MAPPA’s ‘The Rose of Versailles’ needs a raison d’être for revolution

Serialized in Weekly Margaret (published by Shueisha) in 1972, Ikeda’s historical romance manga was shaped by the Japanese New Left movement and credited with proving that female-targeted shōjo could unfurl into complex narratives that challenge politics, as well as ideas surrounding gender and sexuality. Living with an “in-betweenness” of genders, Oscar stood as an androgyne lighthouse for gender politics dissertations—in spite of dated essentialist dialogue such as Oscar’s “womanhood” being responsible for stereotypical traits like crying. Ikeda’s manga and its bifauxnen icon would be entwined in the lineage of many manga and cartoons, from Revolutionary Girl Utena, Pokémon, and Berserk, to Steven Universe and Castlevania: Nocturne (also about a French Revolution). TMS Entertainment produced the 40-episode anime adaptation, directed by Tadao Nagahama and Osamu Dezaki, that ran from 1979-80. French director Jacques Demy also directed a poorly received 1979 live-action feature film, Lady Oscar.

Embroidering the original manga’s Rococo style, director Ai Yoshimura and screenwriter Tomoko Konparu had to pick and choose from about 10 volumes to keep the runtime for their adaptation under two hours. So au revoir to Marie’s feud with Versailles courtesan Madame du Barry (relegated to an Easter egg drama in a montage and sidestepping the original story’s politics on sex work), a masked robin hood-esque arc, the Diamond Necklace Affair, and the campiness of other soap operatic, yet complex, villainesses with maniacal laughs.

For compression purposes, the movie also adopts cues from another adapter machine: the Japanese all-female theater troupe Takarazuka’s staging of countless Rose of Versailles musicals since 1974 in several parts. This new film launches into musical numbers (by Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto) of the vibrant music video persuasion, such as Marie’s upbeat yet melancholic “Ma Vie en Rose” over hollow materialism in her gilded Versailles, with echoes of contemporary needle drops from Sofia Coppola’s 2006 Marie Antoinette, and homages to aesthetics that Ikeda inspired in other media (blink and you’ll miss a dash of a Sailor Moon transformation sequence). The other centerpiece number is Oscar’s “Child of Mars,” a song that lends itself to euphoric readings of her androgyny. At times though, the movie plays oddly cagey with other songs, awkwardly underscoring the music as ornamental for grounded non-fantastical exchanges, such as the blandly lyrical “Never Surrender” during Oscar’s sword duel with a defiant French Army member. (The English dub recorded English versions with lyricist Karine Costa and adapter Caitlyn Elizabeth.)

Marie Antoinette in "The Rose of Versailles."

Still frame from "The Rose of Versailles"

The carnation-wreathed, melodramatic passion burns strong within this new version of The Rose of Versailles, focusing on its players’ pining for a mythical love outside the acceptable boundaries of their social station. Marie finds it in the Swedish count Fersen (voiced by Kazuki Kato in Japanese, and Ryan Colt Levy in English), which could have reputational and political consequences for her arranged marriage with King Louis XVI (voiced by Fukushi Ochiai in Japanese, and Damien Haas in English). “A love that soars like Icarus on brilliant wings,” Marie yearns, failing to note the irony of Icarus falling into the sea, as she tries to grasp the sun from the window of her gilded cage.

An innocent Disney princess Marie is not. Like the anime that came before, this version succeeds at the tricky balance between humanizing Marie’s entrapment and not condoning her opulent bubble that siphons the commoners—despite her interpersonal kindness in her court (Shipman carves out Marie’s path from demureness to a haughty queen of “divine right”). Eventually, Oscar directs her sympathy to the commoners, during which she realizes her class-defying mutual love for her servant-cum-friend André (voiced by Toshiyuki Toyonaga in Japanese, and Brandon McInnis in English). Later, Oscar repeats Marie’s reach out to the sun in the open air when she rallies the commoner French Army into a revolution, tying her pursuit of love with an act of liberation and abolishment of the Ancien régime.

But in the movie’s aims for a tight coming-of-age trajectory for its protagonist Oscar, the movie also strips itself of political-class multifacets. Meaty political context with the cause-and-effect of Versailles’ extravagant spending is reduced to documentary-style narrated interludes that dull the narrative transition into commoner impoverishment. 

Oscar in "The Rose of Versailles."

Still from "The Rose of Versailles"

Among the critical cuts is Rosalie, a commoner with a fleeting speaking scene in the movie, who was once a supporting character with an unrequited romantic love for Oscar. This not only disengages from queer nuances, but it also erases a commoner woman’s point of view that enriched both the manga and its anime adaptation (even Demy’s film subplots Rosalie). In the movie, a commoner mouthpiece falls on journalist Bernard Châtelet (voiced by Miyu Irino in Japanese, and Alejandro Saab in English), supplied with a crowd-rousing “Do You Hear The People Sing?” but he’s barely given time to percolate as a presence. The French Army, led by yet another undercooked player, Alain (voiced by Shunsuke Takeuchi in Japanese, and Talan Warburton in English), remains the film’s most vocal lower-class perspective—who exist for a nuanced dynamic in which they underestimate Oscar on the basis of gender, while holding her class privilege to account. However, the film ultimately frames a “good noble” like Oscar as their savior and preacher rather than collaborator.

The screenplay also downplays its most prominent commoner, André, and his agency in his revolutionary consciousness, while the 1979 anime fleshed out his interest in “the new era.” Although Demy’s film has been a much reviled adaptation, one of its worthwhile experimentations was to heighten André’s bitterness over class stratification. 

While previous Rose of Versailles adaptations were willing to reimagine and reorganize the revolution within Ikeda’s classic story, Yoshimura’s florid panache of The Rose of Versailles blooms as the most visually polished on-screen adaptation to date, but this abridged telling is missing pieces in the puzzle.