Genji Monogatari

I read 源氏物語 (Genji Monogatari) last semester for school, and absolutely fell in love with Murasaki Shikibu's work. Naturally, when I discovered an anime based off the tale, I had to watch it. (It can be found on YouTube)

The anime adds a very unique twist to the tale, focusing most on Lady Rokujo's venegeful spirit. With that slightly horror-esque environment, Genji's liaisons have a whole new element, and Genji himself seems more dimensional than in some translations of the tale. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this anime may not make a whole lot of sense to you. The story is vastly ... enriched from allusions to the text, which is why I can give the enjoyment a 9 and the story only an 8. The anime does not go into the arc with Niou and Kaoru.

Overall, my recommendation is:

If you've read the Tale of Genji and enjoyed it: WATCH!
If you haven't read the Tale: Get some background info on his various lovers and then watch. You'll want to focus on Lady of the Evening Faces (Yugao), his wife (Aoi), Lady of the Plum Blossoms (Murasaki), The Empress (Fujitsubo) and Lady Rokujo (subtitled differently in the anime).

So let me be clear I hadn't read the novel, but what I did do was watched the anime series adaptation from 2009 Genji Monogatari Sennenki, I'd mostly enjoyed it and game it 8/10 (7.5/10, if there was the option), so that lead me to find that there was an older anime film adaptation and it peaked my interest, so I'd watched it and oh I was both impressed and kinda disappointed at the same time.

I felt that this film had compressed the original story too much, if I hadn't seen the anime series adaptation and read the wikipedia page of the novel, I wouldn't ... actually know what's going on in the film, there were some scenes which were cutted out and there's basically no character introduction which makes the film frankly hard to follow, so that's my main criticism really.

Animation wise though, even while watching in VHS tape quality looked amazing, the voice acting was good enough and the music was fitting too.

Personally I don't really feel I can judge the story aspects of the film or novel since well I haven't read the novel and the topics of Genji Monogatari is to me mostly a historic artifact, something not really to enjoy in a modern sense but to analyse society of Japan 1000 years ago.

So overall, it's a 7/10, if you haven't read the novel or know the story of Genji Monogatari already, I would say read the novel first (or even the 2009 anime series adaptation first), then watch the film, even though I criticized it for compressing the novel too much, the film still makes the cut as a classic anime film imo.

Two points of view in one for your entertainment:

1- Me, who didn't know anything about Genji Monogatari prior to seeing this movie. Conclusion: it's boring like hell, slow, the story makes little sense (it does make sense, but is uninteresting), with too many "artistic" slooooow parts.

2- Japanese girlfriend, who is a big fan of Genji Monogatari. Conclusion: This movie is, I quote, "an insult to Genji Monogatari" and the director is "heta kuso" (let's say it means he's shitty weak). Main reason: the story doesn't make much sense even if you have read the story several times in the past, lots of parts are missing.