Thermae Romae Novae

Bathtub, onsen, hot springs, Thermae.
"Thermae" - a public bathing establishment of the ancient Greeks or Romans.

This series is about that.

This show was really big on the cultural appreciation of Japanese bath culture. You get to explore how sophisticated and wonderful culture. Lucius, our MC, sure did have a great time appreciating every bit.

Every episode, you get to learn some rules and quirks about Public Bathing (like drinking Fruit Milk after a bath as an unspoken rule and maintaining etiquette inside the bath). You get to see Lucius explore and get inspiration from these modern-day inventions to bring to his fellow Romans. It's beautiful.

There are no ... "hateable" characters here. There was no actual "villain" in this series. If anything, Lucius' enemy was "art block." So don't expect some action scenes here. Just smile and laugh at Lucius' fascination and wondrous appreciation as he brings this to his people.

The music is great. The suspense, thrill, excitement, and other feelings were conveyed perfectly with the help of music. The art is.. well ok? I mean, there are shots/scenes that are beautiful. But some scenes are mixed with a bit of CGI. The background characters would move so fluidly while the characters in the foreground would move with certain frames per second. You can tell easily which one is CGI and which is not. I am not really against the use of CGI in anime. It's just that it's very obvious to not point out. But that did not hinder me from enjoying the show.

Towards the end of every episode, we get to hang out with the author of Thermae Romae, Mari Yamazaki. Join Yamazaki-sensei to experience the wonders of Public bathing. Explore the history of the bathhouses in Japan while experiencing second-hand relaxation. It's basically Yamazaki-sensei geeking out with public baths and their historical value and stuff and an awesome sketch every end of the episode made by yours truly! (also Tsuda Kenjiro is also narrating it, and that's a huge plus)

I am a sucker when it comes to Cultural Appreciation - kind of media. I'm also a sucker for Tsuda Kenjiro. Plus, I've been studying Greco-Roman history for school, and seeing some references to Roman Gods and the founders of Rome in it made me chuckle. This show tugged my heart. I even did a standing ovation at every end of the episodes lololol.

I don't have a bathtub in our home. We don't have a local bathhouse too. This show made me more eager to go to Japan to try their bathhouses. Or any bathhouse in the world. I would be ecstatic to try an actual Thermae.
Hey Lucius? Yes please build me one. Thank you

Thermae Romae Novae could be literally be described as the "Thermas Isekai". If you take the exact formula from "Isekai Izakaya: Koto Aitheria no Izakaya Nobu" and change the subject from Restaurant to Thermas, this is the result you will get.

It's very simplistic, the story only exist to justify the job being done, its not deep, but also not bad, being followed with a nice "overeaction" style of comedy, with each episode making things a little bit more elaborated.

In the same way as Izakaya Nobu, at the end of each episode you also have a short documentary telling interesting things about Thermas and its ... story, what inspired the author.

The only criticism i have towards this show are the following:

-> The mix between 2D and 3D art style, that as always, it's just ugly. The 2D art style is decent, but the 3D one, is just ugly and poorly made. At least this isn't a fighting show, so it doesnt matter that much.

-> It have a constant orange/coffee like colored filter, maybe to fit the Ancient Roman Thermas theme, but sometimes it just feels weird, almost feeling like everything is dirty, but maybe this is just a personal pick of mine.

-> The character have some weird design choices, their face expressions are just too small and subtle, almost being non existent, if not for the constant change in voice tone to enhance them, they could have done something more expressive.

At the end, it's a good, interesting and relatively funny show, a much needed change in the usual Isekai Formula we are all fed up, especially considering this is coming from from a Netflix.

Very basic comedy with like an isekai type twist with honestly barely any link to roman civilization like you could substitute any old civilization and wouldn't change much at all. At the end of each episode we get a clip of the manga artist visiting the hotsprings that inspired her to make it. very basic story but i liked the art. there was some use of cgi it was quite out of place but its wasn't totally disorientating.


SPOILERS!!!

Basically MC gets isekaied then steals aspects of function and design from modern Japanese bathhouses, has a funny interaction with the Japanese, solves the problem of the ... episode with said stolen idea.

You'd never expect a show about an ancient roman architect making bathtubs to be this entertaining, no, seriously, that's what the show is about, a roman emperor sporadically being teleported into the future after falling into water over the course of his life and finding himself among bath related situations in modern day Japan, where he learns their culture, and hastily rips them off when he randomly returns back to his original time period with his architectural skills.

Now I'm not a comedy fan, alright, but this show is fucking funny. During my torturous bus rides to and from school I get a time ... span enough to watch an episode of whatever show I want to watch each trip, normally I just pick a show with no serious connotations to it so that I don't have any episodes during the bus and drag too much unwanted attention, but I think that backfired, I found myself giggling so childishly at the absurdity of each scenario I think I got a few piercing stares from my neighbors thinking I need to be submitted to a psychiatric ward. What I find to be so special about this show in particular is how it manages to turn a subject no one tends to give a shit about into an educational and engaging watch, kind of like that one elementary school teacher everyone without exception loves, I now know 100x more things about baths than I did before I had watched this show and I am damn well please about it, I will brag to anybody that I know more about baths than they do and that I hold zero regerts spending my time watching such a show do so, historic fantasy aspect and all.

Irony aside, the greatest thing this show does which I have yet to see another show properly do is manage to serve proper purpose, maintaining its goal, and being a comedy, comedy and end goal do not mix in the anime medium and we all know it, take The Genius Prince from Winter 2022 as a good example. This show manages to create a funny way of educating the dumbest of comedy watchers into learning the bathing cultures of both Japan and Rome, and in some way the world, it even manages to slip in a 3-minute documentary at the very end which I have never skipped because of how fascinated I became with whatever Yamazaki was looking around at this episode.

It's difficult to find an engaging comedy that also prospers at achieving its goal of educating the viewer on whatever subject they so please, some of the most outlandish stuff can be taught without you even knowing it, and you my dear friend have just accidentally learnt how to cool down baths with a wooden plank.

I find it especially brilliant to manage to come up with such an original idea: an architect of the Ancient Roman Empire who travels to modern Japan and learns how to build better thermal baths.

The idea is terrific, and the realization kept up with it, that's why Thermae Romae Novae is a breath of fresh air in the isekai/time travel sphere.
I am particularly enthusiastic about this series, since I am not just Italian, but also Roman; although the main focus of the series is to explore and celebrate japanese thermal traditions rather than Ancient Rome, I couldn't help but rejoice watching a job well ... done: I was very happy to see that both the author of the manga and the people who worked to the series were meticulously precise in recreating roman traditions, society, and history.
In particular I appreciated the differentiation between roman people and japanese people, in terms of art: usually, in anime, the only distinction made to portray foreign people is to change hair and eye colour; while here everything is different, from the bone structure, to skin colour, but also eye shape, hair texture and so on and so forth...

Apart from these little (but still important) details, in general I can say this show amazed me: I rediscovered the ancient traditions of my ancestors and learnt many new things about a different culture. And I am convinced that this is the main focus of the show: to paint familiar images (roman) next to exotic ones (japanese), explaining their differences and similarities (probably for japanese watchers this mechanism works the other way around).
So I recommend users to not expect anything outside this concept: no excessive narration of the protagonist's background, no deep characterization, few to none importance given to sub plots... It is a simple show, with just one purpose, namely the one above.

This doesn't certainly mean that these 11 episodes must be regarded as short History lessons, indeed the show begins soon to be very amusing and funny: thinking about it, how hilarious would it be to see someone from the ancient world trying to understand all the new and complex mechanisms of this world and seeing them freak out every time? Basically, it is the funniest thing ever.

I'd like also to mention the short clips at the end of each episode, in which the author of the manga explores thermal bath culture in Japan; it's good to see how things I've only seen in 2D look in the real world, very interesting :) .

It had potential, but it turned out meh.

Thermae Romae Novae is an anime about a Roman architect of bathhouses that gets teleported to modern Japanese bathhouses. He has huge art block and has problems with making something that other Romans would appreciate, after he visits the Japanese bathhouse he has a lot of ideas to improve his project.

I think it could be good anime, but after a few episodes, it’s just boring. The concept for every episode is almost the same. The main character, Lucius Modestus can’t find an idea for a new bathhouse, he’s getting to Japan through water, finds something interesting and ... new, gets back to Rome, and do it in his project. And it’s just it, in all episodes which I watched. Maybe in another episode, something more is happening, but after 5 episodes I had enough.

From the cultural side, it’s kinda nice. You can learn something about Japanese and Roman bathhouses and culture. I didn’t know before a lot of things that were shown in anime, but the construction of the episode is just too much for me.

Anyway, Lucius is a kinda good character. You can see his motivation and goal in all this stuff, he understands what he needs to do and why what is uncommon in anime made by Netflix. His background is just the usual, dead father, dead grandfather, but it’s not about revenge. He just wants to be approved by Roman society and do bathhouses in which everyone can relax and regenerate to work for Rome even harder than before.

I also really appreciate that Lucius and Japanese people can’t communicate. It’s common to have a situation like “I’m Roman and can speak Japanese”, but here is nothing like it, he doesn’t understand them, they don’t understand him and that’s beautiful.

But here is my biggest problem, the main part of the episode ends and you wanna see the ending, but there’s no traditional ending. There is 2-3 min of the author’s story about how she discovered things that Lucius find out in that episode. I think it’s nice to do something like it, but maybe as another episode for people, that’s more interested in this.

That’s why I think this anime is 5/10. It has good elements, but after all, good anime is an anime which I can watch all episodes and don’t have to drop it in the middle. Thermae Romae Novae is just meh.

A wonderfully eccentric series. Something out of the ordinary and not just another trope stuffed carbon copy of another series. The art is mostly quite good, minus points for some ugly CGI at times but it's not very prevalent. Reasonably funny and obviously a love-letter to Japanese bathing culture... Feels like it could have had a little more focus on Roman culture in it though.

The part I enjoyed the most in watching this were the wonderful educational segments with the author at the end of each episode. I learned a lot of cool things watching them and it encouraged me to try to mimic some ... of the food I saw in it which was quite enjoyable.

An ancient Roman man who designs baths for a living falls into a bath and ends up in modern day Japan. He proceeds to learn from their bath structure and brings those learnings back with him to become a success in ancient Rome. This happens every episode with him going to different points in time and different locations in Japan to find the thing he needs to solve a problem back in ancient Rome.

It's a series that probably shouldn't work, but it somehow does. The MC can't speak Japanese and no on in Japan can speak Latin, so miscommunications do a lot of the heavy ... lifting when it comes to humor. The basic structure of each episode doesn't yield any real surprises down the line, so it gets repetitive and the humor really doesn't last, but I learned a lot about baths and every episode ends with the author actually visiting a Japanese bath and asking questions about them. I appreciated that.

I didn't think there would ever be a show that would bridge my interests in ancient Rome and Japan, and I certainly didn't think it would be an anime, but then Thermae Romae Novae came into my life. For context, I am a Classics and Japanese double major at university. I've been studying Latin for years, I am half-Japanese, and I love onsen.

Story 7
Thermae were public baths in Rome, and were popular places to relax, get clean, and talk to others. Lucius Modestus, the main character, is an architect and thermae designer. In each episode, he faces a variety ... of challenges: demanding clients, impossible requests, or rude visitors. He finds the solution to each of these problems in a surprising place: by accident (usually by falling or slipping) he can sink to the bottom of a bath in ancient Rome and emerge in a modern-day Japanese onsen. He is mistaken for a foreigner, and is helped out by the Japanese people around him. He is shocked by the technology and customs that he finds in onsen, and when he returns to Rome, he incorporates these things into the baths he designs, which become huge hits with the Roman people. Every episode after episode 1 follows this plot line, so after a while, you know where each story is headed, but it is still a funny and novel story.
Of course, as a Classics major, I was laser-focused looking for historical accuracy (ignoring, for a minute, that the main gag of the show is time travel), and there are actually some great historical aspects in this show. The show takes place during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, and works to keep itself within that timeline. They show Trajan's Column, and mention that Vesuvius erupted around 50 years ago. There were some great details in the scenery of the first episode, where there was graffiti on the walls, and the boys were wearing bulla.

Art 6
There isn't too much to be said about the art. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great.

Sound 7
I watched the show in Japanese audio with English subtitles. When Lucius is in Japan and tries to speak to the Japanese people, he speaks in Latin. I would have loved to have listened to the Latin closely and judged its accuracy, but unfortunately it sounded like gibberish. Kenjiro Tsuda is a phenomenal voice actor, he's one of my favorites, but his pronunciation of Latin was almost impossible to understand. When I could make out the words though, it sounded like the grammar and vocabulary were accurate.

Character 7
There aren't many recurring characters besides Lucius, who is a humorous character. His passion for baths, and his grudging appreciation of the Japanese are funny and interesting.

Enjoyment 8, Overall 7
At the end of the day, this show is a comedy, and actually teaches you more about Japanese baths than Roman ones. Lucius time-travelling to Japan and copying the Japanese baths and bathing practices in Rome is the main gag of the show. No doubt the author, when learning about the public baths of Rome, which were large, technologically advanced, popular places for socializing, saw similarities in the bathing culture of Japan. I remember that I had a similar reaction when I was in elementary school: I read about thermae in a picture book, and it reminded me of onsen. Obviously the appropriation of Japanese baths for Roman ones is a joke, but the show is sincere in its appreciation of baths. There is a short educational segment at the end of each episode, in which the mangaka, Mari Yamazaki, tours around Japan to highlight aspects of Japanese onsen. There aren't many places that ancient Rome and Japan overlap in, but baths are one of them, and this show has done a good job at creating a funny and enjoyable story based on that.

The anime is about time travel in hot springs, that is, a Roman who travels to Japan and copies the things he sees to improve his hot spring facilities. At the end of each chapter you can see the author of the work in a hot spring, doing tourism, that is to say that the anime was created so that there is more tourism in the hot springs, I guess. The animation is good, the soundtrack is very good, the character design is curious and the development is good. I love how the Roman from hating the Japanese begins to admire them. I recommend it. ... It's very entertaining and fun to watch. I like how they communicate without knowing each other's language.
En español:
El anime de es de viajes temporales en termas, o sea un romano que viaja a japon y copia las cosas que ve para mejorar sus instalaciones de termas. Al final de cada capitulos podes ver a la autora de la obra en un terma, haciendo turismo es decir que el anime se creo para que haya mas turismo en las termas supongo. La animacion esta buena, la banda sonora muy buena, el diseño de personajes es curioso y el desarrollo esta bueno. Me encanta como el romano de odiar a los japoneses comeinza a admirarlos. lo recomiendo es muy entretenido y divertido de ver me gusta como hacen para cominicarse sin saber el idioma del otro.

I never expected this show to be this enjoyable (for me that is). I thought it was going to be eh with how the synopsis is, but I guess having the centerpiece being Rome, not Japan, makes things more interesting.
I can understand viewers saying it is quite annoying with how many times he goes back and forth, but the main character does make it relatable by questioning everything with his brain and reworking it with what he has.
Also, I love the detail that they actually let him speak Roman when confronting people that don't speak his tongue, but it is also weird because in Rome ... he speaks Japanese, which is so weird.
In the Netflix version at the very end, there's a little addition to the show, which I like a lot.

Overall, this isn't for everyone but give it at least 3 episodes.

Watching Thermae Romae Novae was an experience that I haven't felt since when I first watched The Way of the Househusband. It's such a fun show to get into whenever your bored. The characters are great, the story is fun, and it's overall a really fun watch. To top it all off, the author of the series included clips from her adventures in discovering bathhouses in Japan, which is just so fun to watch as well!

My only issue is the animation continuity, or lack thereof. While the majority of the animation is great, some parts of the animation is 3D animated. 3D animation in anime ... can be awesome (look at Beastars for example), but here it looks like it was just a way to cut cost and time. It's really only applied to background characters, but it is noticeable and a little jarring at times.












9

Thermae Romae Novae is an unusual series that I can’t quite recommend despite enjoying it to some extent. I watched it with my partner and we enjoyed it enough to finish it, at least.

In this series our main character is a bathhouse architect named Lucius Modestus. Every episode, he finds himself stuck on a certain aspect of his work, like writer’s block but for architects. Without fail, he manages to fall into a bath, moat, pond or similar and gets transported to a bath in Japan. Upon his arrival he does some exploration and examines everything that is foreign to him. With this fresh inspiration ... he returns home and manages to overcome his architect’s block, resulting in a job well done. The episodes make bathing seem so relaxing that I wish we had bathhouses like those in my country as well, but alas.

There’s nothing wrong with this premise. In fact, the crossover between Rome and Japan is quite novel. However, the bathhouse-of-the-week format quickly becomes repetitive. Not only that, Lucius is not at all a likeable character. He is so driven by his work and loyalty to Rome and the emperor that it causes issues in his marriage. The first episode is also meaningless and almost turned us off the series completely.

The artwork and animation is barely passable. I think I’m just not a fan of the style chosen here. The soundtrack and sound effects did their job. And as much as I like Tsuda Kenjirou’s voice, he is much more fitting for badass roles such as Tatsu in Way of the Househusband.

In the end, the series was entertaining mostly because it has an interesting premise. But together with the live action sections at the end, Thermae Romae Novae felt more like a tourist advertisement promoting Japanese bathing culture than a full-fledged anime series.

Thermae Romae Novae (2022)

Honestly a good show with some fantastic live actions footage with the author and various spas across Japan and the inspiration of the show.
Firstly the ending segments with the live actions tours are absolutely fascinating and really made for some knowledge of where I need to go when I am in Japan.

The show itself is pretty fun, you skip the process of building that happens and essentially it is episodes of a problem, foreign solutions and then the results and reception. Artistically speaking it is pretty good and nice to watch. It never needed to be crazy detailed so this ... is fine. The sound is average, nothing special but does it need to be? Characters outside of the main guy and his friend and the emperor, perhaps who cares? Finally, the show itself is good, it never was going to be amazing, but it is good for what it does.

7/10.

Mari Yamazaki sensei. I have fallen for her.

I decided to watch this anime on a whim after finishing a Netflix series. I was expecting to learn about architecture and hot springs, and european influence. And I got what I expected. But I didn't know I'd enjoy it so much especially the small skits at the end of the anime on Mari Yamazaki sensei's take on hot springs; rediscovering Hot Spings ♨️

I thought it'd be a bore to watch an (11 episodes) anime all about hot springs, but not at all. It was quite enjoyable. Quite a great depiction of what living in Ancient Rome would ... have been like. You'd see Lucius (the main character) traveling through time from Ancient Rome to the early or late period of Japan; all in the sake to educate himself (and us the viewers) of how Hot Springs are in development.

Mari san uses the character Lucius to express herself by drawing reactions of Lucius, reacting to new experiences she discovers on her Journey to the Hot Springs.

It feels truly amazing for her to share her journey with us. I feel blessed because I get to witness these amazing historical places with her and her drawings. Thus the anime. I find it quite valuable to me.

Whatever journey she wishes to venture into next, I hope she takes us along with her as well. Cause I'd like to support her anywhere I can!

Netflix does it again: another terrible show. And as true Netflix style, this show is animated quite horrendously, to say the least. That, however, is one of the many host of flaws that this show has.
Sure, the CGI that's ubiquitous, the lack of fluid movement, scenes of walking or monologuing dragging just a bit too long is bad, but how about adding a 3-5 minute live action sequence about baths in Japan? I don't really care about how the author of the manga is the host, or how "informative" it is. It's just lazy, and of course, more importantly, makes it so that the show ... does not need to animate that much more. Hey, better package this live-action sequence as a unique "feature," rather than cutting corners.
Okay sure, the animation and live action sequences are bad, but that's not all. The general episodic format of Lucius going into a different Japanese bath and experience its culture is also terrible, too. First of all, you're stuck in the perspective of Rome for half the show, and the Rome portion of the show is extremely lackluster. There are absolutely no characters that matter other than Lucius himself. Sure, he technically has a couple of friends that are recurring side characters, but they just are husks of a real character that just make small talk with Lucius, but really, anyone would have been fine, as long as Lucius gets some conversation in.
In fact, this show could have been good if the show actually cared about Lucius building baths. The format is that Lucius isekais to Japan and implements the bath culture into his own baths in Rome. However, none of the build or design process is actually shown, and you're just shown the of course, successful finished product. It would have been nice for the show to have Lucius struggle to get ideas approved, or trying to replicate the bath culture from Japan. But nope, you kind of just see his finished product. Other than that, the time the show is in Rome is pure boring exposition that sets up how Lucius needs to yet again, implement a new feature in a bath, serving not much purpose.
Ok, the time in Japan is probably the best part of the show, but it's still not that good. I definitely like the culture shock, and it depicts someone of Lucius's time period well, thinking that the Japanese people are slaves. However, it's still not very funny. Is it relaxing? Um, not really? you're kind of just seeing Lucius react to how different baths work. It kind of gets really old real quick, not that it was particularly good to begin with.
So yep, should have guessed that Netflix would butcher another show.