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.
