carlis

I have been a RoV fan for over 24 years and honestly only in recent years have I seen this be such a HUGE issue. This is pretty par for the course in historical fiction and with Ikeda. If people are this bothered they should go away. This is not for them.

I get the discomfort, but I also understand that it does have a narrative purpose and it pushes the characters forward and I am honestly not mad at it, I don't think it is nearly as bad as people make it out to be and I don’t think we need to “pretend” it didn’t happen. Yes, I would say it is an outdated trope but I think it still works today, for a piece of historical fiction, for what its being used for. But people lack the capacity to look at it properly and past their kneejerk reaction to it. I also don't see it as, "dark romance" or romance at all. Its dramatic, tragic and emotional.

People focus so much on the Andre half of this scene so let’s start with Oscar and what this does for her character.

To start. People give Oscar far too much credit. She isn’t the most considerate person or the most emotionally intelligent. Throughout the story she is shown to overlook peoples feelings and is very slow in learning about herself and others.

It takes being hit over the head or her experiencing the same things to fully understand people, especially when it comes to emotions. She was built for a specific role and doesn't really think about much outside of that.

She disregards Marie Antoinette’s loneliness and desire to be loved, then realizes she isn’t immune to that either (even falls for the same guy). She is extremely dismissive and kinda mean to Rosalie, then she herself experiences unrequited love and finally understands and empathizes with her (the very misinterpreted marriage line scene). We have Fersen ask her if she is lonely living her life they way she does, which she answers 'no'. Only for Girodelle to ask her again later and she hesitates, because yes, by age 33 she is and also has a better understanding of love. Oscar and Marie Antoinette never really understand each other and there is always a disconnect, until their final meeting where Oscar, through her love for Andre finally understands Antoinette as a woman.

Her treatment of Andre is also not great..

Top of Oscar's crimes list here is the whole Black Knight fiasco. While the scene is played out comedically, Andre is forced by her into this very stupid plan. Forced to cut his hair, risk his life and belittled the whole time by Oscar and nanny. This is quite an abuse of power by Oscar as his master and also of his feelings, as he thinks the only reason he is doing it is because it is for her. Then of course he looses his eye, we see Oscar's guilt and a bit of her sense of possession over him with the first "my Andre". This could be read as hidden feelings coming to light in the heat of the moment or as the more nefarious "you broke my property". I think its a bit of both.

A lot of people, use the “Oscar started to see him as a man” phrase for this scene. While true, maybe it gives the wrong impression. This isn't a dark romance, sexual sexy moment, for either of them. So I’ll try this one.

Oscar never saw Andre as being any different from her.

She didn’t see him as a man. She didn’t think he had any desires that she didn’t. Needs that she didn’t. Feelings that she didn’t. I sometimes don't think she even saw him as his own person. He was more an extension of herself, a third arm, always there to do what she need. So when this happens, its unexpected and she is forced to see him as his own person and THAT is what is scary.

So not only does Oscar now have to think about Andre's desires, needs and feelings...She has to think about hers, because that is how she works.

When it is said that this the start of her "sexual awakening" its not "oh that turned me on" *wink wink dark romance* its "oh that is a thing, I never thought about that, Andre feels that thing, do have those feelings too then?"

Answer is yes, we see from here on that she is extremely sexually attracted to Andre. (and is almost seduced by Girodelle) But it isn't because of that scene being physically sexual or arousing, its about the idea planted in her head that she now has to confront within herself.

The scene is after she has her talk with Fersen and he tells her

"Welp sorry I thought you were dude, maybe if you were more girl looking I'd have liked you back, duces" So she is feeling a certain sort of way and Andre senses this.

She is sitting it the dark (it is dark, no one can see, I think people forget this, for what its worth) feeling sad. As the conversation progresses Andre knows something happened with Fersen, and of course he knows Fersen doesn't return Oscar's feelings. He askes what happened and Oscar refuses to tell him and he gets mad that she is keeping things from him. So he one ups her with his insane confession. Worst possible moment to do so.

I agree with your assessment on Andre. I think he is desperate, his situation is bleak, and he has a moment of crazed weakness. This is also meant to shock us all, audience, Oscar and Andre himself as this scene is very uncharacteristic for him from what we have seen so far. There is also the fact that they are master and servant to add to the mix.

I think it is important to note that his main goal throughout this whole scene is to get her to listen to him (I imagine she doesn't do that often) and he is doing so by holding onto her. He also keeps saying he would rather die and be killed, he is baiting her to call her father and have him shot. (Her father, just come in and shoot him? Does this say something about anything? That he could just do that?) So he is a bit suicidal too. What is being said is much more disturbing then what is being done.

A large part of this scene is also to highlight his "great passion and restraint" and at the time it was considered very admirable and people liked this scene for that reason. Here is "the times" and outdated trope. It is an assault though, I don't think anyone would deny that but the point of this scene isn't that it is an assault. The point isn't the physical act but the emotional repercussions, which get so largely ignored it becomes not worth even talking about this scene.

I know Oscar and Andre never talk about what happened and I understand the disappointment with that. But it doesn't go unresolved or without follow up. We see Oscar realize she is very selfish when it comes to Andre, that she makes his life difficult, that she wouldn't be able to live her life the way she does if not for him and her whole female sexuality thing which is also an out of story achievement as it showed women as subjects of desire as opposed to just being objects.

Everything ties into her realization of equality and living her life on her own terms, which enables her to open herself up to returning Andre's feelings and breaking from the nobility. I think a lot of this gets ignored because people don't look at how this scene contributes to Oscar's growth via her relationship to Andre. For god sake its a story about class and he is our one commoner, the main characters' servant. Everything between has weight and importance to that main theme as well. People are too busy seeing Oscar as a victim to notice the growth she gets out of this. Granted I know most of the people who feel that way don't like the Oscar/Andre relationship or really Oscar either, if we are being honest, so it would be easy to miss.

Controversial opinion. I think for the short form serialized medium that The Rose of Versailles is, the scene is fine. I'm not really sure what else could have been done at this point in the story to get the characters moving to where they needed to be while also beating Aim for the Ace in the polls, so..? I think If it was adapted into some other longer "for TV" format it could be handled differently, It would look differently, staged differently. I mean look at the anime, it completely changed the context and made it 10 times worse! But I don't think the bones are bad, its supposed to be uncomfortable shocking drama:

Two friends of 20 years sitting in the dark talking about their past, the woman is hiding something form the other and won't tell, the man knows its about his rival for her love, they start to argue, he tells her to call out for help but she doesn't, the man confesses his impossible love to the woman not caring if it means his death and kisses her, poetic word vomit, she is in shock, he is ready to die by the hand of her father, finally she calls for help in the name of the other man she is in love with, in the struggle the man rips her shirt, everyone in shock, he immediately stops and apologizes.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That all being said I do think the poison scene does a lot of the same work and maybe even a little better, I think it is an easy replacement for this scene or the two could almost be mixed together. It almost feels like it was a late to arrive better idea that got missed the first time around. We will never know.

I’m going to be blunt. I think most takes on this scene are really lazy, shallow cop outs "assault bad" like omg the sky is blue and the grass is green. Please don't waste our time. I think a lot of it is posturing or people being too scared to be judged by people on the internet and over correcting by talking to much about it as if they need to make sure EVERYONE knows they know its #BAD.

This is #1 bad faith topic and close to 99.9% of people who bring it up don't care about anything other then saying "I know assault bad, omg HIT TWEET" It is an argument that they see as being a 100% win because no one can argue against that.

Tomoeda Middle School - The Gate Hotel by HULIC (ex Rissei Elementary School)

We start this review with one of the most iconic buildings in Clear Card Arc: ever since chapter 2 of the manga (because it didn't appear in chapter 1 yet) and episode 1 of the anime, this new building helped us getting accustomed with Sakura's new life as a middle schooler! Obviously I'm talking about the Tomoeda Middle School! It is a very nice building surrounded by cherry blossom trees, but the best part of it is that it's an existing building in real life!!

Let me introduce you to the ex Rissei Elementary School of Kyoto, which has been renovated in 2020 and turned into the current The Gate Hotel by HULIC. At the time of planning of Clear Card, the building was still known as the ex-Rissei Elementary School, although the building hadn't been used as a school since March 1993 (it had been turned into a multi-purpose space for the local community's gatherings and cultural activities). But don't be fooled: CLAMP didn't choose this building only because it's a pretty school - it is a very, very important historical building for the city of Kyoto (where CLAMP currently live!). This building is considered "the birthplace of cinema in Japan", since in 1897 an early film projector brought from Paris was installed in this school and an experimental showing of Lumière cinema was performed. Furthermore, this school also had the first swimming pool ever installed in an elementary school in Japan.

There's a very nice video explaining in details the history of this important building, subbed in English:

After a 10-years period where the building was used for cultural activities and festivals (particularly cinema oriented), in 2020 the renovation works ended and the place turned into a commercial building hosting a hotel (the current The Gate Hotel by Hulic), but also a library, events hall, restaurants, etc. enclosed in a complex called "Rissei Garden Hulic Kyoto". CLAMP also took interest in the renovation works, mentioning them in their social media at the time.

The thing that immediately stands out is that, in their renovation works, they kept the original architecture intact and so the building still looks exactly like Sakura-chan's school! You can see them here beside eachother and it's really the same.

If you are in Kyoto and want to do some "fan pilgrimage", as Japanese fans call it, you can reach this building at this address:

Rissei Garden Hulic Kyoto 310-2, Bizenjimacho, Kawaramachi Higashiiru, Takoyakushi-dori, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto 604-8023 JAPAN Official website with detailed info on how to reach there.

Clow/Eriol/Akiho's mansion - The Former Moji Mitsui Club

In Cardcaptor Sakura there's another iconic and mysterious building that had been pretty important in Sakura Card Arc already, but in Clear Card Arc becomes basically a matter of "life and death" for the new tenants who live in it: of course I'm talking about the mansion that first belonged to Clow Reed, then to Eriol Hiiragizawa, then to Akiho Shinomoto (along with Yuna D. Kaito) and ultimately is bought and managed again by Eriol! 😆

Kaito, the stoic and unfazed magician Kaito we all know, had been uncharacteristically nervous about obtaining Eriol's ex-house, since he was afraid that the previous owner had left some trick that would prevent them from obtaining it. This info was not revealed in the manga, but actually in a "behind the curtains" scene of the 1st Drama CD that came with volume 7 of the manga. Why was it so important for Kaito to get Eriol's ex-house? It's easy to deduce, once you remember that Eriol himself told Syaoran that his ex-house is a very good place to store and protect magical artifacts. And who carried a ridiculously powerful magical artifact inside herself, unaware of it? Akiho, of course. Eriol's house was probably the best chance Kaito had to protect Akiho from all the attempts of the Association+the Squids to take her away, back into their control (as we have seen in chapter 33).

This house was so important that the anime staff (along with scriptwriter Ohkawa-sensei) had to come up with a convoluted explanation as to why the house was back on its feet again when Akiho invited Sakura and Tomoyo in episode 8, since it had been completely destroyed to build an amusement park at the beginning of The Sealed Card movie!! (which, mind you, it's still canon!! They just suggested that Kaito brought that house back with his magic and the majority of the characters didn't realize the discrepancy).

Well, did you know that such an important mansion is an actually existing building? Let me introduce you to the former Moji Mitsui Club in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture!

As you can see by comparing it with the pictures above, the anime version had to change some elements of the front here and there, but the manga counterpart is basically a tracing of the real existing building!! Just like the ex-Rissei Elementary School, this building isn't just aesthetically interesting, with its exposed timbers evocative of German design of its time. It was built in 1921 as an accommodation facility of Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Japan's first general trading company, but it's famous for having hosted none other than Albert Einstein and his wife, during their tour of Japan, in 1922!! In 1990 it was designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan.

It is very interesting to note how the anime staff was pretty careful in keeping the same European vibe of the interiors of the existing building, with its big curtains, mantelpiece in each room, exposed wooden beams on the ceiling, dark brown half-wall wooden panelings.

In the manga we can mainly see, of this house, the living room where Kaito and Akiho always chat and have tea (which is the same of the anime), and only limitedly we can see another room (some kind of studio) and Akiho's bedroom. We even get a tiny glance at Kaito's bedroom in chapter 80, but it's basically just the bed.

This one above is the "Einstein Memorial Room" and it replicates faithfully the suite where Einstein and his wife stayed at while visiting Fukuoka.

The teal colored wallpaper with all those flowers makes me think that the design of Akiho's room in the anime might have been inspired precisely by this room! ✨

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Fukuoka, you can't miss the opportunity to visit this building at this address:

Former Moji Mitsui Club 7-1 Minatomachi, Moji-ku, Kitakyushu City JAPAN *Admission fee required for the 2nd floor - Einstein's Memorial Room More info on this page.

Masaki's Summer House - Rokkaen

And now we get to what I consider one of the most beautiful buildings featured in Clear Card Arc: one of Masaki's houses shown in episode 20 of the anime and chapter 20 of the manga!

This was seemingly Nadeshiko's favorite summer house and precisely for this reason, Masaki has planned to leave it as an inheritance to our Sakura-chan in the future! Truth to be told, he wanted to give it to her immediately, but Fujitaka understandably refused (for the time being) the inheritance of the house on his daughter's behalf. I don't even think Sakura knows of this, it's a matter the two men must have discussed in private. Regardless, dear CCS fans, this is a sneak peek into the future of our Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun, as this might be the future nest of our two lovebirds. 🥰 And could a building of such importance and beauty be just a fictional house?? Of course not!!

Meet the Rokkaen, a gorgeous light blue European-style building in Kuwana, Mie prefecture!

The official Visit Mie website reports: "Completed in 1913, Rokkaen is an old European building with a four-story tower combined with a Japanese-style structure. It boasts a garden in the front complete with a pond. It was built by Josiah Conder, a British architect who also designed the Rokumeikan". Even this building, just like the former Moji Mitsui Club, was designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan in 1997.

As you can see, this is what the manga shows of this building, and at first glance it might seem like a different mansion because the tower doesn't appear, but worry not: it is still the very same building, only showing the left side of it! The tower on the right side is hidden by the trees (and the Japanese side of the building is missing).

I've checked a bit the interiors from the anime and manga, and while in the anime I didn't recognize particularly any room (the style is still similar though, particularly the half-wall panelings), in the manga there's one scene where it is incontrovertibly featured the sun room on the second floor: it's when Sakura wanders inside and eventually finds Nadeshiko's room!

From the accuracy of the drawing, we can assume Mokona sensei worked closely with different pictures of the real life building! 😉

At this link you can even take a virtual tour of Rokkaen! But if you really want to visit it in person, then take note of the address below:

Rokkaen 663-5 Kuwana City, Kuwana 511-0005 Mie Prefecture JAPAN *Admission fees required to visit the building More info on how to reach the place on this page, using an online translator.

Tomoeda Aquarium - Kaiyukan Aquarium

As for Clear Card, this building only appears in the anime, but it is another one that got a second chance after having appeared in the old anime first: the Tomoeda Aquarium! I still remember how the choice to feature this building again for a very important episode was met with lots of criticism from the SyaoSaku fandom at the time of announcement of episode 9, only to end up making everyone fall in love with the portrayal of Sakura and Syaoran's first date ever. ✨ The magical and intimate atmosphere of an aquarium, with its soft lights and pretty colored fishes, got an unrivaled charm! Well, it seems the design of this magical place (where Kaito and Akiho will have a date of their own later on - only mentioned and manga-only, for now) was inspired by a real existing aquarium, the Kaiyukan Aquarium in Osaka!!

And of course, for CCS, they couldn't choose an average aquarium: Kaiyukan was, when it first opened in 1990, the largest public aquarium in the entire world. Nowadays that record has been surpassed by other aquariums, but it's still one of the largest. Goes without saying, but the design was the same even in the old anime.

Not everything we saw of this aquarium in CCS comes from Kaiyukan, though. It seems like the iconic cylindrical tank (yes, the one that broke twice in the anime) might have been inspired by AquaDom, which was a very popular aquarium situated in the lobby of the Radisson Collection Hotel in Berlin, Germany. This aquarium held the World Record title for the biggest cylindrical aquarium in the world. Why do I talk in past tense? ...Well, this might seem like a joke, you might have heard about it or not, but sometimes fiction turns into reality and on December 16th, 2022 the big tank suddenly ruptured, destroying itself and propelling 1 million litres of water and 1.500 tropical fishes into nearby facilities and streets, with devastating damage. Only two people got hurt from the glass debris since this happened early in the morning (before 6 am), but if this happened even just an hour later, the human damage would've been so much worse, on top of everything else. Unfortunately, all the fishes died. ☹️ When the news came out, I saw a lot of Japanese fans relating the incident to what happened in CCS. 😅

Well, I can't leave information to visit AquaDom anymore, since it seems they don't have any intention to re-build the cylindrical aquarium, but I can certainly do so for the pretty Kaiyukan aquarium in Osaka, so if you visit nearby, definitely check it out! 😉

Kaiyukan Aquarium 1-1-10 Kaigandori, Minato-ku, Osaka City 552-0022 JAPAN *Tickets required Additional access info here.

Old Library of Trinity College & The Eiffel Tower

Alright, alright, I'll admit it: these two come straight from my obsession for YunaAki, hence why I've lumped them together. 😆 When I started getting more and more involved in the story of these two, I (over)analyzed all their panels together, in hope to understand them better and grasp some foreshadowings on the story. And chapter 39 of the manga is particularly dear to me because it showed some fragments of their travels together around the world. I got so interested in that scene in particular, that I started to look if I could recognize the places depicted. And while I had a hard time recognizing some of them, there are two places that are actually existing buildings in real life!

One is the old library of the Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland! When I saw that huge library in the corner of the manga page, I had to look for it. It looked so majestic and beautiful that it had to have a real life inspiration. And it took me to just type "biggest libraries in the world" on Google, to find it! As you can see from the panel circled in purple above, Mokona sensei reproduced (simplifying the design) the one that's called "The Long Room", the biggest and most important room of this impressive library, hosting around 200.000 old books in its 65 mt of length. There are also marble busts lining the room, which have been just vaguely sketched by Mokona sensei, but they do appear along with the seats in the middle of the aisle, indicated by my magenta arrow. The old library is just one building of the Library of the Trinity College, but it is also famous for housing The Book of Kells, which is "an illuminated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables", as reported by Wikipedia. When Akiho was introduced, they didn't mention she had lived in Ireland, and even though this technically could be just a randomly referenced library and nothing else, it's nice to imagine Akiho and Kaito lived there too. But they DID mention that those two lived in France for a period, hence why the next feature was easier to spot:

Despite the design is sliiiightly different (it's not a perfect tracing of the original, particularly where it seems to be corresponding to the second level deck), I think it's apparent this was meant to suggest the Eiffel Tower and the period they lived in France. The "atmosphere" of the scene also kinda fits it (Kaito always manages to get the best houses - like what do you mean they got an apartment with a view on La Tour Eiffel while they were living in France?? 😆). I don't think the Eiffel Tower needs any introduction, as it's one of the most famous and iconic towers in the world (even the Tokyo Tower is inspired to it!).

So let's just leave some basic info here in case you're traveling the world and want to visit the two locations above:

The old library of Trinity College Old Library, College Green, South-East Inner City, Dublin 2, D02 VR66 IRELAND *Admission fee and pre-booking info here. (Note that currently most of the books have been removed from the Long Room as part of a redevelopment project and will be moved back when works are done)

The Eiffel Tower Av. Gustave Eiffel, 75007 Paris, FRANCE *Admission fee required Additional access info here.

Special Feature / The Pictures in Sakura's Bedroom - Hong Kong

And I've chosen to end this post with an extra: not all of them are buildings but it's something I've already featured in another post loooooooong time ago on this same blog, and I believe it deserves to be featured and collected here again, along with all the other buildings of this arc, for easier reference!!

Have you ever wondered what are the pictures pinned to the wall of Sakura's bedroom in the Clear Card anime? When episode 1 aired on January 7th 2018, some chinese fans were lightning-fast to spot the landscapes depicted in those mysterious photos - they might have looked like some random photos at first glance, but in this anime nothing is left to chance!!

They actually were a very conscious, deliberate choice of the anime staff: they're all referencing landscapes from Hong Kong!!! The chinese fans recognized all the places immediately (and from blurry shots of episode 1, at that!) but later on director Morio Asaka confirmed in the interview of the Starter Book that they were in fact postcards that Syaoran sent to Sakura from Hong Kong during the time they've spent apart between 6th grade and 1st year of middle school.

When I first saw the post from the chinese fans, I remember my heart exploded with tenderness for SyaoSaku, but even more so when director Asaka confirmed it: it was a testament to the efforts made by our two lovebirds to keep their bond alive, waiting for the moment when they would finally be together again. And seeing that Sakura filled her personal space with Syaoran's home gave me a good idea of how much she had been missing him, and used those postcards to "wrap herself in his presence" whenever she needed to. I always appreciated so much this little "present" from the anime staff, always so careful in depicting feelings even through these little details. So let's review what each of those postcards depict (sorry for having to do it like this, but I ran out of pics allowed)

First column The Peak Tower Temple Street Ngong Ping 360 cable car Second column Victoria Harbour ferry Victoria Peak night view

For these ones, as they're just hidden cameos, I prefer leaving a convenient link for each of those places/attractions so you can delve far and wide into the interesting info provided by the official websites (all in English), and maybe even plan your next visit to Hong Kong!

And I believe that's everything, for what I could spot, but if you find other buildings in the Clear Card anime or manga that are clearly referencing real life buildings, let me know and I'll add them here to this post with credits!! ✨✨✨

Remember you can always check the other posts of this series through the hashtag #clear card trivia !