The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

stop her growing up, in an effort to keep her in his memory as a perpetually
beautiful, pristine, doll-like woman-child. Her rescue comes in the form of
Eiri, a twenty-first-century young man who also falls in love with her image,
which only he can see in the antique glass. It is his love that releases her
from captivity. However, fuelled by a vengeful spirit and the search for
justice regarding Marcello’s ill treatment of her, for his fetishisation of her
image and her subsequent death at his hands, Cossette coerces Eiri into
making a “pact of blood”, whereby she uses his body as a surrogate for
Marcello’s, cruelly torturing and inflicting pain on him, which he must
endure in order to earn her love. If he can withstand the punishment he will
become worthy of her love and she will be able to reclaim a love
relationship on her own terms.
As with Cossette, Shinku of Rozen Maiden takes complete, dominant
control over a male protagonist. In this series the leading characters,
including Shinku, are violent, warring, Gothloli dolls who come to life and
take revenge. Shinku desires not to be an actual doll, an inanimate object or
a plaything for others, in this case again for a male figure, but to be taken
seriously as a real girl. In order for her to win the prize of becoming “Alice”,
or a human Lolita, she must beat and literally slay all other dolls at the
“Alice” game. The male character is Jun, a young man known as an otaku,
which in Japan is someone addicted to manga-graphic novels, anime, action
figures, character figurines, comics and the internet, and often thus
associated with the viewing of lolicon and hentai. Although the suggestion of
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