same as the separate DVD volume-ized versions we covered years ago...


V. 2

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2074/Hanaukyo+Maid+Team+La+Verite+(V.2/Anim%C3%


V. 3

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2362/Hanaukyo+Maid+Team+La+Verite+(V.3/Anim%C3%



Needless to say I like the content of the show more than our other writer. Extras include clean opening and closing animations and trailers. Episodes are...



How Do You Do, Master? - Taro meets the Hanaukyo Maids.


A 10-Game Match - Ryuka a rival family competes with Mariel for the right to marry Taro.


Cynthia and Grace - Taro learns of Grace and Cynthia who has a double personality.


Konoe Rises - Taro goes shopping with Konoe.


Ryuka Again - The Hanaukyo Maids attend a comic convention. Ryuka returns and joins the Maid teams.


Budget Contest - The Maid departments have a baseball contest for the annual Hanaukyo budget.


Unidentified Living Creature - Taro and the maids explore the secret underground dungeons beneath the Hanaukyo Mansion.


Woman in a Sports Car - Taro leaves the Mansion for a day and the maids get a day off. But who is the mysterious woman that Taro meets?


The First Date - Taro goes out on a date with Mariel.


Blue Silent Bell - Mariel falls in coma, but what is her secret? She was genetically created to be the perfect maid for Taro and gets taken for reconditioning.


Forced Entry - Taro and the Hanaukyo Maids vow to rescue and bring back their Mariel at any cost.


True Smile - Mariel returns and peace returns to the Hanaukyo Mansion. Taro doesn't care what what Mariel's origins are, only he and the Hanaukyo Maids are not complete without her.



Rosen Maiden: Zuruckspulen: Complete Collection



Now upgraded to Blu-ray, Jun one day receives a mysterious letter and suddenly receives Shinku, an antique doll which turns out to be alive. It is then he learns Shinku is part of the Rosen Maidens, 7 life-like dolls created to compete with each other in the 'Alice Games' for their Rosa Mysticas. But the wheels of fate are already in motion and have created another parallel world. In one possible future he choose to accept Shinku and enter the Alice Games. And in another world, he didn't choose to wind Shinku's key and they never met. Now, the future Jun (the one that didn't choose Shinku) start receiving messages from the past from his younger self asking him to help the Rozen Maidens and help himself return to the future that was meant to be.


Jun Sakurada is a total social recluse, rejecting the world for it's ugliness and refusing to be part of it. But when he suddenly receives text messages across time and parallel worlds. The younger version of himself (the one that choose to accept Shinku and the Rozen Maidens) needs the future version of himself to help to save the Rozen Maidens. The younger version of himself and the other Rozen Maidens were trapped in the N-zone. His future counterpart starts receiving parts of dolls to help recreate Shinku in the future to help battle the Alice Games. Shinku is then reborn his dimension, he discovers through her and her relationships with the other Rozen Maidens the Jun of the future starts believing in a single choice maybe can change a person's life.


This anime series is about a boy and his relationships with his dolls, it does a weird time travel with parallel world story. The dolls are symbolic of the main character's feminine side/feelings of caring (and the source of his angst) and conflict. The theme seems to be "it is better to love and lost than to never of loved at all" (or in this case, a for boy to be interested in playing with dolls). I explain more about the show as a franchise in my DVD review pf this set here...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13167/Rozen+Maiden:+Zuruckspulen+-+Complete+Collec


The 1080p 1.78 X 1 image is enough of an improvement over the DVD to recommend the upgrade, while the Japanese, lossless DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo (more so than the English version also included) just outdoes the DVD's sound, but only so much as the original recording was apparently sonically limited. Extras include clean opening and closing animations and trailers like the DVD, so no new extras here.



- Ricky Chiang


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