![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anime: Romeo x Juliet (complete)
Jul. 19th, 2012 09:04 pmHere is the series I signed up for : Juliet Capulet! Crossdressing girl!Zorro in high fantasy-Neo Verona, sidekicks include fellow rebels and theatrical folks*! She is out to avenge her family and reclaim the throne of Neo Verona from Prince Montague, who wiped out her clan! Oh, and the boy she likes is Prince Montague's son. A bit inconvenient, that part.
WHICH! It was for a while, and while it was, it was fun. But then about 1/3 of the way through, the writers decided that simply reimagining Romeo and Juliet as a ihgh fantasy romantic revenge drama wasn't enough, and they needed to get CREATIVE, and so naturally a weird MAGIC OF NATURE RENEW THE LAND ZOMG plot was introduced and it all went downhill from there. That one started giving me an unpleasant feeling of familiarity from the beiginning, and rightly so. Listen, Gonzo, there are a LOT of fantasy writers from multiple countries to get your ideas from. Terry Brooks and his creeptastic idea of how women in Shannara can have lasting MYSTIC DESTINIES is not one of them.
Leaving that plotline out and making it a shorter 12-13 episode series would have fixed most of the series' problems, really, but about halfway through Juliet gets Damsel in Distressed and then disappears for a while (and has a much smaller part for the first few episodes after she returns) so that Romeo can become a miner and then a farmer to prove how in touch he is with The Little People. This made it lose a ton of momentum that, while there were some really good bits after that (largely involving theatrical hijinks and Juliet pulling off heroics and leading armies-sometimes all at once) it never really got its feet back after that.
Whenever it was about Juliet and/or either side of her surrogate family, it was really fun. When it wasn't about them, it...usually wasn't. Alas.
*Including, naturally, an overly dramatic playwright named William who is giddily sexually ambiguous and wants to turn everything into a story to be milked for the maximum Angst And Drama.
WHICH! It was for a while, and while it was, it was fun. But then about 1/3 of the way through, the writers decided that simply reimagining Romeo and Juliet as a ihgh fantasy romantic revenge drama wasn't enough, and they needed to get CREATIVE, and so naturally a weird MAGIC OF NATURE RENEW THE LAND ZOMG plot was introduced and it all went downhill from there. That one started giving me an unpleasant feeling of familiarity from the beiginning, and rightly so. Listen, Gonzo, there are a LOT of fantasy writers from multiple countries to get your ideas from. Terry Brooks and his creeptastic idea of how women in Shannara can have lasting MYSTIC DESTINIES is not one of them.
Leaving that plotline out and making it a shorter 12-13 episode series would have fixed most of the series' problems, really, but about halfway through Juliet gets Damsel in Distressed and then disappears for a while (and has a much smaller part for the first few episodes after she returns) so that Romeo can become a miner and then a farmer to prove how in touch he is with The Little People. This made it lose a ton of momentum that, while there were some really good bits after that (largely involving theatrical hijinks and Juliet pulling off heroics and leading armies-sometimes all at once) it never really got its feet back after that.
Whenever it was about Juliet and/or either side of her surrogate family, it was really fun. When it wasn't about them, it...usually wasn't. Alas.
*Including, naturally, an overly dramatic playwright named William who is giddily sexually ambiguous and wants to turn everything into a story to be milked for the maximum Angst And Drama.