callista | i glimpse eternity

I have a new (anime) addiction: Romeo x Juliet. As you can probably guess, it's loosely based on Shakespeare's play; the main characters are the same, for the most part, but the plot is almost completely different except for the family feud and the whole star-crossed lovers theme. I realize that not everyone will be interested in my ~~fangirling~~ opinion on this show, and this post IS a bit long, so I'll make an LJ cut since I'm so considerate :P

The art and the music are both beautiful, with a Japanese version of You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban as the opening song (Josh Groban doesn't sing it, of course). Another reason I got hooked on this show was because of the voice actors. I'm always interested in anime that have familiar cast members; for example, the only reason I decided to watch Death Note was because Yagami Light has the same voice actor as Suou Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club (which, give the complete contrast between Light's and Tamaki's personalities, is both funny and disturbing). In this case, one of the characters (Lancelot, a doctor) is voiced by the same actor as Maes Hughes from Fullmetal Alchemist and Aizawa from Death Note. And my favorite character in this series (so far), Tybalt, has the same voice actor as two of my other favorite anime characters: Kuchiki Byakuya from Bleach and Tezuka Kunimitsu from Prince of Tennis; I swear, if I close my eyes while listening to Tybalt talk, Tezuka comes to mind immediately. Tybalt is a lot hotter than Tezuka though ♥ Oh, and another thing I noticed about this anime is that two of the major characters, Curio and Francisco, are very reminiscent of Kurogane and Fai from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles; the moment I saw them bantering with each other, I just wanted to pair them up :D Curio has the same "I must be as manly as possible" complex as Kurogane, and Francisco is just as gay as Fai (although Francisco is portrayed as a ~~shameless flirt~~ ladies' man). I'm very interested in how their.. partnership will progress. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, the heroine of the story is not your typical damsel in distress; Juliet is very good at sword-fighting (she was trained by Curio) and is pretty athletic, but she still gets rescued ~~a lot~~ sometimes.

For all you anime fans out there, I can't recommend this anime enough without sounding like a complete and utter fangirl, so just go take a look and judge for yourselves. The first 8 episodes are available on Crunchyroll (the series is still ongoing, so I think only 9 episodes have been aired in Japan). I put up some screenshots for those who are interested.

EDIT: I found another site, Veoh, with better quality videos for Romeo x Juliet, and possibly some other animes as well (I haven't checked). However, it seems to be missing some episodes. And I found a better picture of Tybalt ♥♥♥