3ET: Fantasista Doll

"I'm sad because I'm sad."

Studio: Hoods Entertainment

Director: Saitou Hisashi (Bamboo Blade, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai)

Main Cast: Ohashi Ayaka as Uzume Uno, Tsada Minami as Sasara, Tokui Sora as Katia, Akasaki Chinatsu as Shimeji, Oohara Sayaka as Madeline, Hasegawa Akiko as Akari

Writer: Kakihara Yuuko (Persona 4: The Animation, Chihayafuru 2) and Kimura Noboru (Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo?)

Music: Takanashi Yasuharu (Fairy Tail, Naruto: Shippuden)



I can't say I hate Fantasista Doll. That would imply that it made me feel enough emotion to hate it. I failed it, but I fail a lot of shows. That doesn't mean I necessarily hate them, just that I don't want to watch them. So, what can I say about Fantasista Doll? I'll say that has no plot. That it's boring. That I can't think of an audience for it. Sure, those are things to go on. I'll go with that.

When I say there isn't a plot, I mean that I can't find a reason for all of the things that are happening. Uno is a girl who played a children's card game, won a tournament and is now into the twilight of her life as a middle-school student. She finds a phone that can summon living dolls to fight for her and fights things because they are there. Seriously, I can't remember a point to any of these battles, Uno just runs into someone else's dolls, summons her dolls, they fight, and there isn't anything of consequence. And there needs to be a reason for a battle to take place, something at stake, or there isn't a reason for me to care.

I... whatever.

Without a reason to care about the battles in the show, the rest is a dull mess. Uno and her harem of anime girl archetypes spend a lot of time arguing over nothing. Oh, she is too shy to tell her friend she doesn't like horror movies, totally a reason for one doll to spend half the episode angry at her. And so on, and so forth ad nauseum. Uno herself is an unremarkable girl who does nothing to make us cheer for her. She stands around being confused most of the time, having to be told what to do by the dolls.

And this all would make sense if this were a children's show. And I wouldn't be as annoyed by it if it were made for kids. But, it's not. Kids shows don't have scenes where the girls sit around for five minutes in transparent clothing so the audience can ogle the boobs. I mean, I know Japan likes their casual nudity, but there is a difference between kids in a bath and the sadly normal objectification of women this show pulls off. Which leads me to conclude that there isn't an audience for this show, which is borne out in that it's 21st out of 22 shows as far as viewers go on MAL.

His name is Fabulous-kun. Because fuck you, that's why.

With that in mind, I don't have much else to say about this except for the one thing that perked my interest. The fabulous Tuxedo Mask-type character who shows up to give Uno flowers at the end of the first episode. More of him would have helped, or at least kept my attention better than the rest of this dreck. And, yeah, there is nothing else to say about this show. I'm moving on.