The Rose of Versailles

べるさいゆのばら

Aired: 1979 - 1980

A television anime produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and broadcast on the Nippon Television network, a grand historical-romance work. It is based on the shojo manga that Riyoko Ikeda serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Margaret, which caused a social phenomenon. Set in the late-Bourbon court of eighteenth-century France, it interweaves the destinies of Oscar Francois de Jarjayes, a noble woman raised as a man who becomes a Guards officer, Queen Marie Antoinette, and a commoner youth turned revolutionary. With magnificent court pageantry, love that transcends class, and the lives of people swept up and falling amid the upheaval of the French Revolution, it is an immortal masterpiece rendered with splendid artwork and dramatic direction. The latter half, directed by Osamu Dezaki, won high praise for its stylized beauty, and it has long been celebrated as a landmark among anime adapted from shojo manga.