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Apr. 29th, 2022 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI've been watching Thermae Romae Novae on Netflix. I'd heard of the manga long ago and didn't know the name at the time, so I was glad to see 'the anime about the Roman bath engineer who gets transported to modern Japan and does his best to copy their bath technologies and design when he goes back to ancient Rome' come up without me having to search for a title.
Fascinating stuff to see, very educational, one of the better handlings I've seen of 'guy from X time frame and location thrust into Y time frame and location without warning', cool subject, thank you for remembering that Romans came in multiple colors and appearances because they were an empire covering huge amounts of territory and multiple different peoples, thank you for realistically drawing the non-Italian Romans, a good bit of the script is fish-out-of-water-funny, the scenery is amazing...
and there are so
many
butts
I mean, yeah, it's an anime about a guy who designs bath houses in ancient Rome and it puts him in the heart of Japan's bath culture every episode, whether it's regular bath houses or onsen or what. So I was expecting nudity, because baths, hello.
But if you're gonna watch this, be aware that except for a handful of much older guys (like, having-trouble-walking-due-to-age-related-joint-issues old), every single Roman who goes into the baths is going to have the camera show his butt sooner or later, and may well get a Miranda-in-Mass-Effect-2 sequence of the camera parking itself on his butt while he talks. And all of the not-elderly Romans are sculpted, muscles-wise. It's not sexualized nudity, it's just a lot of butt nudity. There are some frontal shots but they either do the Austin Powers thing of a convenient lens flare/bit of steam/strategically placed bottle blocking the critical zone, or they straight-up pixelate it. But only the groin region. Everything else? These are Romans who clearly put a great deal of work into exercising every muscle group and eating right. Any one of 'em could wear Nightwing's outfits from DC Comics and look better in them than he does.
(Last night's episode involved the main character visiting a friend of his who was working on sculptures for Emperor Hadrian. specifically, nude sculptures of the Emperor's dead bedmate, Antinous; Hadrian wanted these sculptures put on display all over Rome. Apparently the Japanese law that requires censoring visual depictions of male genitalia does not apply to pictures of sculptures. I mention this because this episode was the first one to outright pixelate the main character rather than provide a convenient bit of steam or a strategically placed houseplant, so it kind of stood out.)
There's naked Japanese folks, too, but so far every single one of them has been elderly. Realistically drawn elderly, at that. The one case of female nudity I've seen so far- I've watched four episodes out of eight- was played off as a joke along the lines of 'that foreigner's been staring at you since he got to the hot spring, do you think he's figured out you're a woman yet?', and tbh I would not have guessed that that particular elderly person was female from looking at them. That was an episode dealing with outdoor hot springs used by both humans and snow monkeys.
The last several minutes of every episode are live-action and feature the mangaka traveling around Japan to visit various hot springs, bath houses, etc. and learn about the local practices and history. I think I'd like to get my hands on the actual manga when I run out of episodes; what I've seen of this woman's work has been fascinating and she clearly researched her subject exhaustively. I hope there's more of the anime, too, although given Netflix's track record lately I doubt that'll happen.
I like it. It's funny, it's fascinating.
I am keeping this anime in mind for people who are into men's butts, and I am also keeping it in mind for making people who are into pantyshot extreme cleavage Gainaxing fanservice intensely uncomfortable.
Fascinating stuff to see, very educational, one of the better handlings I've seen of 'guy from X time frame and location thrust into Y time frame and location without warning', cool subject, thank you for remembering that Romans came in multiple colors and appearances because they were an empire covering huge amounts of territory and multiple different peoples, thank you for realistically drawing the non-Italian Romans, a good bit of the script is fish-out-of-water-funny, the scenery is amazing...
and there are so
many
butts
I mean, yeah, it's an anime about a guy who designs bath houses in ancient Rome and it puts him in the heart of Japan's bath culture every episode, whether it's regular bath houses or onsen or what. So I was expecting nudity, because baths, hello.
But if you're gonna watch this, be aware that except for a handful of much older guys (like, having-trouble-walking-due-to-age-related-joint-issues old), every single Roman who goes into the baths is going to have the camera show his butt sooner or later, and may well get a Miranda-in-Mass-Effect-2 sequence of the camera parking itself on his butt while he talks. And all of the not-elderly Romans are sculpted, muscles-wise. It's not sexualized nudity, it's just a lot of butt nudity. There are some frontal shots but they either do the Austin Powers thing of a convenient lens flare/bit of steam/strategically placed bottle blocking the critical zone, or they straight-up pixelate it. But only the groin region. Everything else? These are Romans who clearly put a great deal of work into exercising every muscle group and eating right. Any one of 'em could wear Nightwing's outfits from DC Comics and look better in them than he does.
(Last night's episode involved the main character visiting a friend of his who was working on sculptures for Emperor Hadrian. specifically, nude sculptures of the Emperor's dead bedmate, Antinous; Hadrian wanted these sculptures put on display all over Rome. Apparently the Japanese law that requires censoring visual depictions of male genitalia does not apply to pictures of sculptures. I mention this because this episode was the first one to outright pixelate the main character rather than provide a convenient bit of steam or a strategically placed houseplant, so it kind of stood out.)
There's naked Japanese folks, too, but so far every single one of them has been elderly. Realistically drawn elderly, at that. The one case of female nudity I've seen so far- I've watched four episodes out of eight- was played off as a joke along the lines of 'that foreigner's been staring at you since he got to the hot spring, do you think he's figured out you're a woman yet?', and tbh I would not have guessed that that particular elderly person was female from looking at them. That was an episode dealing with outdoor hot springs used by both humans and snow monkeys.
The last several minutes of every episode are live-action and feature the mangaka traveling around Japan to visit various hot springs, bath houses, etc. and learn about the local practices and history. I think I'd like to get my hands on the actual manga when I run out of episodes; what I've seen of this woman's work has been fascinating and she clearly researched her subject exhaustively. I hope there's more of the anime, too, although given Netflix's track record lately I doubt that'll happen.
I like it. It's funny, it's fascinating.
I am keeping this anime in mind for people who are into men's butts, and I am also keeping it in mind for making people who are into pantyshot extreme cleavage Gainaxing fanservice intensely uncomfortable.
