"The Rose of Versailles" (2025 Anime Film) Talkback (Spoilers)

[wonderfly]

The News Team's Golden Geek has a new review up on the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"Review: “The Rose of Versailles (2025)”: An Unnecessary “Fresh” Coat of Paint"​

"If Marie Antoinette had truly intended to enrage the commoners, she would’ve likely started singing about her romance instead of suggesting dessert. Such is the setup for Netflix’s new adaptation of The Rose of Versailles – beloved historical fiction that’s been given a modern update from MAPPA, one of the most well-known and beloved active studios. Unfortunately, the pretty visuals do very little to justify its existence, as it jumps through a complex story with off-putting musical numbers and droning romance, rather than giving Lady Oscar’s stunning command in a time that was against her the treatment it deserves.

The original Rose of Versailles is a ten-volume manga, previously adapted into a 40-episode series, which is well-loved to this day. While there is some chance that this story could have been handled decently as a film, a lot of that hope goes out the window in the first five minutes, when the serious tone of the original story is completely abandoned for an opening number with character poses and flower backgrounds. And this is where many fans of the original may turn away in horror – yes, they gave The Rose of Versailles the full modern shoujo aesthetic treatment, complete with big eyes and goofy expressions at times. The visuals themselves aren’t the problem (more on that later) – it’s how jarring they are compared to the original series. While The Rose of Versailles is a shoujo, it is one that was well-known for being groundbreaking in the genre for pushing the demographic older and not looking like the rest of the crowd. In this form, it looks like many others in its demographic."

Read the full review here.

 

[Harmonie]

I agree that it is stripped of so much that made the original great (and note I'm only going by memory of having watched the anime 10 years ago, so there's a lot I forgot myself). Entire characters are skipped over, Marie Antoinette's representation is much, much simpler than the original and Lady Oscar's character development that causes her to switch to the revolution's side is really lost. I mean IIRC there's like one scene where she sees the suffering of the commoners from the action of the royalty and that's it. I know it was a movie and all, but it's such a major thing to portray so simply! Not that the scene chosen wasn't a powerful one.

I guess, also if Rose of Versailles were to be made into a musical this isn't exactly what I would hope for from it. But I suppose I'm colored by my longtime love for Les Miserables which is similar in setting, of course. lol. I also much prefer the BGM musical direction of the original anime.

With that said, none of my complaints stopped me from still crying at the inevitably very bittersweet ending.