bliepbliepbliep said: First it all seemed like it was for nothing o_o Okay... Juliet wanted to sacrifice herself so that Neo Verona could keep existing. Romeo didn't want that, because it wouldn't be right for her to take all the sins upon herself. So he tried to stop her. Then he died. Then Juliet did wanted to sacrifice herself, which Romeo wanted to stop her for... Wait... Okay, it was okay. *confused*
This bothered me, too.
Part me thought it was good for Romeo to show how selfish love is; his willingness to let the world be destroyed if it meant spending more time with his love highlighting this and, in a way, being touching.
Another part of found it silly that Romeo fought so hard against the protector of the floating continent, after the protector got transformed from some kind of holy tree maiden into a sinister looking, lesbian villain, with a kissing technique that makes even women in love submit... and then Juliet just went along with the original plan anyway, following Romeo 'saving' her.
The last DVD/six episodes let the series down. Tybalt went from a self-absorbed, vengeful, vicious guy... into Juliet's caring friend, and a man willing to let his hate go; instead opting to fly children on dragons. The war was, basically, over in one episode - a few Capulets on the run somehow turning into an army and, suddenly, being able to win by just charging at Neo Verona. Cordeila mentioned getting proposed to and then got married in the same episode. Etc, etc. It was all so chaotic and rushed, with the world also JUST SO HAPPENING to be ending at around the same time, that it wasted the excellent build-up that went before.
A lot of people were probably offended by RxJ only keeping the main theme of pure, doomed love and then going down the Spirit's Within path, but it isn't as if Gonzo were obligated to be faithful and the end result wasn't at all bad. Ignoring the fact that no-one had bothered to fly below the clouds, the fantasy elements added a lot visually, and in terms of the mood. It's only purists that seem to complain about Tybalt not dying and whatnot, and that's because no-one else cares.
What DID disappoint me about Tybalt was that he and Romeo never had a showdown. When Romeo saw him hugging Juliet early on and misunderstood, I thought it was obvious that they'd have a fight to the death over her, if not their father, and reading the Wiki summary of the play, where I believe it's mentioned that Romeo killed him, has made me even more disappointed.
My only other major disappoint is that Romeo ended the series as a boy; him not having made Juliet into a woman. Pure love and all the rest is heartwarming, but even in the original work they had sex, and left their relationship as kind of incomplete for him not to have made her his. Body and soul, and all the rest...
...Anyhow, there was a lot I liked about the show. In fact, I came close to making it a favourite, before the final disc. I liked how Juliet's balancing act of love and responsibility was shown, and I liked how Romeo got to experience firsthand the differences between nobles and commoners, following his exile. A good job was done of developing the leads, overall... although Juliet could have used a little more since, compared to Romeo, she didn't experience enough. And Romeo's dad is now one of my favourite truly evil/bad villains - I LOVED his voice/scary expressions. His murderous bit in episode 17 was EPIC.
One other thing: The Funimation dub is a MUST. Funimation rewrote the script to better match the original play; reusing some lines and using old English. It gave a classier feel to the story that it lacked with the far more straightforward Japanese version. |