In this new episode of Anime Breakfast we go to France with Lady Oscar celebrating Bastille Day on July 14th in our own way, with this intense and dramatic anime
New episode of Anime Breakfast and new anime, which always remains in the context of combat and also drama, after we dealt with the Knights of the Zodiac in the last episode. We didn’t want to stay dramatic yet, but an important historical occasion served us a perfect hook to deal with a famous and much loved anime: Lady Oscar.
The historic occasion in question is the Storming of the Bastille, which was held in Paris on July 14, 1789 and is the day on which the memory of the French Revolution is still celebrated in France today. So why Lady Oscar? Very simple reason: this anime is set in the years of the French Revolution and the protagonist Oscar is commander of the Royal Guard, first and then of the French Guards in Paris. But let’s go in order and retrace this very revolutionary anime and not because it is set in the years of the Revolution.
The good father wanted a boy | Anime Breakfast: Lady Oscar and the Gentle Revolution
The good father wanted a boy, but alas you were born
So he quoted a passage from the first Italian acronym of the anime, that of 1982 sung by the group The Knights of the King, with the voice here of Clara Serina and already explains a fundamental passage of the plot. Oscar, the protagonist is a woman in command of the Royal Guard of France, as wanted by her father, a military general who wanted a male to continue his lineage in the military profession and so he decided to make everyone believe that his daughter was a man. This passage is fundamental in the anime also in the subsequent plot dynamics, namely the difficulty for Oscar to be a woman in a male and military context.
The strength of this anime lies right here, in its totally revolutionary protagonist for those times, who also helped an entire generation of the public to think that one can be whatever one wants in life, no matter how you are born. And for this same reason, this anime was heavily censored in Italy upon its release and still today it divides social criticism and causes discussion on whether it could be “bad” for young audiences.
The charisma of Oscar | Anime Breakfast: Lady Oscar and the Gentle Revolution
The contagious charisma of this protagonist is what allowed her to have an anime of her own. To explain ourselves better, let’s take a few steps back to the original manga, in which Oscar appeared only as a supporting character to the absolute protagonist who was Marie Antoinette, who later became the Queen who ended up under the guillotine’s clutches. In fact, the original manga was very historical, based on the facts that led to the French Revolution and also on the characters who really were the protagonists of these events. The character of Oscar in the manga was so successful that he then became the protagonist of the anime, with Marie Antoinette slightly in the background. However, this does not mean that even the anime remains very interesting to follow also from a historical point of view, because many characters and many events that have occurred are the ones we have been reading in school books for years.
The story of an impossible love | Anime Breakfast: Lady Oscar and the Gentle Revolution
Oscar’s charisma is indisputable, as is his temperament, calm, calm with indecipherable intentions and emotions, but a series of situations are placed next to her that make the anime very interesting. These situations are obviously sentimental and they are many, constantly intertwined and which narrate quite impossible loves. One of these certainly concerns Andrè, friend and companion of Oscar in battle, who falls just the day before the Bastille Day hit by a bullet, after he and Oscar had abandoned the Paris Guards to join the people of the Revolution. An impossible love which, however, is consumed within the manga, even if followed by many refusals, abandonments and misunderstandings between the two characters. The tragic ending, which sees Oscar now exhausted by tuberculosis die the day after André, increases the power of the relationship between Oscar and André on a narrative level: as if they were the protagonists of a Shakespearean tragedy, André and Oscar fall together, united by the same battle, the same values and mutual love.
An anime steeped in tragedy
These elements and also this ending of the anime, confirm Lady Oscar as tragic. Drama and tragedy are steeped in this story, as are love passions and historical events. And precisely this makes Lady Oscar a wonderful anime, but not easy to watch. You have to be ready to prepare your handkerchiefs in many episodes and know that the ending is yes, tragic but very much in line with the overall story and its context: we are in the context of war and guerrilla warfare and therefore we must be ready to expect anything. Furthermore, Japanese anime often have dramatic and almost horror hues, just think of Rossana, who we treated in a previous episode of Anime Breakfast and some dramatic passages of the original manga. So given this premise, we are facing a remarkable anime that has marked a generation and that continues to make people discuss themselves and horrify right-thinking people, which, as long as there aren’t too many censures, is never a bad thing.
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