The Rococo Period is one of my favorite art periods, aside from Art Nouveau and Art Deco. France, at the time, was recovering from Louis XIV’s heavy moral and religious art stylings and wanted to revel in light, airy, and happy themes. Thus Rococo was born.
Period pieces in anime that are historically accurate totally make my day and a period piece that hits Rococo in all its splendor on its gilded nose makes my month. Production IG, the studio that brought us the beautiful and deep Otogi Zoshi, has done it again, this time Rococo style, with their tale inspired by the real life French spy extraordinaire, D’Eon de Beaumont. Let’s just say thanks to watching the first four episodes of this series, I’m having a really good month…
D’Eon de Beaumont was, in actuality, one of the greatest swordsman France has ever known. He was a brave spy who helped cement France’s relations with Russia in the mid 18th century. He did so by gaining the confidence of Russia’s Empress Elizabeth. D’Eon convinced the Empress to hear him out by dressing as a female courtier and stating his duty to her personally. Rumors abounded that D’Eon was a woman. He wasn’t; he was just a damn good spy willing to go the distance.
Production IG has taken on the task of retelling D’Eon’s tale, but with a twist in the anime series Le Chevalier D’Eon. In their story line, D’Eon never went to Russia in the King’s name…his sister did. His sister is the spy extraordinaire and while he’s no slouch himself, he has a lot to learn from her bravery and dedication. How dedicated was Lia de Beaumont to the throne of France? Dedicated enough to give up her life for her country, which is how this anime begins.
D’Eon finds the body of his beloved sister’s body in a coffin afloat on the River Seine. Her reposed body has been filled with mercury, preventing her body from the inevitable decomposition all the deceased face. According to church doctrine of the time, a body that does not become corrupted cannot be buried. This grieves D’Eon to no end and he joins His Majesty King Louis the XV’s secret police to find her killers. What he finds instead are secrets, secrets and personal agendas filled with more secrets.
Many of these secrets deal with alchemy, political corruption, and magic. D’Eon is swept up in this world but finds unsolicited help in the way of three companions: Robin, a faithful page to Her Majesty the Queen of France; Durand, a fellow spy who worked personally with Lia; and Teillagory, D’Eon and Lia’s former Swordmaster. While these three help bolster D’Eon from without, the soul of his sister is working to help solve the recent mysteries from within. Within D’Eon himself that is.
Now all five strive to bring justice and order to a France faced with an uncertain future; a possible future filled with mercury driven zombies, murder, and revolution.
Thus far, the first four episodes of this series have me riveted. Yes, riveted. We watched all four episodes the other night and when the last episode ended, I said “What, we watched all four? Really?†Even with really good anime I feel the tug of time passing. It was like I was in a time warp with this anime.
Le Chevalier D’Eon has all the elements that make a fascinating anime for me: Historical accuracy, characters that actually existed, magic, and originality. Not only does it have my fave mix of ideas, it sports really awesome character design and flawless animation. SO FAR.
The animation got my attention from the get go. It was clean while managing to convey the sumptuousness of the time. While the animation was detailed, the details didn’t seem muddied or over powering like some anime I’ve seen. One of my favorite scenes was one that was shot in the crypts of Le Cathedrale de Notre Dame. The eeriness of the place is such that I actually felt cold. And the candle light that is reflected in the characters’ eyes adds to the morbid and fevered feel of the scene. There were a few CG scenes in the anime and they were usually used to help illustrate how opulent Versailles was.
To rate the sound quality of the series; so far so good. We tried the voice cast in both Japanese and English and while both were good, for once David wanted to leave the subs on. I however, was content with the English cast. I was especially for the dub since there were many details I felt I would miss if I was too busy reading. So we left the dub on for the first time in a long time.
I normally never get the chance to review a DVD as a whole product. Since I rent most of the time, I rarely get my grubby hands on liner notes and such. The folks at ADV were kind enough to let me screen Le Chevalier D’Eon and sent me a gorgeous DVD with the first four episodes. The DVD comes in a sleeve that’s embossed with gold and has that certain Rococo flair. The snap case is just your average case with the artwork on it but inside is a really nice set of liner notes. Inside the liner is artwork, character designs and dialog. Overall, a very nice DVD.
Since I also rarely rate a series by episode or volume, Hellsing Ultimate being the only exception, I’ll rate this per volume as well and then average out the score at the end of the series.
Le Chevalier D’Eon gets:
outta a possible four gummies.
Read my review of Le Chevalier D’Eon, Volume Two.
Read my review of Le Chevalier D’Eon, Volume Three.
Thanks again to ADV for the chance to screen Le Chevalier D’Eon, which will be available on Feburary 20, 2007.
Hi Rachel, sorry for using the comments but I’m trying to contact you about doing a possible podcast. (aka I want to interview you) But it seems like the contact email is not working.
Blame Bill Gates for that in a round about way, -Michael. I sent you an e-mail in regards to the podcast.
The contact page e-mail address problem has now been fixed – you may resume the contacting!
So I really liked the first four episodes of Le Chevalier D’Eon (volume one). This is an anime series I hadn’t actually heard of…so it was a bit of a surprise. At first, I thought it was going to be a murder-mystery, but then some supernatural-type stuff started happening and I completely caught off-guard.
Rachel makes a great point about the look of the show:
I agree – as you can see in the screencap, the CG effects are very well placed and fit in with the style of the show. The character designs are crisp and clean – plus, they look very historically accurate (Rachel says so).
The action scenes are very well done – there are quite a few chase scenes and sword fights that are really quite exciting.
Overall, I liked the first four episodes of the Le Chevalier D’Eon anime and would generally recommend it to fans of historical fiction and action-adventure.
You know, I’ve never heard of this one before. It does sound interesting though. I’ll definitely check it out. Good review!
Thanks! It’s good, -Chris believe me. ADV is releasing it on February 20th but keep reading at a chance to take home a brand new DVD of volume one.
If it was a period peice it would be in neither Japanese nor English, it would be in eighteenth century French. Anime fanatics have got to stop obsessing with watching things in Japanese, especially if they aren’t set in Japan. Hellsing is set in England so watch it in English, Gunsmith Cats is set in Chicago so watch it in English. Watch Samurai Champloo in Japanese, that is actually set in Japan.
@ Guerino della Scrittore, “If it was a period piece it would be in neither Japanese nor English, it would be in eighteenth century French.” That would be the bees knees but not necessarily financially possible.
Distribution companies already have to dub anime series in English for American audiences who prefer the dub. I can’t see them translating the dialog into French and then subtitling that as well.
I can’t speak about whether the Japanese would go along with a foreign language dub and get rid of the Japanese version altogether in these instances.
I imagine they’re just as picky about good voice acting as we are. Hell, they’ve perfected the art of voice acting!
And many anime fans, myself included, find some English dubs appalling. It’d be fantastic to have English speaking voice actors that are on par with their Japanese counterparts. Thus far, we’re still not even close to the quality the Japanese re producing.
Love the series, but it got rather disappointing after the third volume. Watched it all though. I think it’s worth it, somewhat, to see how it all plays out.
As far as the comments about voice acting go: As much as I agree with Rachel, I do wonder about certain animated movies (Metropolis, for instance) that have a French audio option. But I don’t claim to know anything about that area of the industry. I think people can and should watch anime in whatever language they please.
More on topic, the music is amazing and historically, the anime is extremely close. It’s a perfect blend of historical twists, political intrigue and supernatural arts. Also, the voice acting and art are to die for.
@Derek, I agree the story slowed down a bit after the third volume. Weird how it did that after it seemed like it would be super strong through the end. But it’s still a fantastic series, one which made full use of what the anime medium has to offer.
I love this anime so much. I can’t being to count how many times i cried during most parts. It was really well acted like hmm how to explain. In my opinion it was acceted like they were in a hollywood studio. I loved all of the actors and actresses. While some of them used more then once can get annoying. But with this anime i can hardly tell the young boy who played robin was spectacular he such an amazing actor just like the rest of them. I was also surprised how close the english dubbing was to the original japanese i watched in it subtitle to compair. Princess tutu was an other amazing anime as well. These two anime never get enough attention its always about the unoriginal naruto and bleach blah i can deal without those two. I’ll stand by for another review the review was amazing as well.
@BrittanyH, thanks for the kudos on the review! I’m still not done with the series. It seems I have a lot up catching up to do! When I do catch up, I will post another review, never fear!
love it!
where I can watch this anime in english.. :/ I havent found any place..
it is one of best anime . also it is under rated anime . it has deep story ; great music and is full of mystery . i recommend this anime to everyone .