It's this basis that sets up mangaka Aya Kanno's manga-centric plays into stardom (though her first work of 2001's short manga Soul Rescue didn't really set the world on fire), starting with Otomen from 2006-2012, which once licensed by VIZ Media, became one of the best-selling Shoujo manga of the late 2000s in both Japan and the West. What happens thereafter is the longest work that she has ever done: the historical dark fantasy series Baraou no Souretsu a.k.a Requiem of the Rose King, that is loosely based on the William Shakespearean medieval plays of Henry VI, Part 3 (1591) and Richard III (1592-1594). If you'd ask me of what I'll remember Aya Kanno by, it's this tragedy series that cements her status as someone with a historical lore, yet doesn't fail to showcase the hallmarks of disturbing imagery and complex notions that's just as ever alluring to see as it is to read the entirety of the manga's 78 chapters in 17 volumes run that started from October 2013 to its recent finish in January 2022.
However, I'm just gonna say that please, PLEASE, read the manga instead as J.C.Staff's complete and finished adaptation and interpretation of this magnificent historical tragedy series is severely underwhelming in all aspects, and is a very stark comparison against the original source material which had so much depth and cognizant feelings. And this is all coming off from director Suzuki Kentarou which directed Summer 2018's Satsuriku no Tenshi (which had a very similar dark premise), which almost seems like a slap in the face to the psychological, horror and suspense genres, and now adding the historical, action, drama and supernatural themes altogether to make one more extra bad and awful rap.
As the show's title suggests, Baraou no Souretsu a.k.a Requiem of the Rose King takes place in the trying times known as the War of the Roses (or the Civil War), and being heavily inspired off of the Shakespearean plays should give you an idea of what to expect. THe only difference in this show, is by following the main character: the House of York's Richard III, deviated into an intersex version of himself that's fighting his own "questionable" descent, where hateful despise from his mother, extreme adoration from his father, alienation from the surrounding people, grappling with the haunting and taunting of frightful spirits, unsteady and unintentional alliances with frenemies, above all, this is his story of own passion fighting for a throne, that is the throne of the King of England.
So first off, I have to clear the misconceptions that some of you may not understand what the somewhat derogatory term means. These are individuals that are birthed with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies". Nowadays, intersex people are most representated as part of the LGBTQ+ community, whereas in the past they're referred to as "hermaphrodites" or "congenital eunuchs", facing discrimination from birth, or following the discovery of intersex traits at stages of development such as puberty, which would ultimately result in infanticide (infant homicide), abandonment, and the stigmatization of their families.
The 3rd son of Richard Plantagenet of the Duke of York, alongside older brothers Edward IV of York and George of the Duke of Clarence, Richard seems like your typical kind of birthed son and sibling of the family, that according to its claims of being superior to the throne of England according to cognatic primogeniture (a male-preference succession to a female member of the House taking over the throne only if there weren't any male offspring) but inferior according to agnatic/patrilineal primogeniture (where inheritance is given according to the seniority of birth among kin, mainly sons before brothers and with both females and matrilineal (tracing through female kinship) males), would result that he would eventually rise to the throne, but not after both of his brothers Edward IV and George get their succession phase before he does. The problem (as is inferred) is Richard's intersex or hermaphrodite (son of the Greek god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite) nature, whom looks like a male but has both sexes' reproductive organs where he can act as either the male or the female, and the closest of people interpret him in both ways, which his mother Cecily Neville of the Duchess of York (Richard Plantagenet's wife and the mother of the Yorkist sons) dubbed him as a demon of the worst kind. Day and night, Cecily would protest her hatred in Richard's face and memories, reminding him of his needless existence, that's only supplemented by the French warrior woman Joan of Arc's inclusions appearing in his visions to torment him, based on the belief by the English that she is a witch.
It definitely is sad seeing Richard's character be brushed and glanced by people from whom he has earned the trust to many of his detractors that's mainly the House of Lancaster with everybody else except Henry VI, the King of England, whom he has an inept connection with of both the sexual and purpose kind, because you see that Richard longs for someone whom he can be himself with, someone that will accept him for who he is despite being intersex, and certainly that someone whom will make him shine and receive happiness unbound. But alas, this was never meant to be, as the War of the Roses mounts between the Houses of York and Lancaster into in-fighting, backstabbing, betrayals, and all that is within the confines of murder and rebellion just to obtain personal objectives as their own vendettas. The closest people to Richard III (aside from his immediate family of his brothers Edward IV and George) are his loyal servant Catesby, Henry Stafford of the Duke of Buckingham (which is King Henry VI's replacement for sexual affection), Anne Neville of Richard Neville's family (also known as Warwick the Kingmaker of York that then defected to Lancaster) whom eventually becomes his wife after the in-fighting rumours of Prince Edward of Lancaster, the only son of Henry VI and Queen Margaret, and thus, leading to the Head of the Lancaster family himself. Anyone whom has very inept with history would already surmise that times like these are rudimentary complexities to deal with, ranging from family issues to allies that become frenemies in the process, begrudgingly often using them for their own self gain, and this War of the Roses is no exception.
Take the House of Lancaster for example, where Henry VI feels like a bird in a cage that he cannot get out of, and his wife Margaret being the shrewd queen that she is to help ascert his dominance of the throne by reinforcing to the Lancaster subjects that he is the king, where Henry himself just wants out of the oppression of his own mother, running away from the throne like it's sin and punishment. This does not get any better after Henry VI and Richard III's secret meet-ups that only show that both of them had a semblance for one another that the world would never understand, and more characters ranging from Richard Neville's family's politically-driven marriage into both the House of York and Lancaster's families to their sons (Edward iV, George, Richard III, Prince Edward of Lancaster) and outsiders of the likes of John Grey's descendants, the witch Jane Shore assisting the Yorkist older brother, the murderer James Tyrell, and eventually the Earl of Richmond Henry Tudor (whom is the stepson of Thomas Stanley and ally to Queen Elizabeth) to reclaim England. These are the group of people that interwine for the King of England's throne position, and this is attesting to the disorderly fashion that results in the War of the Roses that starts from a simple war of rivalry to turn into a bloody mess that culminates in the unification of England.
It's such a noteworthy historical centerpiece of a work that Aya Kanno has ever done, and I'd say that this is probably her best work that has been the current mainstay of her work biography, yet for some reason, how J.C. Staff managed to butcher this wonderful manga into a lifeless, PowerPoint-like production and presentation, the likes of Tokyo Ghoul and The Promised Neverland's sequel seasons is beyond me. So first off, the rushed pacing that attributes to the major cutting of content that explains most of the series' lore in the very beginning, that as the episodes went by, was severely cut out and provided no context for the audience, because this is a series that exclusively demands the 5W1Hs of storytelling to make it much more compelling and a deep dive of a read that drives the manga into pure insanity. This is a 2-cour show that's 24 episodes long, and if there was a choice to re-adapt this manga, I would have put it in a maximum of 26 episodes just that ALL of the manga can be adapted 1-to-1 with the anime for sizable pacing that loses none of the source material's flare, despite Japanese TV broadcast timing schedule issues. Also, it doesn't help that scriptwriter and series composer Hiroki Uchida is essentially the wrong person to do this job, giving by the fact that he did the screenplay for Date A Live Season 3 (when it was produced under J.C. Staff) and most recently, the series composition for Shikkakumon (though Gamers! was the first under his belt, it almost seems now that this is a one-off good out of the many bad). To note, thsi is newbie character designer Tsutomu Hashizume's first gig, so as much as the symbolisms were done decently, I hope that he continues to get more works and broaden his CV. But as a whole, J.C. Staff's work here was abominable, from incomplete background work (literally people have no faces at all) to the drab art style that you can argue, either reinforces greatly or badly to the whole show's mood swings to reflect the solemn and dark vibe.
Ultimately, the saving grace for such a palpitable series like this has to be the music, and then again, it's a mixed bag of feelings. Music composer Kow Otani is a well-known composer that can stand amongst the likes of Final Fantasy's Nobuo Uematsu and Metal Gear Solid's Hideo Kojima, and no doubt that his primetime was in the anime scene in the 1980s and 1990s, that continues to grow today with classic shows like 2002's Haibane Renmei and the entirety of the Shakugan no Shana series of the mid to late 2000s. This guy is a god amongst the few that creates iconic OSTs, but I'm sad to say that while this show's OST is good, it's nowhere near the levels of his past works. In regards to the sound direction however, Yoshikazu Iwanami may have done a lot of work as of recently, but the clear-cut adage of "quantity never equals quality" shows here, and at times, feels like a chore that the work was half-assed and not done proper. If there was a plus point of the show, I'd say that the 1st Cour's OP/ED set was pretty much perfection from Makoto Furukawa and ZAQ's pairing to showcase the amount of discourse that was to set for the series to come with some good visuals and great songs. The 2nd Cour's OP/ED set however, felt like everyone was already giving up even before the halfway mark to show the same amount of quality input, that there was no difference as a whole from visuals to even the songs that were a step down. Started off great, but clearly ran out of gas halfway through.
Is it REALLY that hard to follow a plan such as this just to vindicate manga readers of their reasons to watch the adaptations of their favourite series? I guess not, because anime production is so expensive, and hiring good talent to help out almost seems like it has to be dealt with back-door exclusivity deals, so much that what you're left is with the rag-tag people that have hit-and-miss works to their name, And this is what I can surmise that truly happened to this show: originally supposing to release last Fall but couldn't due to production issues, then taking a really good-to-great existing property and adapting it at the very bare minimum just to pass off as a by-product of the most inferior kind, which honestly, disgusts me to no end. I'd rather watch a PROPER adaptation than to have one that downgrades the source material (especially if it's a really good one), and Baraou no Souretsu literally has a black sheep now: the anime adaptation done by J.C. Staff (that literally, the studio now has no creativeness to their name anymore).
Just heed my (and many others) word to read the manga and forget that the anime ever existed, I promise that you'll spend your time better in a word-reading and art-gratifying premise that is this dark fantasy and historical drama of a compelling Shoujo manga. What a disappointment and an utter disgrace of an adaptation.
