Version française
Version française
A sinister individual has just arrived in Sononio, a little village of Italian speaking Switzerland. The goal of this man, named Luini, is indeed to find children from poor families to "rent" them and send them work as chimney sweeps in Milano for winter (we are still in the 19th century). One says many never come back... His eyes quickly catch young Romeo. The father of the young boy first refuses the base proposal he's made, but after the family corn field is destroyed in a fire (everything but accidental), his family is confonted with serious hardships. Romeo then decides to sacrifice himself for them...
With such a synopsis, you may think Romeo is a poignant drama à la Little Princess Sara. This is what I had first thought, too, but I didn't need much time to change my mind... Except in the very first part, the story is quickly moving with action scenes or new story developments following one another from episode to episode, and the last quarter has a suspense no other WMT has ever reached! While the style of most Meisakus reminds director Isao TAKAHATA, this one is more Hayao MIYAZAKI like, and thus rather differs from the rest of the line. Of course, Romeo keeps a side of realistic drama and still contains some of these daily life sequences the WMT are traditionally full of, but the series sounds more novelistic than authentic, and remains first of all a "boy's adventure story". My feeling is however that KUSUBA found a much better balance between emotion and action than TAKAGE the previous year with Tico. The story is developed with quite a quick rhythm, but also with delicacy enough to give intensity to the dramatic scenes. The symbol of this success is definitely the 29th episode, which is at the same time one of the most exciting and the most poignant anime episode ever made.
This style mixing emotion and action probably explains the success of Romeo among Japanese anime fans, who are usually a bit hermetic to too slow series: at the 1995 Anime Grand Prix (a poll organised by the magazine Animage), the series was elected 6th anime of the year, and its 29th episode which I was referring to 3rd episode of the year (no WMT had ever had so good results as far as I know). Popularity among fans, but also failure for the general audience, with a great decrease in the TV ratings: Romeo did about 10%, the worst rating a World Masterpiece Theater ever had (the previous were about 15%). Disown of the audience due to the change of the style or consequence of Fuji TV's policy, that canceled episode after episode to show volleyball games or comedy programs? I'd state for the second hypothesis. Another characteristic of Romeo is indeed to have been produced during the decline of the WMT: many episodes which had been planed at first were thus never made; the series became much shorter than all the previous Meisaku, and Nippon Animation had to change the script near the end. The story is overall well led and sometimes very exciting, but its shortness is sadly perceptible: some points in the screenplay are quite obscure, and some extra explanation would have been necessary (e.g. regarding Alfredo and his family). The story also contains two distinct parts, and the 24th episode which is used as a transition (the one of Bianca's arrival - the girl on the picture) makes too abrupt a change with what was before. You have the feeling the story starts again. Some more episodes would have probably made a more believable and coherent whole.
Sad thing the director displayed his usual shortcomings: the exaggeration of the character's feelings, the over dramatization of some situations. Friendship, fraternity and education are central themes of the series, which is natural for a WMT, but KUSUBA is sometimes too preachy which makes many scenes caricatured. This criticisum applies for most of his works, and doesn't prevent this one from being good, but I feel frustrated when I think to the result he could have reached with more soberty. Last complain: the excessive use of a narrator. Why does she have to say what we would be able to understand by ourselves?
Let's not end on a negative note, and speak about the great artistic qualities of this series. Yoshiharu SATÔ didn't IMO his best work as a character designer, (even if Bianca's face is sometimes quite expressive), but the character animation is simply beautiful, and very few WMT ever managed to make their movements so natural and expressive. Another strong side is the very nice music by Kei WAKAKUSA, which almost reaches the level of Daddy Long Legs.
Romeo is anyway a refreshing series, which finds a good balance between WMT's traditional style and action tale. And even if it's easy to find it weak points, it's also easy to forget them, with the best scenes sounding so true and the story being sometime so hooking. Too sad it's also somehow the swan song of the Meisaku line. It's clear Fuji TV didn't count on Nippon Animation any more for its Sunday evening schedule.
The series was shown on Italia 1 from July 9 to August 9 1997. You can count it, it makes 32 days ... because the 17th episode has been forgotten (on purpose?).
Back to theWorld Masterpiece Theater listing
Frédéric Goetzinger
(goetz@starnet.fr) Opening date: May 4, 1998 - last update: June 4, 2000