Things I like more than I should: anime
So, Romeo x Juliet, in which Shakespeare becomes an anime and won't let us forget it. We might drift off for a while, then WHAM: BITCH, THIS IS JAPAN. For my part, that moment was Tybalt's entrance.
We're probably talking about the only version of Romeo and Juliet that needs a full summary to be truly comprehended: Young Juliet is raised as a boy for reasons she does not know, and has taken up the task of heroically protecting the citizens of Neo Verona from the abuse of the police guard. Juliet fights disguised as "The Red Whirlwind", and becomes an eyesore of Leontes Montague, the less-than-sympathetic Prince. Plot starts when two things happen: Juliet meets and falls for Montague's son, the gentle Romeo. And Juliet learns that she is the daughter of Capulet, the previous ruler who Montague murdered as he usurped the throne. Also: Pegasuses.
Anime Shakespeare is obviously not even trying for a faithful adaptation here, so let it be said once and for all: don't go to this series if you want a rehash of the play. The only scenes that are retained is the meeting at the party and the balcony scene, and the meeting isn't their first meeting and the balcony scene takes place in the morning, in a convent, in the room of Romeo's estranged mother. The most obvious difference is that Romeo and Juliet have switched parts: Romeo is the one hanging around the castle answering the news of his arranged marriage with "oh! Uh, yes, father", while the one running around getting into brawls is Juliet. To the point where I heard her speaking at least one line that is his in the play. And yes, pegasuses and a grand resistance battle and HER FATHER'S SWORD and the end of the world. You know, anime. 2/3 of the anime cast are from outside the play, and the ones from the play have kept their names but little else, not even their main function in the plot. Tybalt is Juliet's blood-thirsty relative, but let's just say that that has nothing to do with his part in the story.
Since the anime departs so very much from the play in terms of storyline, it has a lot less wacky suicide, but a bundle of Tree of Life and Fate in Ancient Covenants that sure as hell isn't in the stage version. This makes for what is the most glaring problem with the story, namely that the climax comes two episodes before the end. I'm also sure it can be discussed how well that ending truly works in comparison to that of the play, since there is an ocean of thematic and narrative difference between them.
Story quality except for that, then: fun adventure, sweet love story, predictable as all hell but pulled off very well. The characters are shallow and none of them get any depth added. There was a total of one character whose outcome honestly surprised me - Mercutio (and even he probably shouldn't). There was a total of one character who wasn't a fairly standard anime type - Benvolio (this is mainly because his personality consists of not hitting himself on the head with a broom). It looks gorgeous except for your occasionally unfortunate animation frames, the music is beautiful, the characters are lovable and come on, it takes place on a flying island. It doesn't take much more to win me over. One particular element to mention here is the dub, which isn't outstanding in itself - this became distractingly clear when I watched an episode in Japanese and switched the audio track for comparison. However, a lot of the dub is written in Shakesparean manner, which distracts from both the notably not-quite-there voice work in English, and from the fact that there is a lot of very, very predictable lines in this series. The use of English in the dub gives the series a very unique atmosphere that isn't there in Japanese, and it tricks me into thinking that the story is more remarkable than it actually is.
The series is generally very well paced, but it has its odd moments, and most of those fall to Romeo. It might be because the title demands his presence and it might be some odd gender double standard: the problem is that Juliet carries the entire story, and Romeo is delegated hang around in the fringes and occasionally help her out (that is, when they're not having their Moments of Impossible Love). His actions are simply not as important as hers, and the story's attempts to give him a development mirroring hers just don't work out. This is where you find the greatest weakness I see in the story: the attempts at making Romeo as central as Juliet, in combination with the attempts at making the story span something more than Juliet reclaiming her throne. The first gives us a couple of weird and at times painfully clichéd episodes mid-series, while the latter kicks in towards the end, when Juliet's story ends but then it continues into another plot that was foreshadowed but never enough to make, you know, thematic sense in the story. There is something beautiful in the ending, but it is very out-of-nowhere and the story has me making up explanations that I shouldn't have to.
The educated question is if the anime interacts with the play on any level beyond borrowing the names and some very basic plot elements. I hesitate to name myself as a person with any authority to speak about this, but in my opinion: no, it doesn't. I only read the play after watching the anime, but I saw the version with Leonardo diCaprio fairly recently and recognised a number of lines lifted from the play through that one. It's futile to make any serious comparisons on the plot level, but I'll admit to liking the anime better because I can't appreciate Shakespeare for his language, and at least the love story isn't as incomprehensible as in the play (a brief internet search suggests that the complete dumb of Romeo and Juliet's relationship went over with the original audience because the lovers are Italians, and people knew what Italians are like before Hetalia, too). A lot of minor characters-that-weren't-in-the-play are named from other of Shakespeare's characters, without me being able to tell how intentional the naming is or isn't (Ariel as the powerful-yet-disabled patron of the arts that aides the displaced hero back to her rightful throne? IDE). However: The Shakespeare plays I've read are The Tempest and Macbeth, and both of them have tiny, but tangible presences in Romeo x Juliet - and I'm not talking about the occasional Shakespearean references that at least the dub made with varying degrees of success.
Of course, I would argue that Romeo x Juliet shouldn't need to justify its existence even if it claims a heritage that it does little to prove. It works excellently on its own and would debatably have worked even better if certain plot elements that were carried over had been left behind. Meaningful intertextuality would demand a kind of depth that this anime simply doesn't have. And anyway, Shakespeare is interesting today mainly because of the gigantic impact he has made on western literary history, not because his plays can mean the same things to an audience today as they did to an audiences before the Enlightenment. Anime is a modern medium, and I honestly don't think that an anime version that was entirely faithful to the play would ever have made it on air. Anyone wanting to argue can come back after I've been convinced that Disney is going to make a Princess Film that sticks to the formula of the fairy-tales on which they are based.
We're probably talking about the only version of Romeo and Juliet that needs a full summary to be truly comprehended: Young Juliet is raised as a boy for reasons she does not know, and has taken up the task of heroically protecting the citizens of Neo Verona from the abuse of the police guard. Juliet fights disguised as "The Red Whirlwind", and becomes an eyesore of Leontes Montague, the less-than-sympathetic Prince. Plot starts when two things happen: Juliet meets and falls for Montague's son, the gentle Romeo. And Juliet learns that she is the daughter of Capulet, the previous ruler who Montague murdered as he usurped the throne. Also: Pegasuses.
Anime Shakespeare is obviously not even trying for a faithful adaptation here, so let it be said once and for all: don't go to this series if you want a rehash of the play. The only scenes that are retained is the meeting at the party and the balcony scene, and the meeting isn't their first meeting and the balcony scene takes place in the morning, in a convent, in the room of Romeo's estranged mother. The most obvious difference is that Romeo and Juliet have switched parts: Romeo is the one hanging around the castle answering the news of his arranged marriage with "oh! Uh, yes, father", while the one running around getting into brawls is Juliet. To the point where I heard her speaking at least one line that is his in the play. And yes, pegasuses and a grand resistance battle and HER FATHER'S SWORD and the end of the world. You know, anime. 2/3 of the anime cast are from outside the play, and the ones from the play have kept their names but little else, not even their main function in the plot. Tybalt is Juliet's blood-thirsty relative, but let's just say that that has nothing to do with his part in the story.
Since the anime departs so very much from the play in terms of storyline, it has a lot less wacky suicide, but a bundle of Tree of Life and Fate in Ancient Covenants that sure as hell isn't in the stage version. This makes for what is the most glaring problem with the story, namely that the climax comes two episodes before the end. I'm also sure it can be discussed how well that ending truly works in comparison to that of the play, since there is an ocean of thematic and narrative difference between them.
Story quality except for that, then: fun adventure, sweet love story, predictable as all hell but pulled off very well. The characters are shallow and none of them get any depth added. There was a total of one character whose outcome honestly surprised me - Mercutio (and even he probably shouldn't). There was a total of one character who wasn't a fairly standard anime type - Benvolio (this is mainly because his personality consists of not hitting himself on the head with a broom). It looks gorgeous except for your occasionally unfortunate animation frames, the music is beautiful, the characters are lovable and come on, it takes place on a flying island. It doesn't take much more to win me over. One particular element to mention here is the dub, which isn't outstanding in itself - this became distractingly clear when I watched an episode in Japanese and switched the audio track for comparison. However, a lot of the dub is written in Shakesparean manner, which distracts from both the notably not-quite-there voice work in English, and from the fact that there is a lot of very, very predictable lines in this series. The use of English in the dub gives the series a very unique atmosphere that isn't there in Japanese, and it tricks me into thinking that the story is more remarkable than it actually is.
The series is generally very well paced, but it has its odd moments, and most of those fall to Romeo. It might be because the title demands his presence and it might be some odd gender double standard: the problem is that Juliet carries the entire story, and Romeo is delegated hang around in the fringes and occasionally help her out (that is, when they're not having their Moments of Impossible Love). His actions are simply not as important as hers, and the story's attempts to give him a development mirroring hers just don't work out. This is where you find the greatest weakness I see in the story: the attempts at making Romeo as central as Juliet, in combination with the attempts at making the story span something more than Juliet reclaiming her throne. The first gives us a couple of weird and at times painfully clichéd episodes mid-series, while the latter kicks in towards the end, when Juliet's story ends but then it continues into another plot that was foreshadowed but never enough to make, you know, thematic sense in the story. There is something beautiful in the ending, but it is very out-of-nowhere and the story has me making up explanations that I shouldn't have to.
The educated question is if the anime interacts with the play on any level beyond borrowing the names and some very basic plot elements. I hesitate to name myself as a person with any authority to speak about this, but in my opinion: no, it doesn't. I only read the play after watching the anime, but I saw the version with Leonardo diCaprio fairly recently and recognised a number of lines lifted from the play through that one. It's futile to make any serious comparisons on the plot level, but I'll admit to liking the anime better because I can't appreciate Shakespeare for his language, and at least the love story isn't as incomprehensible as in the play (a brief internet search suggests that the complete dumb of Romeo and Juliet's relationship went over with the original audience because the lovers are Italians, and people knew what Italians are like before Hetalia, too). A lot of minor characters-that-weren't-in-the-play are named from other of Shakespeare's characters, without me being able to tell how intentional the naming is or isn't (Ariel as the powerful-yet-disabled patron of the arts that aides the displaced hero back to her rightful throne? IDE). However: The Shakespeare plays I've read are The Tempest and Macbeth, and both of them have tiny, but tangible presences in Romeo x Juliet - and I'm not talking about the occasional Shakespearean references that at least the dub made with varying degrees of success.
Of course, I would argue that Romeo x Juliet shouldn't need to justify its existence even if it claims a heritage that it does little to prove. It works excellently on its own and would debatably have worked even better if certain plot elements that were carried over had been left behind. Meaningful intertextuality would demand a kind of depth that this anime simply doesn't have. And anyway, Shakespeare is interesting today mainly because of the gigantic impact he has made on western literary history, not because his plays can mean the same things to an audience today as they did to an audiences before the Enlightenment. Anime is a modern medium, and I honestly don't think that an anime version that was entirely faithful to the play would ever have made it on air. Anyone wanting to argue can come back after I've been convinced that Disney is going to make a Princess Film that sticks to the formula of the fairy-tales on which they are based.