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This Week in Anime
When in Rome, Bathe as the Romans Do

by Jean-Karlo Lemus & Monique Thomas,

Thermae Romae Novae looks to reinvigorate Mari Yamazaki's historical comedy manga about bath culture with a brand new series on Netflix. Does this version manage to bring the silly charm or is its topic too niche?

This series is streaming on Netflix

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.


@Lossthief @mouse_inhouse @NickyEnchilada @vestenet


Nicky
Heyyo, Jean-Karlo! Finally, the past anime season is over and the new season is just beginning. It's really nice to be able to chill out reflect, and take some time off while we wait for the new shows to start up. Let me just check out the schedule to see if there isn't any surprise upcoming drops—Oh, Okay. Time to cancel my vacation plans because it seems that Netflix has other ideas.
Jean-Karlo
My heart goes out to our colleagues working on Preview Guide, they're definitely feeling the grind. I think we can all afford to take it easy and relax with a nice, long bath with the boys...
I think I'd rather be hunting some megafauna but mostly because that involves slightly less nudity. Anyways, This Week we're taking a deep soak in the experience of Thermae Romae Novae .
Thermae Romae is one of those weird concepts you could only really get away with in the world of anime and manga, a historical-fiction-slash-speculative-fiction story about an ancient Roman architect slipping through time to bring contemporary bathroom tech to the Ancient Romans. It shouldn't be as engaging as it is, and yet not only did Yen Press bring over the manga a few years back but it's had two animated adaptations—this one, Thermae Romae Novae, being the second one. And man, did this one surprise me!
The first adaption was a series of shorts animated in flash by DLE and those are surprisingly still available both for streaming on Crunchyroll and just released by our pals at Discotek. Thermae Romae Novae, on the other hand is a full series distributed by Netflix and animated by NAZ.

The last thing I fully watched by NAZ was the DRAMAtical Murder anime only because the animation was SO horrendous I couldn't stop laughing. So I wasn't really having high expectations for the shows production values dipping into this. I was actually a little worried. Mari Yamazaki is a wonderful artist and mangaka and there's a real charm to her original work. I'm still unsure if the anime transfers all the appeal but I don't think the show looks low quality either. Even a few of the CG sections impressed me with their creativity.

COVID has no doubt complicated the animation production system worldwide, hence why there are so many CG scenes in Thermae Romae Novae, but I wanna second their creativity. Most of the CG is otherwise kept to crowd shots (animating the passers-by) or tricky rotation shots that would be a lot harder to do with traditional animation. It's a far cry from DRAMAtical Murder for sure. Pic related, it's DRAMAtical Murder.
Not that studio is always directly tied to production values, mind. But the other staff credits weren't impressing me either. Some parts of the show still feel stiff and there's a grainy filter on everything but everything looses up once we enter the influence of the bathtub. Lucius Modestus is an aspiring bath architect living in Rome during the year 128 A.D. Being a third gen Bath Building Boy, he's very passionate about the power of being naked in some warm hot can have on people's lives. Something both Japanese and Ancient Roman cultures seem to have deeply in common, despite being separated by more than just time and space.
I don't know how true-to-life the Roman obsession with bathing is, but the show claims that the first things many armies do while marching is construct a bath at the frontlines. With Lucius living in Emperor Hadrian's era of Pax Romana (a time in Roman history where they pulled back a little on bellicose conquest), the population seeks out comfort even further, giving Lucius plenty of opportunities to work. His problem when the show begins is that he loves baths a little too much: being inspired by the constructions his father and grandfather made, Lucius's traditional designs come off as dull and old-fashioned to contemporary Romans enjoying the influx of new aesthetics and cultures absorbed by Rome's expansion.

There's definitely a lot about the setting that seems exaggerated to be more friendly to Japanese viewers but there's other aspects about their daily lives that feel really well researched and detail-oriented as well. And if you're a westerner who's a stranger to both cultures, it can lead to learning a lot of novel information.
There's definitely quite a bit that's accurate to the era—like the Roman-era toilets and how they scrubbed themselves with brushes on sticks. Rome was no stranger to advanced engineering feats like aqueducts and heating, so it's not hard to buy into some of the other feats achieved in this series. But that nevertheless leaves poor Lucius in a bind: finding new, innovative bath designs for the spoiled Roman population.
Yeah, as of now he needs inspiration for the new era. But where is he supposed to get it? Fortunate for him fate has other ideas and transports him to another world of modern Japan using the power of baths.
There's no explanation for Lucius getting transported to modern day Japan, and there doesn't have to be because it's just hilarious to see a bunch of pruney old Japanese people nodding sagely at a temporally-displaced Roman and going, "Oh man, we got a poor foreigner here who's never seen a Japanese bath before. He's a real looker though, you could iron your laundry on those abs. Wouldn't mind that spread out on a cracker. He's a tall glass of water and I love moisture." Meanwhile, in a bit of extremely-era-accurate-but-nevertheless-politically-incorrect humor, Lucius is convinced that all of the "flat-faced" Japanese people he meets are slaves and deigns it appropriate for him to pick and choose the bits of their engineering that suit him best.
The period-accurate racism is very uncomfortable if the whole thing wasn't so damn silly and really about teaching the dumb foreigner about the simple pleasures of Japanese culture like the power of fruity milk drinks. But it's also low-stakes to see everyone be nice to this extremely muscular fish out of water and try to teach him how to kick back and enjoy himself in a strange land. It has a similar vibe to something like Restaurant in Another World only instead of a lizard dude, he's just white.

This also ties into my thesis that the appeal of many isekai is actually just experiencing culture shock.
It's quite cute how so many of the Japanese people Lucius meets are simply pleasantly amused at this poor foreigner who doesn't speak the language. Also, being that he usually appears at bathhouses (with the exception of the time he pops up at a water park and a bathroom display store—we'll get to that later), not many people have to be freaked out about him being in the buff. As Terminator taught us, time travel has to be done in the nude.

It's also quite fortuitous that many of the people Lucius meets are of the older generation; many younger people in Japan are no doubt used to indoor bathing, but older Japanese people no doubt grew up in an era where many houses probably didn't have actual tubs or showers, leaving people to go to the local bathhouse for their bathing. There's a tradition that many younger folks probably can't appreciate; through Lucius, we don't just get to see how a foreign culture reacts to Japanese bathing, but we as an audience are able to see these old traditions kept alive.

Also, nothing to do with nothing but: I'm tickled pink by the Godzilla vs Hedorah poster in that one bathhouse. Also, Jaws and Enter the Dragon. Some old traditional place in Japan would definitely have movie posters from the 1970s up on the walls that haven't been taken down since they went up in the Nixon administration.

That's all part of the charm! Lucius even brings over that bit along with mural. It's a bit of a travelogue series mixed with heavy amounts of "what if" for what Lucius reverse engineers from modern day to his current era. Don't think too hard about the Butterfly Effect or anything.
It's funny because Lucius thinks the mural in the bathhouse is Mt. Vesuvius when it's actually Mt Fuji! But we'll let him think he's still in Rome.
But even with his misconceptions, he doesn't take these experiences for granted, he recognizes that even mundane objects are their own pieces of technology and convenience just like how a medieval peasant would shit themselves silly if you taught them how to properly season their food.
I love Lucius's attention to detail. He sees a cat-shaped shampoo bottle, he thinks, "Clearly, the cat shape is what brings the thing together!"—and so he recreates novelty toiletries in Ancient Rome. A pity he never discovered the rubber duckie.
Even if he doesn't 100% understand the technology he understands the functions and the appeal and tries to mirror that to create a greater quality of life. Like he may not understand what a TV is but he understands that images are soothing. Other things are more universal even with the gap of thousands of years, like the experience of good food paired with some booze. I would kill for a hot spring egg and some sake.

After each episode there's also a segment where Yamazaki herself travels to different Japanese hot springs. It's a kind of variety segment we don't get to see very much. I love seeing her draw on her tablet after. She seems like a nice lady who like Lucius, really cares about the details and enjoying life.
What's sweetest about these segments is how much Yamazaki herself learns from her travels and how much it motivates her to potentially draw new adventures for Lucius! Yamazaki is a very curious person and it's just as fun seeing her experience all the lovely cultural aspects of Japanese bathing as it is to simply see them in action.

Again, there's definitely a spirit of wanting to keep these old traditions alive. There's a curious moment where Yamazaki discovers that water at a hot spring takes 30 years to travel through the ground, and another where she visits an inn that's over 100 years old. A lot of Japanese bathing itself feels like time-travel in its own way.
Both the travelogue segments and the main character of Lucius are voiced by the smooth Kenjirō Tsuda in Japanese. Recently, I praised him for his gravely as all hell mobster characters in the past, but as Lucius he is at the opposite end of the spectrum as this serious and contemplative man with a very refined voice. Most of the series is listening to him monologue as he mentally tries to process whatever's in front of him, so it's key that his voice be interesting. David Wald gave an equally pleasant performance in the dub but these tour segments remain sub-only.

Speaking of sounds, I actually thought the music was an understated element. The show opens with a blasting aria, and we hear many interesting mixes of both classical and modern genres of both eastern and western influences until you can no longer separate them.

I was just amused to hear Tsuda's voice after his grave narration for To Your Eternity and him voicing a dog-boy in Sonny Boy. It's very amusing to hear him voice the comedically-unfunny Lucius, as well as his attempts at pronouncing Latin. Tsuda is really good at rolling those "R"s.
Oh, I guess we should mention that our boy Lucius doesn't know a LICK of Japanese of course and is just constantly floundering through the language barrier through other people's extreme hospitality? Poor guy, not many people who took high school Latin around, I guess? Though, you'd only notice this during the modern-day segments. In Rome, everyone speaks Japanese for the audience's sake.
It's like The Hunt for Red October where Sean Connery and Sam Neill start speaking English when the camera zooms into their mouths. There is a gag in the manga that someone who is otherwise very passionate about Roman culture manages to learn Latin to communicate with Lucius, but this anime doesn't cover that part of the series in the adaptation. The most we get is a cute bit of bonding between Lucius and a young architect who is tasked with building a gaudy "Roman-inspired" bathhouse by a nouveaux-rich old man with more dollars than sense. The two bond over being hired by rich old men with absolutely no taste.
We watch him bond more than he ever does his own wife! The poor girl. He doesn't see her for three years while working on baths. Definitely the biggest points down for Lucius' character. Dude should learn to take a real day off sometime. And not just the forced-time traveling ones.
I'm getting ahead of myself, but the series ends with Livia reconciling with Lucius after the Roman Emperor Hadrian explains the importance of Lucius's work as an architect. Which... yeah, no. The series has Livia abscond to her parents' house because of how neglectful Lucius is, and even in the manga they divorce (the circumstances of Lucius' remarrying in the manga are hilarious).
In my opinion, he might have a better chance getting it on Emperor Hadrian HIMSELF than winning back the favor of his actual wife after how badly he treated her. Hadrian is actually noted as a pretty good emperor by history standards (a rarity for roman emperors) and the show portrays him as such, and one who deeply cares about trying to keep the empire at peace instead of expanding more territory. But it also notes early on that he was notoriously in love with men, even deifying the young Antinous after he died. So basically, I think Lucius has a chance.

Shout out to Antinous' statue butt!!
Emperor Hadrian having a good head on his shoulders is noted often in the series; the Senate actively plots against him—and by extension Lucius—by virtue of being his favorite architect. Neither of Hadrian's heirs, Ceionus or Marcus Aurelius (seen in the series as a fifteen-year-old boy), are safe from the Senate, hence why Hadrian tasks Lucius with building baths in order to keep the peace. There's a bit where the Senate sends Lucius on a snipe hunt to bandit-infested territory behind Mt. Vesuvius (the series takes place a few decades after Pompeii is razed). After visiting a spa town in Japan, Lucius is able to help the bandits turn over a new leaf and found a thriving tourist town in the process.

Also, in what is a very Japanese bit of humor, manzai routines make it through to Ancient Rome! As seen with these two dorks who have a whole Abbot-and-Costello bit about the price of souvenirs.
Again, we try not to think too hard about the anachronisms. Though I did really enjoy the one where Lucius ended up in an Edo period bath house and inn rather than a modern day one. And came back with a portrait of himself.

And it's small gags that really elevate the show from just edutainment. Though, there's nothing wrong from learning from something you enjoy.
The idea of Lucius ending up in the Edo period is making me want a Thermae Romae Novae/Doraemon crossover. I wanna know what Ancient Rome thinks of earless robot cats!

But I digress. Lucius also ends up at a Japanese waterpark and somehow avoids being put on a sex offender list for showing up naked at a public venue. It's a lot of fun seeing him presume the whole thing is some kind of weird training facility for children, to say nothing of how he manages to adapt it for the ancient Romans.
He's very fortunate that everyone just takes this suddenly naked man in good stride and doesn't call the cops on him immediately. I just feel bad for the poor girl running the showroom! Service jobs are bad enough without a weird time traveler you mistake for an Italian associate showing up in the buff.
Oh geez, her. She'd just started at that job and her boss tells he to keep an eye out for an Italian customer due in at any moment. So she gives Lucius the royal treatment when he shows up... but once he vanishes, she just looks like she'd been goofing off all day. I can only hope the worst she got was getting written up...
She actually handled things well all things considered, so I'd hope so. But the series is really at its best when it goes back to how people find ways to bond with each other. Even Lucius schooling a bunch of ruffians Roman-style for roughhousing in the bath too much ends up being very sweet because of how much he respects the experience when you share a space with others. But also he kicks ass with a broom.
Shout-out to the guy he fights, who apparently was an award-winning Russian fencer! Even going spear-and-board isn't enough to take him down.

Early on, there's also this elderly old man who struggles to bathe himself. Confusing Lucius for a caretaker, he walks Lucius through the process of at-home bathing. Lucius walks away convinced this old man could easily trump most of Rome by virtue of how decadent his lifestyle is.

He also gets the very unique experience of using a Japanese bidet toilet for the first time. Truly the modern world is full of wonders.
To be fair, that's about everyone's experience when they try a Japanese toilet for the first time. We also get to see Lucius experience ramen for the first time, which is also a treat because hey, good ramen will reduce anyone to tears.
But I think the real lesson is Lucius' incredible presence of mind towards his experiences. He doesn't think too hard about it. He takes everything in stride. And sometimes, he and the audience really get to enjoy themselves. You know what they say about being in Rome. Which is key to enjoying any series about life. He may be serious about his work but these pleasures are key to keeping him from being a boring workaholic even if they are part of his work!
Part of why Emperor Hadrian's requests of Lucius work so well at pacifying the populace is because... yeah, people do need these simple pleasures, and sometimes just feeling clean and warm is enough to improve your outlook. It's easy to take them for granted but they are nevertheless important and they can change your entire day.
They also talk a lot about the health benefits, and while I don't buy into some of the series' wellness culture talk (too many hot baths will actually dry out your skin), doing something that relaxes you, does improve both your mental and physical health immensely and will help reduce the toll of daily life.
It's a bit of a shame that Thermae Romae Novae only skims the surface of the manga because the story does go into interesting territory, but for what it does cover it is still nevertheless a surprisingly engaging series. The wit is sharp and charming, the set-up is wildly creative, and the series has a deep respect of everyone and the very idea of cultural exchange. This is the kind of thing that only could have come from a manga because I can't think of any other medium where this kind of concept would have been able to flourish.
I enjoyed the anime as a meditative experience, but I also prefer manga for this kind of informative dump because it's something I can go at my own pace about while enjoying the art. It's a lot more of a contemplative state than sitting in front of my computer desk. Especially when I don't have to binge a series because Netflix demands it. But I can still see people enjoying this on a casual level, and that's the exact spirit you should take away from Thermae Romae Novae. Once again, I implore you you to defy Netflix's dumb algorithm and enjoy anime at your own pace and keep talking about them even after the week that they air! Unlike bath water, anime doesn't become lukewarm just because it's not "The New Hotness."
Anime is a medium, not a genre or a fad. It's been here longer than a lot of us, and it'll be here when many of the out-of-touch execs are gone. Just like the ancient ruins of the Romans! As the ancient scribe once said, "People called Romanes, they go the houses!"

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