(Japanese Video Series)Continuing on my journey through Japanese pop culture, here’s another anime series.
This series takes place during the French Revolution, so it allows me to combine Japanese studying with my interest in European history.
However this isn't just some obscure anime series I dug up to satisfy my own geeky interests. On the contrary, this is perhaps the most famous Shojo anime series ever. (In fact a “Daily Yomiuri” article recently called it the most influential Shojo miniseries).
Anecdotally, I can say that whenever I’m discussing the French Revolution with Japanese friends, this anime series almost always gets brought up. And it seems to me that a lot of Japanese people, especially a lot of Japanese woman, have gotten all their knowledge about the French Revolution exclusively from this series.
Strange that one of the most popular Japanese anime series should be about the French Revolution, but I guess that’s just the kind of international world we live in now. Just as one of the highest rated miniseries in U.S. television history is about the Japanese Shogun.
Like a lot of popular Japanese animation, this story has gone through several mediums. It started out as a manga, then was converted into an animation, then a movie, and is currently still being performed as a popular musical in Japan.
And as always, the story gets slightly altered at each transformation. I've been told the original manga is more historical accurate, but I've only seen the anime, so I’ll have to confine my review to that.
In “Shogun”, author James Clavell spent years researching Japanese history, and then in the end decided to write a novel that was not purely historical, but instead mixed large amounts of fiction with Japanese history.
By the same token, Ryoko Ikeda, the author of “The Rose of Versailles” (who published her story in the mid 70s, about the same time as “Shogun”) obviously spent a lot of time researching French history, and is knowledgeable about a lot of small details. But then she decided to write a story freely mixing historical fact with large amounts of fiction.
The story revolves around the fictional character of Oscar François de Jarjayes . On the night of her birth, Oscar’s father was desperately hoping for a son, but got another daughter instead.
So, he decided to raise Oscar as if she were his son. The adult Oscar becomes a soldier who can ride, fence, shoot, and fight as well as any man can. In her soldier’s uniform, she is often mistaken for a man by those who don’t know any better.
This is a surprisingly common theme in Shojo [girl's] anime and manga. Some elements of this were even present in “Romeo X Juliet”, where the princess Juliet was raised as a boy to hide her true identity, and she also fought injustice disguised as a man in the costume of “The Red Wind”.
And in fact, I could list several other Shojo series where the main character is able to disguise herself as a man and operate successfully in a man’s world.
...To the extent that popular entertainment represents wish fulfillment, this probably says something interesting about the desires of the average Japanese woman, Japanese society, and women’s place in that society. But I’ll leave that question to the sociologists.
Also, as you might expect given this scenario, the sexuality gets a little bit confused in this story. Oscar is a beautiful woman, who many men fall desperately in love with over the course of the series. And she herself loves some of them back. (The story follows the commonly established pattern, where Oscar falls in love with brave and dashing men, only at the end to realize her true love is the boy next door who has been right in front of her eyes the whole time).
However at the same time Oscar also appears to be coveted sexually by several of the women in the Versailles court.
Again, assuming this type of entertainment represents a certain degree vicarious wish fulfillment, and keeping in mind that “The Rose of Versailles” is one of the most popular Shojo series in Anime history, one wonders what this might say about the sexual desires of the average Japanese woman (or woman in general?). I’m sure Dr. Kinsey would have had something interesting to say about this. But again I’ll leave that question hanging for people more qualified than me to analyze.
Oscar becomes the captain of Marie Antoinette’s guards, and is responsible for safeguarding Marie Antoinette’s safety. The series begins with Marie Antoinette entering France, and follows over the course of forty(30 minute) episodes the 20 years leading up to the storming of the Bastille. The series ends at the battle of the Bastille, although there is a 15 minute epilogue that recounts the fates of the main characters following the fall of the Bastille.
(According to Wikipedia, Ryoko Ikeda wrote a sequel that follows the events of French history through the Directory and the rise of Napoleon, but this sequel hasn't been made into an anime, and is only available in Manga form).
During the course of these 20 years, the anime series follows Marie Antionette's life through crisises both historical and imagined. Marie Antionette’s rivalry with Madame du-Barry and romance with Count Fersen are both re-counted in this series.
(Some of this is very similar to the Kirsten Dunst “Marie Antoinette” movie version, such as the ongoing battle of wills between Marie Antoinette not to speak to Madame du-Barry, and Madame du-Barry’s backstage politicking to force Marie Antoinette to acknowledge her. Also Marie Antoinette meeting Count Fersen at a masked ball.
I guess the similarities shouldn't be a big surprise since both are based on the same historical source material. And I couldn't help but wonder if the producers of the Kirsten Dunst movie had seen “The Rose of Versailles”, or had been influenced by it a little.)
During this same period, to keep up the excitement, there are numerous fictional cloak and dagger plots against Marie Antoinette’s life, which Oscar must uncover and foil.
One of the main subplots of this series is a story that could have been straight out of Charles Dickens (speaking of another writer who mixed facts with fiction when writing about the French Revolution). In the slums of Paris, a poor dying mother is trying to raise two daughters of completely different temperament. One daughter Jeanne, who is greedy and rebellious, goes off to seek her fortune among the aristocracy. Through a series of lies and deceptions she becomes integrated in aristocratic society, and, as one greedy plot piles on top of another, she eventually becomes the Jeanne of the infamous “Affair of the Necklace”.
The other daughter, Rosalie, stays behind to loyally tend her sick mother, but eventually finds out she was adopted, and that her true mother is Lady Polignac (one of Marie Antoinette’s inner circle, who in accordance with popular perception, is portrayed in “The Rose of Versailles” as a corrupting influence on Marie Antoinette.)
(Rosalie is also one of the women who briefly falls romantically in love with Oscar).
The revolutionaries appear in the story as well. For the first several episodes, we see and hear nothing of them, but they creep into the story slowly to represent the changes that are going on in French society away from Versailles.
Maximilien Robespierre first appears as a young student giving a speech at King Louis XVI coronation ceremony. (A fact true to history, although the historical 17 year old Robespierre stood out in the rain and delivered his speech as the king’s carriage drove by. In “The Rose of Versailles” anime, Robespierre is inside the coronation hall giving his speech before the assembled ministers.)
We next meet Robespierre when Oscar goes on a trip out to the countryside, and meets Robespierre as a young lawyer working for the good of the common people.
Robespierre appears more and more frequently as events progress towards Revolution, although he is often represented not as one demagogue among many, but as all the historical French Revolutionaries rolled into one.
Saint-Just often appears at Robespierre side, at first as a disciple of Robespierre, but he later openly defies Robespierre and starts to represent the radical side of the revolution that Robespierre can not control.
The series then jumps off from the historical rails completely when Saint-Just becomes a masked terrorist setting off bombs and assassinating aristocrats.
The 3rd member of the revolutionary trio is entirely fictional: a journalist named Bernard, who starts out as one of Robespierre’s followers, then has a brief career as “The Black Knight”, a sort of Robin Hood type figure who steals jewels from the aristocrats and gives them to the poor, until he is unmasked and defeated by Oscar and her sidekick Andre. Finally he becomes one of the leaders of the common people, marries Rosalie, and becomes an ally of Oscar and Andre as the two of them decide to join with the people during the battle against the Bastille.
This anime was made in the late 70s, and it’s showing it’s age a bit now. The animation is a little stiff and jerky. It bothered me at first, but it was one of those things that after a few episodes I stopped even noticing.
Also the pacing of this anime started to get to me after a while. There are a lot of action scenes, to be sure, but there’s also a few too many scenes of characters looking lovingly into each other’s eyes while romantic music plays in the background.
I mentioned earlier that “Romeo X Juliet” was a Shojo anime that the 12 year old boy inside of me didn't mind a bit. But in “The Rose of Versailles” the Y chromosome in me was getting a little restless during some of the sappier scenes.
Still, all in all, a mostly entertaining series, and a good way to combine Japanese language study with French History.
Link of the Day
FBI to Get Freer Rein to Gather Domestic Information
The Rose of Versailles: Anime Series Review (Scripted)
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