Paris no Isabelle

When I was a child my uncle told me that when he was in college, he and his roommates, after a milk puking accident and a series of subsequent lab experiments, had discovered cheese. He told me that the only reason he’s not being paid licensing fees from all over the world, is because filling in the form to file his patent seemed like too much work at the time. In hindsight I can clearly tell this was a lie. I mean, my uncle went to college in the early 80s, but this anime from the late 70s has cheese written all over it. It ... was upon realizing this however, that my mind went in a completely different direction. Reader, may I ask you: have you ever seen a cheesy 70s anime? I hadn’t before this point. Surely some old-fags stumbled into some cheesy nonsense back in the day, some over the top super robot shows or whatnot, but the 70s shows that newer anime fans are getting into are usually a little too tasteful to put on a cracker half its own thickness. The only reason why I even watched this show is because Old castle, a group that had already subbed a few classic shoujo before this, had just started subbing this when I discovered them. Little would I know what a crazy ride I was in for. I don’t think they knew either.

In a way it almost makes too much sense: but a couple months before ‘A Rose of Versailles’ would hit television, one of the most iconic, classic anime of all time, based on an already popular manga and set during the early days of the French revolution, this anime would come out, set during a much shorter, much less well known French revolution, and just so, this anime would be much shorter and much more forgotten. Does it deserve to be forgotten? Well, kinda. I don’t think anyone is going to watch this anime and come out of it lamenting the fact that more people don’t know about it. But anyone who does delve into it, thinking it’s going to be boring and only barely coherently watchable, is likely to be pleasantly surprised.

Before World War 1 there were but two examples of major, modern warfare: The American Civil War and the Franco Prussian War of 1870. It is often argued that the nation states of Europe at the onset of the Great War wrongfully looked at the latter of these two conflicts to figure out what war was going to be like in the 20th century. Despite that, though this war seemed like any old war of glory on the German side, the French didn’t experience it this way and this anime is not afraid to show the horrors of modern warfare and to quench the fantasy of glory. Despite being a somewhat silly show, its setting is filled with bloody battlefields, angry populations and corrupt nobles. The silliness of the show comes from the fact that this serious war drama is held up by a backbone of cheesy, girly drama and a bit of fun, over the top, boyish action.

Considering the amount of historical young adult novels from the seventies I read as a kid, all of which were about tomboyish main characters, I feel right at home watching this show. Isabelle is all I could dare ask for as the main character of a show like this. Right at the intersection between childhood and adulthood, Isabelle is finally starting to appreciate the value of femininity, yet right when she finally wishes to join noble society Paris is disturbed by the nearing of an enemy German army and her family is almost torn apart. What makes her work so well is the fact that she is a very tough cookie. She doesn’t cower away in the corner when something dangerous is happening, but actively participates in the action. She stands up for what she cares for and is not shy for sharing her opinions, but she’s still somewhat naive at times. In the second half of the show she goes on an adventure with her weakling of a side-kick Jean and her chemistry with him is a lot of what makes the show for me.

Similarly to A Rose of Versailles the beginning part of this show forgoes the military conflict at hand for courtly melodrama, which might put off some people. Just like in Versailles, I do think this part of the show goes on a bit too long, which is strange, because the rest of the show is constantly moving. The rest of the show goes from action bit to action bit, from location to location, never lingering in any location for too long before moving to the next and that’s probably what kept it fun for me. There were a few parts of the show that got me kinda bored, but it always picked back up pretty quickly and despite the low production quality, the action was usually pretty exciting. The action wasn’t all the same stuff either. There were parts where they ran away from the Prussian army, there were sword fights, there was an action scene in a balloon, they had everything. There were parts where an immortal, unintelligent Frankenstein’s monster went after them and just wouldn’t die, goddammit!. You know... all the regular action movie stuff.

The production quality is probably the wonkiest part of this already super wonky production. There’s a lot of awkward of even downright bad looking shots in this show and the fact that it manages to make the action work despite that is pretty impressive. Because this is a seventies show, however, the way that it is wonky is completely different from a modern show that’s made of a shoestring budget consisting of whatever coins they could find in the directors couch. Modern shows often save their animation effort for scenes that deserve it. Even high budget shows will often look somewhat stale outside of action scenes. Maybe you’d get a few head bobs here or there, but modern anime rarely go through the trouble of animating something inane, like pulling back a chair. But seventies anime do that sort of stuff all the time, even when the animation comes out looking like it was someone’s first cut they ever drew. And I have to give my respect for that. Sure a modern anime might use what it has more effectively, but it’s nice sometimes to see small stuff like that being animated and to see animation being spread out over the episode. Even if that means we also get to see lots of awkward cuts, wonky perspective shots and one shot where the left half of some guy’s face looked like it belonged to another person... Oh God what have they done to that poor old man’s face?!

The music on the other hand is pretty good. Half the score consists of piano tunes by Chopin, which I instantly recognized, because I had just watched Piano no Mori when I was watching the show, which has an entire season-and-a-half long arc about a Chopin piano competition. The other half of the score is generic anime orchestral music, which, I have to say, was pretty darn good. There were a few moments in this show where I went: “Hey, this music is pretty good”, which I’d be pretty proud of if some random guy on the internet said that about a piece of music that I made 40 years ago. Nothing is greater than having a scene be elevated by the selection of a good, fitting tune, rather than the background music being there for the sake of itself and this show nails that, sometimes. Also the show has two openings: one for the show and one for the block. And the OP for the block doesn’t fit the tone of the show at all. Ya gotta love that.

So I started writing this review, about a month ago, with a whole sketch about how cheesy it was. And yeah, depending on your definition of the word ‘dairy’ this show is pretty cheesy in a quite few ways, but, like, I don’t actually have anything to say about that. There were times where I was enjoying the fact that the show was so silly more that the show itself, but there were also parts where the show was genuinely moving or exciting. Even if the show is more shaky than my body after I do five push-ups, it still manages to do a lot of things right to make up for its failures. I honestly wasn’t expecting to give this show anything higher than a 6 when I went into it, but it really hustled for its money. Whenever I was getting bored it tried something different, every time I thought the show was out of tricks something insane happened. And it’s short too, only 13 episodes. It’s not super hard to pick this show up on a whim, spend an afternoon watching it and come out of it thinking: “huh, yeah. That random mal reviewer was right. This show really is slightly better than expected.”

Anyways I’m gonna go back to doing what I was doing before, which is listening to the Aikatsu song ‘Love Game’ on repeat, which I was already doing, but I’m gonna continue doing that now Bye.

Few people have heard of Isabelle of Paris, and not without reason. In fact, I am convinced that if it was not for the cultic Rose of Versailles manga getting its just as cultic anime adaptation that same year, noone would have bothered making this show. But it was made and their inspiration is evident: the heroine of both shows is a woman stepping outside the confines of what is seen as proper behaviour by taking on a more active and vocal role in their own lives and public events, going as far as fighting with a sword etc. Both have a love interest who ... has been present since childhood. But the tone and structure of the two tragedies differ so much, only the location of Paris and the period of major turmoil termed a revolution is what stays the same.

The problem with Isabelle is firstly that they don't dwell on the story at large, but only move from point A to B and in this all characters are secondary to the plot; everybody merely reacts to events, the story is fragmented and lacks cohesion or a proper theme. It is also drawn poorly and animated in a bad way. When there's dancing, they skip frames but the wrong ones so the legs just teleport about weirdly. Even the title card wears the name Isabell [sic] where the two letters L are given in different typefaces. However the many action scenes can be entertaining; a good few feature a minor character named Karlov, a la Boris Karloff of old Hollywood monster movie fame. This is when it becomes clear that this is in fact the kind of cartoon where it is only natural that the antagonist has a clearly green face.

But where the show is strongest is melodramatic tragedy - dynamic and colourful still panes slowly moving across the screen as Chopin plays with great virtuosity! I do not joke, the still pane is an art, and Isabelle uses it well. But that is all. Our heroine is just a girl from Paris who survives all these turbulent and tragic events, without a proper story of her own. She isn't a great sword-wielding hero, nor a cunning spy, not even a rebellious youth who takes on the establishment or the patriarchy - other, also episodal characters more readily take on these roles. So in retrospect, Isabelle tried to tell the grand story of revolution and loss, but couldn't decide who's story to tell. And here we are with all these events that don't really make a story. But this is a short series - you can watch it before you watch Rose of Versailles, it will make you appreciate it more. Watching it after only made Isabelle look worse in comparison.

No Spoilers.

So I made it nine episodes deep before I dropped it. I'll admit, I did enjoy watching it to an extent, but mostly because I would have to pause the show to recover from gut-busting laughter at just how bad it actually is. There's almost nothing redeemable about this show. I love anime from this period, and rated other anime in a similar vein quite highly, but this one was just the worst. The characters are all either flat or annoying, and the plot and just everything, it's just a mess. The kind of over-the-top dramaticism that is performed ... like an elegant high dive in Rose of Versailles is attempted here and executed with the grace of a hog cast off the cliffs of Dover. This anime is only suitable to watch to marvel at just how bad it is. There really were a good number of moments where I was crying from laughing so hard at it, I'll give it that.