Thermae Romae Novae

Thermae Romae Novae could be literally be described as the "Thermas Isekai". If you take the exact formula from "Isekai Izakaya: Koto Aitheria no Izakaya Nobu" and change the subject from Restaurant to Thermas, this is the result you will get. It's very simplistic, the story only exist to justify the job being done, its not deep, but also not bad, being followed with a nice "overeaction" style of comedy, with each episode making things a little bit more elaborated. In the same way as Izakaya Nobu, at the end of each episode you also have a short documentary telling interesting things about Thermas and itsstory, what inspired the author. The only criticism i have towards this show are the following: -> The mix between 2D and 3D art style, that as always, it's just ugly. The 2D art style is decent, but the 3D one, is just ugly and poorly made. At least this isn't a fighting show, so it doesnt matter that much. -> It have a constant orange/coffee like colored filter, maybe to fit the Ancient Roman Thermas theme, but sometimes it just feels weird, almost feeling like everything is dirty, but maybe this is just a personal pick of mine. -> The character have some weird design choices, their face expressions are just too small and subtle, almost being non existent, if not for the constant change in voice tone to enhance them, they could have done something more expressive. At the end, it's a good, interesting and relatively funny show, a much needed change in the usual Isekai Formula we are all fed up, especially considering this is coming from from a Netflix.

You'd never expect a show about an ancient roman architect making bathtubs to be this entertaining, no, seriously, that's what the show is about, a roman emperor sporadically being teleported into the future after falling into water over the course of his life and finding himself among bath related situations in modern day Japan, where he learns their culture, and hastily rips them off when he randomly returns back to his original time period with his architectural skills. Now I'm not a comedy fan, alright, but this show is fucking funny. During my torturous bus rides to and from school I get a timespan enough to watch an episode of whatever show I want to watch each trip, normally I just pick a show with no serious connotations to it so that I don't have any episodes during the bus and drag too much unwanted attention, but I think that backfired, I found myself giggling so childishly at the absurdity of each scenario I think I got a few piercing stares from my neighbors thinking I need to be submitted to a psychiatric ward. What I find to be so special about this show in particular is how it manages to turn a subject no one tends to give a shit about into an educational and engaging watch, kind of like that one elementary school teacher everyone without exception loves, I now know 100x more things about baths than I did before I had watched this show and I am damn well please about it, I will brag to anybody that I know more about baths than they do and that I hold zero regerts spending my time watching such a show do so, historic fantasy aspect and all. Irony aside, the greatest thing this show does which I have yet to see another show properly do is manage to serve proper purpose, maintaining its goal, and being a comedy, comedy and end goal do not mix in the anime medium and we all know it, take The Genius Prince from Winter 2022 as a good example. This show manages to create a funny way of educating the dumbest of comedy watchers into learning the bathing cultures of both Japan and Rome, and in some way the world, it even manages to slip in a 3-minute documentary at the very end which I have never skipped because of how fascinated I became with whatever Yamazaki was looking around at this episode. It's difficult to find an engaging comedy that also prospers at achieving its goal of educating the viewer on whatever subject they so please, some of the most outlandish stuff can be taught without you even knowing it, and you my dear friend have just accidentally learnt how to cool down baths with a wooden plank.

Very basic comedy with like an isekai type twist with honestly barely any link to roman civilization like you could substitute any old civilization and wouldn't change much at all. At the end of each episode we get a clip of the manga artist visiting the hotsprings that inspired her to make it. very basic story but i liked the art. there was some use of cgi it was quite out of place but its wasn't totally disorientating. SPOILERS!!! Basically MC gets isekaied then steals aspects of function and design from modern Japanese bathhouses, has a funny interaction with the Japanese, solves the problem of theepisode with said stolen idea.

I find it especially brilliant to manage to come up with such an original idea: an architect of the Ancient Roman Empire who travels to modern Japan and learns how to build better thermal baths. The idea is terrific, and the realization kept up with it, that's why Thermae Romae Novae is a breath of fresh air in the isekai/time travel sphere. I am particularly enthusiastic about this series, since I am not just Italian, but also Roman; although the main focus of the series is to explore and celebrate japanese thermal traditions rather than Ancient Rome, I couldn't help but rejoice watching a job welldone: I was very happy to see that both the author of the manga and the people who worked to the series were meticulously precise in recreating roman traditions, society, and history. In particular I appreciated the differentiation between roman people and japanese people, in terms of art: usually, in anime, the only distinction made to portray foreign people is to change hair and eye colour; while here everything is different, from the bone structure, to skin colour, but also eye shape, hair texture and so on and so forth... Apart from these little (but still important) details, in general I can say this show amazed me: I rediscovered the ancient traditions of my ancestors and learnt many new things about a different culture. And I am convinced that this is the main focus of the show: to paint familiar images (roman) next to exotic ones (japanese), explaining their differences and similarities (probably for japanese watchers this mechanism works the other way around). So I recommend users to not expect anything outside this concept: no excessive narration of the protagonist's background, no deep characterization, few to none importance given to sub plots... It is a simple show, with just one purpose, namely the one above. This doesn't certainly mean that these 11 episodes must be regarded as short History lessons, indeed the show begins soon to be very amusing and funny: thinking about it, how hilarious would it be to see someone from the ancient world trying to understand all the new and complex mechanisms of this world and seeing them freak out every time? Basically, it is the funniest thing ever. I'd like also to mention the short clips at the end of each episode, in which the author of the manga explores thermal bath culture in Japan; it's good to see how things I've only seen in 2D look in the real world, very interesting :) .

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