Romeo x Juliet

On the floating continent of Neo Verona, the Montague family slaughters the entire Capulet family and seizes control of the kingdom. The true heir to the throne, Juliet Fiammata Asto Capulet, manages to escape the onslaught and is hidden away by loyalists for 14 years with hope that she may one day overthrow the cruel Montague regime.

Despite having forgotten the murder of her entire family, Juliet now secretly protects the oppressed citizens of Neo Verona as a vigilante called the Red Whirlwind. During one of her escapades she meets Romeo Candorebanto Montague, the kind and selfless son of the tyrannical Prince Laertes Montague, and without knowledge of each other's background, they both fall in love at first sight.

Unfortunately, however, their destiny is a cursed one: not only does each of the two families wish to obliterate the other, but an ancient secret hidden beneath Neo Verona also threatens their undying love for each other. Will they be able to defy the stars, or is this truly a love that can never be?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Capulet, Juliet Fiammata Asto Main

Mizusawa, Fumie Japanese

Montague, Romeo Candorebanto Main

Mizushima, Daichuu Japanese

Tybalt Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Francisco Supporting

Nojima, Hirofumi Japanese

William Supporting

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Curio Supporting

Toriumi, Kousuke Japanese

de Frescobaldi, Benvolio Supporting

Tachibana, Shinnosuke Japanese

Cordelia Supporting

Matsuki, Miyu Japanese

Antonio Supporting

Hirohashi, Ryou Japanese

Emilia Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Oizaki, Fumitoshi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Satou, Junichi Sound Director, Storyboard

Yoshida, Tomohiro Sound Director

Reviews

Apr 18, 2008

kahhwee

Recommended

What can we expect from a title that says Romeo x Juliet? Probably a cheesy and draggy remade version of the original story that has no dept whatsoever.

But I was utterly wrong. Simply bear in mind that this is the Anime Version of Romeo and Juliet, and expect what you'll expect from most anime for eg, fantasy. I'm no fan of Shakespear's work but I do know the general outline of the story and the important scenes such as the balcony which audience will get to enjoy during the course of the series (although I'm guilty of laughing at that part).

Story wise - ... Firstly, I'm very impressed by the various climax and exciting moments in this series. The first 10 episodes or so will keep you on your toes while tugging your emotions along with the sweet and tragic moments of our main characters. Following episodes then mellow down, and just when I thought it's gonna get boring here forth the story picks up again and you just have to keep watching. ie. damn high priority. However, you may find yourself with a big "huh?!" at the last few eps. Yes there's where the Fantasy kicks in although if you have watched enough anime, you'll know that this is a typical storyline and thus befitting for this series as well. In general, the story was well remade for an anime indeed.

Art - The style may be a little hard to stomach for some but fret not, you'll get used to it in 1 or 2 episodes' time. The background was beautiful in some scenes especially the extensive flower beds. In fact, during the course of watching this series, I actually felt that it's well drawn because the characters doesn't have oversized eyes (or boobs) or overly skinny limbs, unlike some other animes.

Sound - Needless to say, the opening is one where you'll keep listening to even after completing the series. Images from the anime will then naturally float into your mind. Yes that's how influential Lena Park's version of You Raise Me Up is.

Character - For this portion, I'll really have to give the director a big hug. Setting the side characters aside, the mental development of both our hero and heroine was well-balanced and developed. The romance between the 2 was nicely presented while slowly telling the audience how they fell in love. This part was absolutely perfect because a plain love-at-first-sight thing would cause the story to lose its meaning and turn me off quickly.

Despite it being a great anime, I've gotta admit the presence of my fan-girling moments during the exceptionally sweet and touching moments which were strewed here and there. So fellow babes, watch this to ignite the shoujo heart in you!

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 12, 2008

Venneh

Mixed Feelings

Title: Romeo x Juliet

Manga, Anime: Romeo x Juliet does have a manga spinoff, with art done by COM and story still done by Gonzo and Sky Perfect Well think, that began running in Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Asuka on March 24th, 2007. It is still running at this point in time, and has yet to be licensed Stateside.

Romeo x Juliet is a twenty-four episode anime that was produced by Gonzo (famous for their work on Gankutsuou and Saikano) and directed by Fumitoshi Oisaki (this was his first major work as a director). It ran from April 4th to September 26th, 2007 on Japanese TV, ... and, contrary to Funimation's giving subbers a cease and desist (which was on supposedly on behalf of Gonzo's requests for them to enforce Japanese copyright laws), the anime has NOT been licensed Stateside.

Story: Fourteen years ago, on the floating continent of Neo-Verona, the Montagues led a coup against the Capulets, and slaughtered the entire family, except for a young girl and her servant. The girl, in the meantime, has been bought up as a boy, Odin, and kept in hiding, occasionally going out as the masked vigilante the Red whirlwind. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, the day when her true identity is to be revealed, she meets Romeo, the son of the Montagues...

As you can tell, this is an EXTREMELY loose adaptation of the story. And, honestly, it had the chance to be good. However, the story has issues, and lots of them. And to cover them requires some SPOILERS, so read ahead at your own risk

First of all centers in the adaptation of the story. It's absolutely bare-bones: two star-crossed lover from rival families who die. I'm not a Shakespeare purist at all, but dear GOD, they fucked a lot up. They can't decide when to use Shakespearean dialogue or when to adapt it, or when to keep scenes from the original play in just to remind people that yes, this is an adaptation. And for the recored, they fucked up the balcony scene in the extreme. I'm sorry, but you have to be really trying with a vengance to mess it up.

Another major problem in this is the characters. Gonzo might have been able to pull this off if they'd kept the original personalities from Shakespeare. Instead, Romeo becomes a naive whiny little brat who waxes philosophically (and unconvincingly) about justice and freedom and peace once he is sent to work in the mines by his father (Maoist China, plz?), Juliet can't decide whether she wants to be a shoujo heroine destined to lead a revolution and avenge her parents or a whiny little Mary-Sue moping over her angsty past and her TRU WUV with Romeo, not to mention that she's supposedly uber-skilled with a sword, but makes incredibly stupid beginners mistakes at several critical times, and Tybalt, probably my favorite out of the whole lot, is dark and brooding and actually doesn't coddle Juliet, unlike most of the cast. Other characters from other Shakespeare plays are thrown in haphazardly, but don't hold your breath waiting for them to be like in other plays; they're all butchered versions of their former selves (like most everyone else from the original Romeo and Juliet), most of whom are fawning over and coddling either Romeo or Juliet or both. Background stories for some major characters (such as Tybalt and the generic evil tyrant Montague) don't come until later in the series, and when they do, it's just more WTF (Montague is a son of the Capulets and got adopted into the Montagues and backstabbed his way to the top in order to get his revenge on the Capulets for mistreating his mother, who was, in fact, a whore; and Tybalt is apparently the son of Montague and a Capulet woman - again, WTF?!) The biggest issue with characters is the fact that NONE of them get any development; they're all one-note personalities running around in circles for most of the series.

This, in turn, is compounded by the issue that, for most of the series, THERE IS NO PLOT. It's either Juliet running around with Romeo in puppy love, angsting, or attempting to lead a revolution but failing at swordfighting when she's supposedly amazing at it, while Romeo either runs around with Juliet, tries to kindly let down his arranged fiancee, or starts to realize just what a douche his father is. Gonzo tries to build the series on Romeo and Juliet's TRU WUV, but the most that it is is puppy love, as they never meet for anything more than six minutes, yet this is enough for them to decide to run away together about halfway through the series and marry each other and set up house in a pastoral village out in the middle of nowhere. (...Then again, it was kind of like this in the original play, so they got that aspect down, to some degree.) They get captured, though, and Romeo goes off to the mines to have a slight development arc that makes him even more annoying at the end of it, and Juliet goes off to finally lead that revolution (which is instigated by something so fucking EASY that it's a wonder they didn't try this years ago, let alone the other five times that the revolution failed in this series!). And when the revolution comes about, it's glossed over to make room for the random tree that apparently keeps Neo Verona in the sky and that is dying because of the Montagues, and apparently Juliet is the next sacrifice to keep it alive. This brings about the situation in the last two episodes that I bought up back in the third paragraph. To say the least, this thing is a fucking MESS.

In short, the whole story is made of FAIL. There are bits of redemption that come through in Tybalt here and there, but all in all, this was just made of suck. And you wonder where it comes from, because on the one hand, you've got stuff like Saikano, and Bokurano, and Gankutsuou (which was an EXCELLENT adaptation), and then on the other, you've got THIS.

Art: Neo-Verona is absolutely beautiful. Gonzo really tried to emulate classical Italian Renaissance architecture in its construction, and they did it well. The winged horses that show up here and there in the series are pretty neatly designed and executed as well.

The character designs could've been done better, I think. Most everyone in this show looks pretty generic -- well-animated, for the most part, but fairly generic. And there are times when it was pretty obvious that they were trying to save budget with pan shots, still frames, and glossing over fight scenes. The animation quality dropped every once in a while, too.

Music: The background music for this was a study in extremes: it was either melodramatic or overdramatic string orchestra, to match the "epic" fight scenes and "dramatic" revelations, or soft and gentle string and piano numbers, to match the "tender" moments and the angst. All in all, it took the suckiness to whole new places.

The two versions of the OP and its instrumental, a cover of Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up" by Lena Park, were used at several points in the series, and even if I didn't really like where it was used, I liked the songs themselves. The first ED, "Cyclone" by 12012, was a pretty nice rock piece as well. I didn't like the second ED all that much, as it was another female emo ballad, which we kind of already had in the OP.

Seiyuu: Overall, the seiyuu for this did a good job in portraying their characters, even if I hated their characters' guts. Props especially to Tybalt and Montague's seiyuu, who pitched their voices so that they matched, something I didn't recognize till I saw them in scenes that happened one right after the other, which was a hint to a major (if slightly WTF-ish) plot point.

Length: Honestly? I think this series shouldn't have even been able to get off the ground -- whoever greenlighted this should probably get fired.

But, in the long run, this was just way too long. I was starting to get sick of this around episode 13. If they went and retooled the whole damn thing (and maybe took care of the issues with the plot and the characters), they should've been able to wrap this up in about sixteen to twenty episodes, and had a chance of it being decent, too.

Overall: A pretty, well-acted series that, unfortunately, is an EXTREMELY loose adaptation of the original has nothing resembling a plot for most of its entirety, and when it does get a plot, it's quite WTF-ish, one-note characters that, for the most part, you will HATE with a passion by the third episode (except maybe for Tybalt) and music (save for the OP and the first ED) that doesn't help its case.

Stay as far away from this series as possible.

Story: 4/10
Art: 6/10
Music: 7/10
Seiyuu: 8/10
Length: 4/10

Overall: 29/50; 58% (F)

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 21, 2013

ggultra2764

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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