manga: Rose of Versailles
Jan. 2nd, 2014 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreRose of Versailles, for those not up on the history of shoujo manga, is essentialy the formative shoujo, both for manga and anime, serving as the cornerstone for the entire genre. Giant sparking shoujo eyes! Flowers and sparkles everywhere! Dramatic confessions! Love interests everywhere! Everyone is in love with the protagonist! Crossdressing! Superfrilly dresses! So much drama you can trip over it by wiggling your toes! Sometimes there are also disco pants, and the dark haired men have a disturbing tendency to look alike. (At one point, a light haired man put on a dark wig and I wanted to cry, because it made him look like all the rest.) I watched the anime adaptation a few years ago, and recently bought the US release of the anime (It only took 30 years for it to get licensed...) but haven't watched my DVDs yet because I wanted to read the manga before rewatching.
RoV is a manga about the French Revolution. Initially meant to be a manga about Marie Antoinette, it soon switches to being about Oscar, a character created by the mangaka Riyoko Ikeda, who I suspect was meant to be a foil for both Marie Antoinette and Hans Axel Von Fersen, as the earliest chapters seem to be setting the book up to focus on Marie Antoinette/Fersen. (Ikeda ships them a lot guys. A LOT. I suspect she may view them as the most epic love story of all time.) You, Oscar is the youngest daughter of a French general, who, hearing Oscar's very strong manly cry at birth, decides that if he can't have sons, he'll just raise his youngest daughter as a boy. And make her a soldier in the Royal Guards, which eventually results in her being one of Marie Antoinette's guards, and one of Antionette's first friends in France.
Oscar is gorgeous. Oscar is handsome. Oscar is dashing. All the court ladies are in love with Oscar, and all the men at court get a teeny bit confused when she's around. Oscar's biological gender is an open secret that people just forget half the time, and Oscar frequently tells us that she's always thought of herself as a man, but really she's a woman. A REAL WOMAN. And so, lovely maidens A, B, C, D, E and F, Oscar can only ever love you as sisters, not as lovers. Lovely young maidens may or may not actually die of being denied Oscar's love. Oscar's love interests include Andre, her childhood friend (who's love is FORBIDDEN because he is a commoner and she is a noble), Fersen (who might have fallen for Oscar had he realized she was a man before he met Marie Antoinette) Rosalie, a young woman who becomes Oscar's companion (and who has a plot relevant secret sister, a plot relevant long-lost mother, and two secret noble pasts, but her love for Oscar is doomed because Oscar is TRULY A WOMAN and so can only love her as a sister), Girondelle, a soldier under Oscar's command (who later takes advantage of being the only socially appropriate love interest and gets Oscar's father's approval, only to be thwarted by Oscar, who is having none of that), I think another soldier or two, and a bevy of young ladies. Naturally, Oscar's main love interest is the one who attempts sexual assault, because this was the 70s.I wish I could say that's no longer considered a sign of love... (When I saw it in the anime, I thought it was out of character and came out of nowhere, and was told it would seem even moreso in the manga. Which was true, but sadly, still there. SIGH.)
Tragically, it appears that the rampant Oscar/Marie Antoinette subtext is mostly in the anime, and there's considerably less of it in the manga.
Oh, yes, there's also eventually the 7-year-old crown prince of France who is destined to die young, his greatest regret being that he won't live long enough to properly romance Oscar.
Oscar is awesome. There really aren't word to explain how Oscar is awesome. Just trust me. Oscar is also given more liberty to run around France and be connected to things than Marie Antoinette at times, which allows Ikeda to cover various events without suddenly abandoning the protagonist for chapters on end. Despite all the drama and crossdressing hijinks and love affairs, this is also a very detailed and fairly accurate portrayal of France from Marie Antoinette's arrival through her death, and one that does a very good job of conveying the social unrest and events that led to the revolution.
Also, after Ikeda kills off Marie Antoinette, there's a sidestory set somewhere around volumes 3-4 in which Oscar, Andre and Rosalie go to visit Oscar's sister and have adventures with Oscar's 6 year old niece and a manipulative young lady who is, naturally, in love with Oscar, and the five go up against Lady Bathory's spiritual heir and her murderous automaton and killer maids. I kid you not.
I do think the anime is stronger than the manga, but largely because the anime had the advantage of knowing going in where the story would go and who it would focus on, while Ikeda started out writing one series and ended up writing one about the same general subject, but still a completely different one than she had intended to write, and so it takes a lot longer for the manga to find its footing.
Does anyone know where I can find Ikeda's other work in English? i know where I can get Claudine and Oniisama E, but I'm also curious about her Napoleon series (mostly for the RoV crossover characters) and Orpheus in the Window. Not to mention the RoV parody series.
RoV is a manga about the French Revolution. Initially meant to be a manga about Marie Antoinette, it soon switches to being about Oscar, a character created by the mangaka Riyoko Ikeda, who I suspect was meant to be a foil for both Marie Antoinette and Hans Axel Von Fersen, as the earliest chapters seem to be setting the book up to focus on Marie Antoinette/Fersen. (Ikeda ships them a lot guys. A LOT. I suspect she may view them as the most epic love story of all time.) You, Oscar is the youngest daughter of a French general, who, hearing Oscar's very strong manly cry at birth, decides that if he can't have sons, he'll just raise his youngest daughter as a boy. And make her a soldier in the Royal Guards, which eventually results in her being one of Marie Antoinette's guards, and one of Antionette's first friends in France.
Oscar is gorgeous. Oscar is handsome. Oscar is dashing. All the court ladies are in love with Oscar, and all the men at court get a teeny bit confused when she's around. Oscar's biological gender is an open secret that people just forget half the time, and Oscar frequently tells us that she's always thought of herself as a man, but really she's a woman. A REAL WOMAN. And so, lovely maidens A, B, C, D, E and F, Oscar can only ever love you as sisters, not as lovers. Lovely young maidens may or may not actually die of being denied Oscar's love. Oscar's love interests include Andre, her childhood friend (who's love is FORBIDDEN because he is a commoner and she is a noble), Fersen (who might have fallen for Oscar had he realized she was a man before he met Marie Antoinette) Rosalie, a young woman who becomes Oscar's companion (and who has a plot relevant secret sister, a plot relevant long-lost mother, and two secret noble pasts, but her love for Oscar is doomed because Oscar is TRULY A WOMAN and so can only love her as a sister), Girondelle, a soldier under Oscar's command (who later takes advantage of being the only socially appropriate love interest and gets Oscar's father's approval, only to be thwarted by Oscar, who is having none of that), I think another soldier or two, and a bevy of young ladies. Naturally, Oscar's main love interest is the one who attempts sexual assault, because this was the 70s.
Tragically, it appears that the rampant Oscar/Marie Antoinette subtext is mostly in the anime, and there's considerably less of it in the manga.
Oh, yes, there's also eventually the 7-year-old crown prince of France who is destined to die young, his greatest regret being that he won't live long enough to properly romance Oscar.
Oscar is awesome. There really aren't word to explain how Oscar is awesome. Just trust me. Oscar is also given more liberty to run around France and be connected to things than Marie Antoinette at times, which allows Ikeda to cover various events without suddenly abandoning the protagonist for chapters on end. Despite all the drama and crossdressing hijinks and love affairs, this is also a very detailed and fairly accurate portrayal of France from Marie Antoinette's arrival through her death, and one that does a very good job of conveying the social unrest and events that led to the revolution.
Also, after Ikeda kills off Marie Antoinette, there's a sidestory set somewhere around volumes 3-4 in which Oscar, Andre and Rosalie go to visit Oscar's sister and have adventures with Oscar's 6 year old niece and a manipulative young lady who is, naturally, in love with Oscar, and the five go up against Lady Bathory's spiritual heir and her murderous automaton and killer maids. I kid you not.
I do think the anime is stronger than the manga, but largely because the anime had the advantage of knowing going in where the story would go and who it would focus on, while Ikeda started out writing one series and ended up writing one about the same general subject, but still a completely different one than she had intended to write, and so it takes a lot longer for the manga to find its footing.
Does anyone know where I can find Ikeda's other work in English? i know where I can get Claudine and Oniisama E, but I'm also curious about her Napoleon series (mostly for the RoV crossover characters) and Orpheus in the Window. Not to mention the RoV parody series.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 02:19 am (UTC)In the meantime, I'll just read Saitou Chiho's historical melodramas.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 04:36 am (UTC)As for her other works, I clicked on several at random from the list on Baka Updates and none of the ones I clicked on had been scanlated, but it's possible some are and I just didn't click the right ones. That is a pretty daunting list of works there.