I don’t watch live actions that often because most of the time, they suck. The whole idea of trying to get anime characters to work irl just isn’t usually something that can work with real life actors, but occasionally, you come across a case where it worked beautifully. Prior to watching the Thermae Romae live action, my favorite live action was the Grand Blue one. Grand Blue fit perfectly into a live action because there wasn’t anything unrealistic about it other than their drinking capacity. Other than that, it worked perfectly as a live action with irl actors. Thermae Romae is the same, it works perfectly with real actors since it doesn’t have anything that’s too unnatural for them like different colored hair or superpowers.
I previously watched the 2012 Thermae Romae anime and the newer 2022 Thermae Romae Novae anime. I’ve also ordered the manga which should be here in the next couple days, looking forward to reading that. Just now, in the middle of the night (it’s 4am as I write this lmao), I just watched the first Thermae Romae live action from 2012. It appears there’s a 2nd live action movie that aired in 2014 and I’m looking forward to watching that too.
I highly recommend watching the Thermae Romae animes as well as this live action. From here on out there’ll be heavy spoilers, so if you want to know if I recommend it, I very much do. The music, the story, the acting, the original parts of the story, and especially the romance that was implemented, it’s all magnificent. Highly highly highly recommend watching.
*Spoilers*
So right off the bat, Thermae Romae’s concept is very interesting to me. Cultural diffusion between ancient Rome and modern day Japan is like saying I can have 2 desserts tonight. Rome is one of the greatest civilizations in history, and anyone that loves history most likely has at least some fascination in Rome. So much of what exists today wouldn’t have without Rome. Cultural, political, linguistical, and many other types of influences in the modern world come from Rome. And mix that with Japan, the civilization I probably have the most fascination with as a weeb, and you have the perfect thing to catch my attention. Before I even watched it, I knew it would be great.
Acting
Moving onto the live action itself, there was so much I loved about it. The first thing I’ll talk about is the acting. All the actors were magnificent. Lucius’s actor, Mami’s actor, Hadrian’s actor, the old men, all of them. All of the acting was amazing, and I genuinely got so absorbed into it. Their acting felt so real and perfectly captured all the emotions and tones of the movie. Just all around, incredible acting.
Another thing to point out is the casting. It makes sense that the main characters are going to be Japanese actors, bc you need people that can speak Japanese to act the main roles in a Japanese movie lmao. But many of the actors playing side characters, background characters, and extras were actually westerners. They actually casted westerns to play the Roman people, which is very fitting and I think was a really good move because it brought much more realism to it to really absorb the viewer into the movie. The westerners that had dialogue like Lucius’s wife had to be dubbed over and that was done pretty poorly tbh, but it’s a small price to pay for the realism it brought. And Lucius’s actor may be Japanese, but between the hair style and the fact that the actor is at the massive height of 6’2, him not being a Roman person didn’t take away from the immersion at all lmao.
Music
Another thing is the music. They chose the music very very well. All the pieces fit perfectly into the tone and vibes of the movie. I know classical music didn’t come around until like 1600 years after the Pax Romana, but it still was the most perfect fit for this setting of classical Rome. The biggest thing I wanted to point out is the utilization of “Un bel di vedremo.”
Around 1:34:05 in the movie, this piece starts playing, and at 1:36:23 the climax of the piece arrives. When I heard that climax with that beautiful melody in the brass section, it clicked in my brain that I heard this exact piece in Magnetic Rose from Memories, the collection of short anime films. Magnetic Rose is an absolute masterpiece, and everyone I’ve shown it to seems to agree. It’s a hidden gem, an obscure work of art that has yet to be uncovered by the majority of people. If you haven’t seen it, please go watch it as soon as possible, it’s really such a masterpiece. When Miguel touches the piano and screen erupts into this beautiful garden in around 25:54 in Magnetic Rose, the climax of Un bel di vedremo plays and it’s really such a powerful moment.
In the Thermae Romae live action, the climax of this piece plays as Mami returns to the modern world and Lucius seems to be enveloped in emotions as she gets separated from him after spending so much time with her. That scene honestly wouldn’t be that powerful without the music, because it wasn’t like that was the last time he ever saw her, but with the inclusion of the music, that beautiful soprano voice singing under the night sky, tears were brought to my eyes. Music really is such a powerful thing in influencing people’s emotions.
Story
The story ofc followed closely to the manga and 2012 anime. All the baths he built and places he visited were the same as the manga and anime with tiny liberties taken in the details. But the biggest difference is the romance that was implemented into the live action. Lucius’s romance with Mami was actually really nicely done imo. I know it doesn’t exactly say anything about them being in love, but I feel it was pretty heavily implied that they were.
When Mami first appeared in the first bath house, I thought that was funny because she was making references to the Fist of the North Star and was drawing Lucius, but when she kept reappearing when he was returning to the world, I realized that she would be a reoccurring character and that brought my interest. Later when she when to the mountain in that her parents run and talked to the professor about the coin and cloth Lucius left with her, that really started to peak my interest. And when they were at the Zoo and Lucius and Mami actually had their first full fledged interaction with each other, I was already shipping them lmao.
Mami’s dedication to being able to learn Latin so quickly was really impressive. Latin is actually a lot easier for Japanese people to speak than it is for someone who speaks english, because both Japanese and Latin have the concept of different vowel lengths changing the meaning of words and stuff like that, so it is fairly realistic that she would be able to pronounce Latin, in fact Lucius’s actor and Tsuda Kenjirou, Lucius’s anime VA, were able to do it. But the power of love really is strong for her to be able to learn Latin like that to be able to communicate with Lucius.
Mami and the group of old men actually time traveling back to the Roman Empire was a surprise, and I really enjoyed it. It was nice seeing not just a Roman going to the modern world, but someone from the modern world going to Ancient Rome. I did get concerned for a moment when Mami mentioned changing the future because I didn’t think it was a good idea to get into that whole changing the future scenario here, but luckily they didn’t actually go into that and just mentioned things were back on track at the end.
The concept of returning when the time traveler cries was actually pretty interesting, bc in the anime, they didn’t go into how he returned. We know he travels to Japan by “drowning,” but when going back to Rome he just disappeared randomly. The concept of crying being the factor that returns them is nice because it offers a solid ground for when they return rather than just them randomly going back. And it’s actually funny because moments before Lucius mentioned how it seems crying is what returns them, I actually said “how is Mami going to get back to Japan” lmao. Overall, this was a really good story.
Conclusion
I’d honestly like to talk more about it, especially in more detail about each scene, but it’s already passed 5am and this post is already getting pretty long, so I’ll just leave it at these main points that I wanted to talk about. Overall this is easily my favorite live action and one of my favorite movies now. I really enjoyed watching this and Definitely look forward to watching Thermae Romae 2.
That was a pretty abrupt ending to this post since I looked at the clock and realized I shouldn’t stay up too longer lmao. But yeah, 100% recommend watching, bye.
