While we’re on the topic, let’s not forget how comparing what was meant to be an hour-long (perhaps one and a half, two?) play to a television series adaptation spanning a likely 26 episodes, is ridiculous. I mean, ridiculous on a scale of comparing all twelve volumes of Death Note to the two 45+ minute movie adaptations and gnashing your teeth while going “THEY TOTALLY SHAFTED THE FANS, I WANT MY MELLO/NEAR/OBSCURE SIDE CHARACTER/ANIME-EXCLUSIVE YAOI FOOT WASHING SCENE”. So let’s not get into that.

Since we’re going for the jugular, why not stop too with the Gonzo bashing for a second to realise that, shock and horror: judging an anime based on its predecessors’ performance, and the animation studio responsible for said predecessors, is pretty dumb. No, maybe exceedingly blind is a better way of putting it. If you thought the KyoAni fans were bad enough, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a victim of shoddy plot, form over function, exceedingly short-sighted expectations, and jaded cynicism — the Gonzo hater.

I’ll be honest and go out on a limb here to say that hating an animation studio because of its past, and present works failing miserably is quite the immature opinion. Not pointing fingers at nobody, just sayin’. That’s like hating Germany and all its Germans for giving Hitler to the world. Just wanted to put that aside.

Is it obvious, then, that I loved every bit of Romeo x Juliet? This is, in my book, the other clear winner of this season’s selection, putting aside Darker than Black for a moment. Let’s get back to the topic of adaptations that I mentioned at the beginning — they’ve gotten this down to a science, Gonzo has. An adaptation should remain that — just an adaptation. It doesn’t mean that it simply has to follow the original bit by bit if the medium used to project it differs from the original in terms of length or method of presentation — a lot of creative license and common sense should be applied instead.

For the record, I hated the Death Note movies. Gag-inducing and a decadent waste of those three hours of my life, if only for the fact that I read the entire manga beforehand. The problem with adaptations is that the day 1 fans always feel like they got the short end of the stick. Emphasis here on feel. I’m sure that out there somewhere, despite Peter Jackson’s efforts, that there’s a Tolkien fan that felt LOTR needed more elves. Or, regardless of how powerful and lump-in-the-throat inducing the Spiderman movies were, there’s one of them comic buffs wondering how did Parker shot web without that wrist-attachment things he was supposed to invent. You can’t please everybody.

So the old fan will never be satisfied. But what about the new one? Moving Spiderman away from the immense archive of convoluted story arcs lacking a coherent meta-narrative into the immediately accessible sphere of cinema brought about many a new fan, and rekindled old ones to the simplistic charm that held them in the beginning. Bringing Death Note out of its bloated dialogue, and twisted reasoning rooted in cold logic in order to water it down to resemble a cat-and-mouse trailer warmed it to the masses immediately. Honey & Clover, moving and hilarious with its equal parts emotional honesty and situational humour, was made to show the finest points of its brilliance under two hours.

That’s an adaptation for you — not necessarily taking away per se, but removing the barrier that prevents more than just its original audience from picking it up. And this is what Romeo x Juliet is doing, with a quiet, urgent spin on the tale we’ve all come to know and moan about. The epitome of true love. A tragedy wearing its finest.

this is the way the show ends — not with a double suicide, but a TRUE END.

Watching Romeo x Juliet hit me with wave after wave of nostalgia. I’m probably the only anime blogger in existence that actually triumphs The Vision of Escaflowne as one of the best anime ever due to its high production values. The concept here a carefully honed aesthetic that permeates every inch of the anime and turns it into an experience. This is what drove me to watch it more than once, to buy the soundtrack CDs and fanboy endlessly about it — a perfect blend of shoujo and shonen, mecha and drama, tragedy and folklore. Romeo x Juliet’s only missing the mecha.

Even the opening sequence resembles the best of two classics. A foreboding text narrative introduction reminiscent of Star Wars? It’s there. A beginning steeped in tragedy with an entire family massacred, not unlike Harry Potter? Ditto. Then before you know it it’s all over, and the OP begins, a delicate rendition of Josh Groban’s.

This proceeds to set the mood for the entire episode, if not series — the harsh images in the opening and the soft, feminine vocals of the OP, which ultimately end with a montage of our hero and heroine lying in a field of flowers, provide a sharp contrast that serves to jolt the viewer out of any preconceptions they might have had. Immediately the viewer is hooked — they think they know the ending, but since the Capulet massacre and Neo Verona have thrown it out of whack, the only other reasonable explanation is for them to take what they see, and hope for a happy ending.

It’s been thought that Romeo and Juliet was all about the romance, yet we’re proven wrong again. The episode begins with what, an alleyway chase? With a mysteriously masked Zorro-like swashbuckler saving an innocent girl from authoritarian tyranny? But I thought you said it was romance, sputters a bewildered now-fan. He hasn’t fully understood what he’s gotten himself into.

Because this is an experience — the consistently detailed animation that demands your attention. The background music that pulls you in like a proper soundtrack should, and leaves you gasping for more in aural ecstasy. The consistent pacing and unconventional premise. And then there’s the world itself. I’ve always had a soft spot for the in-between, something that isn’t quite sci-fi but isn’t quite fantasy, isn’t quite medieval but isn’t quite modern either. The bastard child of steampunk and cyberpunk. Neo Verona fills the shoes of that requirement pretty well — isn’t that a Victorian setting? No, no, it looks more Last Exile to me than anythi- wait, flying horses? When was the last time a setting like this could hold your interest for so long? This is madness…

…this is Gonzo. What were the self-appointed prophets mouthing about them, again? I don’t know. I forget. In the end the only thing that matters to me is how well they’re going to go about this interpretation of The Bard’s work, and they couldn’t have chosen a better way to go about it. I remember Vandread pretty well, Gonzo; I remember the gripping battles above and aboard the Nirvana, the poignance that juggled comedy and drama; I remember hope and loss in a universe of Star Trek proportions; I remember you making a little something that made the teenage me go “wow” with wonder and awe.

The adult me just went “wow” again, and a lot more breath certainly went into that one. Forget the generalizations and accusations levelled against you, all that rubbish about “selling out” was just trashy fan sentiment. You’ve come full circle. Tonight, we dine on quality.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 8:06 am and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Related Posts by Tags

• sola? More like so lame, why can’t this be like R x J blah blah bitch bitch whineee
• March Comes in Like a Rigardo
• What is a magnum opus? The beginning of Gurren-Lagann
• kimikiss pure rouge 04 - short stories about their distance
• Juxtaposing Bokurano and Claymore: The point of adaptations
• Pride Comes Before A… Fall 2007 Previews: Dragons, Magic, Mecha
• Pride Comes Before A… Fall 2007 Previews: The Tsundere/Tarzan theory