Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth ~ The Animation
As a fan of the Aria the animation series, I had quite a bit of expectations of Ikoku Meiro no Croisee. It was set to be a slice of life/iyashikei series, directed by Sato Junichi and with animation by Satelight. That being said, I have to say that this series didn’t quite meet up to my expectations. There are probably several factors that played into my disappointment of Ikoku Meiro, but aside from that, this series is still a solid slice of life series. It has some rather adorable characters, a historical setting, and a plot that is rather subtle at times. The series does a great job with some of it’s character development, and that is one thing I definitely appreciate.
That being said, I do believe my main issue with this series was the believability of the characters. It’s one thing when you have a series like Aria, an anime that takes place in a fictional world. Ikoku Meiro, however, sets itself up in a historical, real life setting (Paris during the late 19th century). That in itself automatically gets me into the mindset of expecting something realistic, yet some of the characters were anything but realistic. Actually, to be specific, the main heroine Yune was the one character I had a particular uncomfortable feeling with. Yune is setup to be the idealized little Japanese girl, where she is absolutely adorable and can do absolutely no wrong. There are tons of times in this series where Yune is cast off as completely innocent, and all the blame/bad-will is thrown onto Claude, or another “westerner” in the series. Quite frankly, this notion of an idealized Japanese girl completely conflicts with the idea of a realistic historical drama. A lot of times, the Japanese ideals espoused in this series seemed a bit too good to be true, and certainly is not taking into account a balanced perspective of both cultural focuses of this series.
One thing that I feel could’ve used more work was the usage of the setting itself. Exploring a late 19th century Paris would’ve revealed much more than just the high-class lifestyles and the life inside a small artisan shop. We would’ve seen a lot of the culture, as well as the poverty and strong class distinctions associated with such times. While some of these topics are briefly touched upon, they are never really fully explored in extreme detail, which results in a rather biased overall picture of a romanticized Paris where everything was all pretty and lovely. While I do understand that this was meant to be a slice of life series, I feel that this series could’ve been absolutely amazing if it fully realized the potential offered up by the setting itself.
That being said, what Ikoku Meiro did greatly excel at is having some excellent character development, specifically whenever there wasn’t a central focus on the explicit differences between Japanese and Western Culture. The character backstories for Claude, Camille, Yune, and Alice all meshed well together to create some compelling drama during certain arcs. They had their rather captivating moments throughout the series, and occasionally actually did have some good cultural conflicts. The chemistry between the cast was superb, such as the subtle involvement of Oscar into many different events in this series. The character development at times was simply fantastic, and made for a memorable cast that grew upon you over time.
All in all, this was a slice of life series that certainly tugged at the heartstrings. It didn’t quite score a home run in my book due to some rather annoying little flaws, but that didn’t stop this series from being a surprisingly powerful human drama. Yet at the same time, while it was a powerful drama, it was subtle in the most intricate of ways, and really brings out the full potential to some of the cast. There is much more to this series than the simple facade of cuteness that is immediately noticeable about Ikoku Meiro. There are a ton of tiny factors that play into this series, and it’s the aggregate of all of these small things that makes this series a joy to watch.
Animation/Art: 9.0/10
Music: 8.5/10
Setting: 7.5/10
Characters: 8.5/10
Story: 8.0/10
Overall Enjoyment: 8.3/10
Distant Paradise 