Le rose di Versailles - Lady Oscar

Where to start with "The Rose of Versailles" from 2025? Visually, I have to admit, the film has its own elegance. The graphics are clean, the costumes are sumptuous and some scenes recreate the atmosphere of the time well. However, let's stop here with the compliments, because for the rest... a disaster waiting to happen!

The story, which was the beating heart of the manga and the old, timeless anime, has been literally massacred here. They have cut away entire narrative arcs, fundamental characters have been reduced to extras if not eliminated altogether. It almost seems as if they have taken the most beautiful and significant pages with scissors.

Those who loved the intricate dynamics between Oscar, André, Marie Antoinette and Fersen, the psychological depth of the protagonists, the political and social nuances of the French Revolution, will find here only a pale summary, hasty and superficial. The charisma of the characters has been lost along the way, their motivations appear sketchy and the emotions, which in the manga and anime tore our hearts, here leave us totally indifferent.

It's as if they wanted to make a "The Rose of Versailles" for those who have never read or seen the original, depriving it of all its richness and complexity.

There is no comparison with the old anime, which despite the technical limitations of the time, managed to convey the passion, drama and grandeur of this epic. The anime was an engaging experience, capable of making you cry, dream and reflect. This 2025 film is just an empty shell.

With barely 2 hours, it was clear that the feature film would cut many things present in the manga and the old anime from which this film is based, but the things absent are really too many.

They have sacrificed many elements in this film that are fundamental to fully understanding this work, starting with the most obvious one: having a female protagonist forced to grow up and act as a man, which is more prominently introduced here at more than 30 minutes after the incipit, but still coming across as always oversimplified in the overall. Even the other events that are more closely linked to actual history, and which should have a greater impact on Marie Antoinette's growth, are treated with extreme speed; everything is oversimplified in this film, in a decidedly negative way.

Unfortunately all expectations were confirmed: redundant, cloying film, forced musical interludes, little pathos and unfortunately the characters are without charisma.

Such a wasted opportunity to do something memorable because of the music used. The music is unoriginal, tacky and just out of place. If the style of the music resembled a bit the style of the music of the era could have been a GREAT musical to watch. Instead, the story runs too fast and waste so much time in music that isn't memorable and it's just out of context.

Those musical moments are supposed to fill up parts of the story, but they don't because they stay in the shallow end.

The relationship between characters isn't understood at all; it all seems too fast in the end, and we don't get to see the guillotine or the moment when the monarchs are taken into custody.

The designs, costumes, and all the aesthetic side area gorgeous reinterpretation of an old classic, but that's it.

When I was a child, this story moved and shocked me deeply. I had high hopes for MAPPA's theatrical version, but to my dismay, not even 20 minutes in, I was already thinking, "What am I watching?" and "Did I open the wrong movie?" I barely lasted an hour before giving up. Throughout the viewing, I couldn't connect with the characters' emotions at all. The story, which should have resonated deeply with the audience, felt completely hollow. The scene transitions were jarring, and even the use of music felt off and disconnected from the narrative-as if they just wanted to rush through the story.

This was originally a story rich with a strong sense of its era. I still remember how heartbreaking it was to see André die when I watched it as a kid. Oscar was such a stunningly cool woman. But the 2025 theatrical version had none of that! It tried to compress a story that originally took many episodes to tell into just two hours. Naturally, the screenplay should've carefully chosen which parts to keep or cut, and there was no way the original pacing could be copied wholesale. After about an hour, I just felt the pacing was all over the place, and I had no idea what the storytelling was trying to convey. Many scenes were delivered in such awkward ways that I found myself constantly thinking, "Uhh... what?"-completely speechless.

Three stars: one for Hiroyuki Sawano's music, one for the voice actors who clearly understood their roles, and one for the beautiful visuals. That's it. Regardless of the medium-anime, novel, manga, live-action TV, or film-the story and writing are absolutely critical. But in this film, I saw no evidence of thoughtful screenwriting or post-production effort.

Take NieR, for example-originally a game adapted into an anime. You could tell the writers put in real effort to weave the entire story together. Even though they changed the order of events or tweaked some scenes, they still managed to faithfully recreate the narrative and evoke genuine emotion in the audience. That's something the 2025 Rose of Versailles movie completely failed to do.

The film was very superficial and fast-paced. It didn't give the main story and events of the revolution their due. Everything was unclear and rushed. Most of the focus was on the relationships, while the deeper, more important historical events of the story were neglected. I understood the ending because I had already watched the original anime; otherwise, the plot would have been vague.

In addition, the film made it seem as though Oscar's happiness in the end was due to her finding love, and that the entire dilemma revolved around it. This is partially true, but it's not the main reason. The deeper reason, which was ignored, is that she finally rebelled and followed her heart and freedom after being a mere scapegoat following orders her entire life. Oscar was also portrayed as a much weaker character than in the anime, breaking down and crying in front of the army! Oscar was never like that; her image was distorted and weakened greatly.

I can excuse them since it's a movie, and they're limited to a certain length, thus neglecting some aspects and events. We all know that the romantic market is strong, so it's normal to focus more on the aspects of love to ensure greater success and returns. Overall, the movie is incomparable and does not reach the level of the original work, the seventies anime, at all.