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[WAD] Week #6: Romeo x Juliet
Topic Started: Dec 14 2013, 07:31 AM (182 Views)
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Edited by savepoints, Jan 17 2014, 05:03 PM.
 
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It took me way longer than I thought to finish this, what with the christmas holiday, and then my own minor problems with the show that kept me from watching those last few episodes, but now I'm finally done, and so here it goes...

For the first few episodes, we get to follow Juliet, who's forced to hide her true identity and disguise herself as a boy. She spends her time as the "Red Whirlwhind", helping out the people of the city. This gives a very lighthearted tone, which remains until about 6 or so episodes in, when things start becoming a bit darker, and the series itself actually starts to pick up. For quite some time, there's not that much focus on Romeo at all. It mostly feels like the scenes of Romeo at first are simply there to make us understand that his father is a douche, and things are not good in the city and all. The focus on Juliet at the start is much bigger, with her having to deal with the fact that she's the sole survivor of the Capulet house, and the important task that forces upon her.

Now, this is where my biggest problem where this show comes in; the pacing. Basically, up to episode 6, they're mostly all dilly-dallying, and when things finally seem like they're gonna start to pick up, they soon go back to seemingly unimportant events shortly after. The pacing is just weird, imo. Some parts are way too drawn out, and some they just seem to glance over. Honestly, you could probably skip large parts of a lot of the episodes, and you'd still get the story and everything like that, without missing anything important.

To be honest, I don't really know that much about Romeo & Juliet. I know the overall story, the balcony scene, and how it ends, but from what I've heard, RxJ actually manages to create a pretty good representation of the original work, even with the fantasy elements. In reality though, it's not until the very last 3 or 4 episodes where the fantasy elements actually play a big role (in the rest of the series, it's mostly just that they have flying horses). But this is, in a way, what made it harder for me to finish the series. This is a very personal problem, obviously, but just knowing how the original ends, and that RxJ will most likely end the same way sort of ruined it for me. In the end, it doesn't actually end exactly the same (it's the same outcome, but it doesn't happen in the same way), and it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

Apart from Romeo and Juliet, I didn't really care for any of the other characters, even though they try very hard to give all characters solid personalities and development. I just happend to not care about anyone else, but I have to say that the development of both Romeo and Juliet was very well done. That's not to say that none of the other characters were good, I'm just saying that if any of them were to die, it probably wouldn't bother me that much.

Another small problem I had was the art. Now, I know that this was made in 2007, and quality was generally on a lower standard then, but seeing how something like Shakugan no Shana also came out in 2007, and looks much better, I couldn't really shake the feeling that the art was pretty sub-par. The characters lack detail, and some characters just seem to be less well drawn, like the fact that Juliet totally looks like a dude. For instance, when a scene is shown from a distance (we're not talking birds view here, just not that up close to the characters), you can see how a lot less detail is put into the character, to the point where their faces are just two dots and a line. For some reason, the most detailed character happens to be Ophelia who, for 20 episodes, is a very minor character.

Even though it's a tragedy, not much else but the ending is really that emotional, which is a bad thing, imo, since there's also no comedy (there are attempts at it, but...). This makes the not-that-eventful parts of the series feel very boring, really. The few emotional scenes there are, are pretty good tho. This is further enhanced by the fact that they almost always play an instrumental version of the OP in the background, which really adds to the scene, imo. The OP itself, "Inori ~You Raise Me Up~" (yes, that's a japanese version of "You Raise Me Up"), sung by Lena Park, is actually a pretty interesting song to be used here, and I think it fits the series very well.

In any case, I think this show was decent, but the weird pacing really drags it down for me. It's far from being one of the best out there, but it's certainly worth watching. 7/10.
 
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