Romeo x Juliet

This was a struggle for me to plow through and definitely among one of Gonzo's weaker efforts. Romeo x Juliet attempts to go for a more fantasy-based approach to Shakespeare's tragic love story of feuding families and teens in love. Instead though, this series takes far too many liberties with the source material where it completely alters the basic concepts of the original play's storytelling. Rather than the Capulets and Montagues having a rivalry with one another and both sides shown to be in the wrong for their conflict, Romeo x Juliet depicts a black-and-white storyline with the Capulets being the "good" side and the ... Montagues being the "bad" side (done enough times), with the former being mostly killed off and the latter ruling the kingdom of Neo Verona with an iron fist. Whatever remnants there are of the Capulet family are leading a resistance movement against the Montagues' tyranny (name enough anime titles that pull this off) with Juliet unwillingly being the leader of said movement, especially as she comes to gain a love interest in Montague family heir Romeo.

My snarking in the parenthesis of the previous paragraph should clue you in what makes this take on Shakespeare's classic a major issue for me. It relies so heavily on cliches for its plot and character developments, that it's laughable. Romeo's the idealistic and courageous young boy, Lord Montague the merciless and power-hungry ruler, Tybalt the revenge-seeking loner, Mercutio the opportunistic power-snagger, and so forth. Basically, mostly everyone in the series is tacked on with an archetype and they don't really develop very much out of it. In addition, the characters tend to make very illogical decisions in many instances that the series tries playing up as dramatic yet come across more ridiculous, especially in the finale of the series. Only character I really found myself caring for was "Willy", whose foppish and flamboyant take on William Shakespeare provided some humor and sanity for me in this mess of a series.

Visuals were decent for the most part with vivid color and a good amount of visual detail applied for scenery and character designs. Action scenes were somewhat engaging with the implementation of Dragon Steeds used for travel and engaging into battles, though animation wasn't a major element in their use since many such scenes were flourishes and weren't relying on regular animation shortcuts. The dramatic musical score for the series is nice to listen to featuring orchestral pieces and a nice ballad from Korean singer Lena Park for an OP and insert song, though are quite overwhelming in their implementation at points during key scenes in the series.

Overall, I found Romeo x Juliet to be quite underwhelming. The anime tries being dramatic in its take on Shakespeare's tragic work, but takes too many liberties with its source material and dabbles into too many cliches to be a unique work compared to Gonzo's earlier effort with Gankutsuou. Definitely don't waste any time with this one.

I discovered this anime by listening to the theme song on an anime playlist I have saved on Youtube. The song is called "Inori" - which is the Japanese version of "You Raise Me Up", one of my favorite songs. This wasn't the first time I fell in love with a song from an anime that lead me into watching it ("Angel Beats!", "The World is Still Beautiful", "Uta no Prince Sama"). I dove into the anime and thought "what could go wrong?"

A lot of things apparently. 

First off, I had a really hard time keeping up with this anime because there were some times where it bored me ... half to death or a character did something pretty stupid. The only character I really enjoyed was Francisco who was one of Juliet's bodyguards. Another thing, Francisco and Curio were far better looking than Romeo, I'm surprised Juliet didn't fall in love with one of them before she met her forbidden lover. 

If anyone knows the original "Romeo and Juliet", you know that the two lovers are together at almost all times after they meet. In this spinoff, there were only about five episodes out of the twenty-four where Romeo and Juliet were actually together. That really annoyed because EVERYONE knows Romeo and Juliet as a ROMANCE TRADEGY, but it is very hard for the show to be romantic in any way if the two lovers are always separated. 

On top of that, the two characters who were supposed to be the comical relief characters weren't funny at all, just plain annoying. 

The ending was the worst of all. I know the creators wanted the anime to be a little different from the play, but I just thought the idea of what they came up with was pretty lame. We all know that in the end, Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, but the ending when they DID die was so rushed that I had no idea what was happening. The creators must have put zero thought into the ending given that everyone knows that both Romeo and Juliet die in the end. 

I decided to write this review, because today is that day that I finally dropped Romeo x Juliet. I made it to episode 22 of 24. Being very familiar with Shakespear's 'Romeo and Juliet' I wasn't sure whether it was worth watching, but it turned out not too similar to the original, so thats one good point. However, I think the storyline is a bit too ridiculous. When I finally got to the point where the ending was starting to unravel I just couldn't watch any longer. People who have no idea about Shakespear may like this, but for those who do: stay away!

This is my first time writing a review, although I have watched quite a lot of anime.
I just could not leave this alone without writing something to describe my utter disappointment (or more precisely, anger) toward this series. The villains (the duke and his guard/carabineri) are just so terribly one-dimensional and evil, it just makes zero sense and causes me to get angry every time they say/do something. All of their actions are simply just pure evil for the sole purpose of being evil without any reason whatsoever. Case in point: when they go looking for Romeo, who has disappeared without reason, they learn he ... passed through some village. So what do the carabineri do? They take all of the villagers as prisoners, and start BURNING DOWN THEIR HOUSES - just because Romeo happened to pass though the village at some point before. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? Throughout the whole show, the Duke and his guards/carabineri treat all other people in such a despicable and evil way, it just makes no sense to me ... these are supposed to be their subjects, they have committed no crimes, and suddenly the big masters come and start shitting on them for no logical reason whatsoever.
This kept happening over and over in the show to the point where I could no longer tolerate it and just dropped it because it got way too ridiculous in the way of the villains being just plain evil and one-dimensional.

Well, to start... I was in the mood to watch romance, once in a while, so I just picked randomly.

I already seen Gankutsuou... I didn't expect this to be a close version of the piece anyway, but this.is.genius. It's just as non-european as it possible for a european setting. That was the only thing entertaining me all 24 eps. Starting from gestures and etiquette and ending with philosophy.
The plot... Well, what's with it again? Yep, they took a piece and put it into a shredder. One family killed the other. But the heiress survived. Now, begone, old tyrant. I was more enjoying analyzing ... the probable outcome of Lord Montague social politics if it was happening in real life than actually following the second part of story... Something with tree of life. Yeah. Those who died, died. Those who didn't bothered, lived happily ever after in a candyland. Why taking story on a floating island, no idea. Nothing could possibly change if it was happening on the Earth surface. But then again, it's anime. Everything is fancier with winged horses. Makes me wonder, why no one bothered to bring on a katana, because everything is even more exciting with it. Oh, and battle scenes are epic. In a kind when character can make a long-term speech while other swing a sword. And the first one still get to dodge after finishing.
Not like I'm a Shakespeare fan. I've only read the original story once, back when I was a teen. But while watching, I really wanted to open the book and search through to finally understand where the hell they took that weird cast from. The author avatar *Willy* was the most annoying thing ever... To the point of not being funny annoying. Srsly, get some respect to the writer maybe?
I'm not the one to judge the soundtrack, but well... It was at least bearable. No earworms. No dissonance. Rarely noticeable, actually. I'm fine with it tho.
So, in the end:
"+" Pretty funny story that doesn't affect brain. Everything you would expect from a typical shojo anime (SIC!) in fantasy-Middle-age entourage. No unpredictable turns... But then again, no desire to try and predict something. What politics? What war? What plot? Hey, they look so sweet together.
"-" If cliché put you in a bad mood, you'd better not to come close... If you're thinking when you're watching, avoid this of all costs. And hey, their logic makes you facepalm so hard. I nearly broke my nerdy glasses doing so.

This could have been a lot better. The first few episodes were great but it had it's problems it seem they would fix these over time they don't. The story doesn't follow the original material so read the book not manga. The main bad guy looked to be OP and looked like the "good guys" had no shot. Also the bad guy is awful to everyone including the rich noway he would have stayed in power for that long. Also the bad guys look unrealistic they are cartoonish evil. There a supernatural elements which i won't spoiled but it ... not necessary and comes out of nowhere. I have no idea if this is earth. Another problem is the characters don't improve. Romeo is weak and timed and I have no idea if Romeo is straight because he seem to like weak boys Juliet passes for a boy when her hair is up so I can see why Romeo liked her. Romeo can't stand up to his father even after his father tired to killed someone he knows. Juliet makes mistakes in the whole series that is ok because she is 16 the problem is she seem to have multiple persona disorder because she doen't know if she wants to be a hero for the city or go be a house wife to romeo in the forrest. She also forgave the man that killed her whole family after she tired to kill him. Shame could have been a top tier anime shame.