If you were looking for a faithful anime adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, sorry to disappoint this isn't it. Please go watch the 1963 film bc that's the closest you will get to one.
Now I'm not the biggest fan of Romeo and Juliet, mainly because the play is full of too many contrivances and miscommunications and weak characters all mixed in with the most flowery of rhetoric. Now my boy Willy Shakes was never really known for his ability as a story teller but HE IS A MASTER OF LANGUAGE! Shakespeare can take the shittiest story and make it classic because he knew how
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to use language in such a way that makes it so.
So, to see an anime adaptation of R+J not only completely turn the story on its head, but actually making our two leads interesting and likeable characters, while also having lines pulled directly from the play and other references to Shakespeare's works? And my boy Lil Will from Stratford upon Avon born and raised is an actual character?! Color me impressed.
Like I said this is not a faithful adaptation, there are a lot of changes from the original play. The capulets and the montegues are not wealthy merchants with a rivalry that no one can fucking explain. Instead the entirety of the capulet family isn't even in the anime; having been the slaughtered ruling family of Neo Verona, ending their rule by the wicked villain montegue, where he ascends to the throne as Neo Verona's ruling tyrant; holding power with an iron fist. Juliet is the sole survivor of the house of Capulet and must hide her identity and disguise herself as a boy until her 16th birthday were all would be revealed. Romeo, being the son of the now dictator prince, is a young man with a gentle soul always looking out for and willingly helping others. He looks upon the oppression of Neo Verona sorrowfully and vows to make things right when he assumes the throne. Juliet must take it upon herself to reclaim her birth rite and free the people of Neo Verona. They fall in love and work together to build a world where they could live in peace without their families names. There are a lot of references to Shakespeare's other plays including character names like Petruchio, Antonio, Cordelia, Ophelia, etc.
Animation wise, it was pretty solid although there was some jarring CG used in some of the landscape and scenery backgrounds that kind of looked bizarre. There was also the branches of the esscalis tree that were animated with CG and they look like PlayStation 2 graphics, they were pretty bad. The character designs were really nice, and special shout out to my boy tybalt HE IS SOOO FREAKING HOT LIKE DAMN JULIET WHAT YOU DOING WITH ROMEO'S BITCH ASS WHEN YOU GOT THAT BEEFCAKE TYBALT HANGING AROUND YA GIRL!! Yea I sort of developed a crush on him bc he is hot and mysterious and has black hair and momma like her the cool mysterious types.
The music was absolutely finominal, but I should warn you if you don't like "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Grobin you will not be able to stand the score; they play that song like 65% of the time in English, Japanese and instrumental. Also you need to watch this in the English dub bc duh it's Shakespeare!
Overall, I give this anime a solid 8. It does loose a couple points for it does slow down a bit halfway through and we get like 3-4 episodes where Romeo is at this mine and tries to start a village with the prisoners who worked in the mine and yea didn't really much care for it. It also lost a point because of the ending. So if you don't want to be spoiled ( but you know how it ends because everyone knows how Romeo and Juliet ends) STOP READING NOW! Go watch the anime!!
Ok, WTF was up with that ending. If one thing did not work in this anime is the whole plot with the esscalis tree bc When you think about it, it's fucking stupid. According to Ophelia, there were two trees instead one but one died so Juliet has to die in order to give life back to the tree that's left because it is also dying and the world will crumble and fall if it dies. Romeo dies trying to save Juliet from this fate and kills Ophelia ultimately destroying the esscalis tree. BUT THEN THE BITCH SACRIFICIES HERSELF TO THE FUCKING TREE ANYWAY. Wtf was the point of Romeo dying to protect you of yo ass was going to die to give life to the tree anyway. WHY? And also, NEO VERONA WAS A FUCKING FLOATING ISLAND! The entire reason to save the esscalis tree was because it was the source that kept Neo Verona a float. In the end the city falls anyway and get this, it was a mother flipping island the whole time. Like I don't understand did these people not know? William said they didn't, so what did they think that Neo Verona was the entire world? We're there minds not blown when they touched upon the ocean and saw there was more to their world like wtf? Why was it played off so lightly their world turned out to be a whole bigger than they could ever imagine! The more I think about it, the stupider it gets so I'm just going to chalk it up to being fucking anime. Only in anime man. Thanks for reading the review!
Sep 16, 2016
Romeo x Juliet
(Anime)
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If you were looking for a faithful anime adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, sorry to disappoint this isn't it. Please go watch the 1963 film bc that's the closest you will get to one.
Now I'm not the biggest fan of Romeo and Juliet, mainly because the play is full of too many contrivances and miscommunications and weak characters all mixed in with the most flowery of rhetoric. Now my boy Willy Shakes was never really known for his ability as a story teller but HE IS A MASTER OF LANGUAGE! Shakespeare can take the shittiest story and make it classic because he knew how ... 
Sep 11, 2016
Kimi no Na wa.
(Anime)
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Having not seen any of Makoto Shinkai's films, I really did not know what to expect from this film. I think it is best to go into this movie without knowing too much about it, just because there are so may surprises in the film that the impact would be lost if you knew about them ahead of time. Of course if you are spoiled, it won't damper your enjoyment of the movie but still try to avoid spoilers.
Anywho, I adored this film. People were not kidding, the animation was so breathtaking that I had a hard time picking a screencap to make as ... |
