Romeo's Blue Skies - Official watercolor art for the covers of the compiled script collections by the character designer and animation director for the series Yoshiharu Sato
Yoshiharu Sato worked extensively at Studio Ghibli as a key animator, and notably was the animation director on My Neighbor Totoro and Only Yesterday. He also worked on many of the other World Masterpiece Theater series at Nippon Animation.
"Let's swear an oath . . . that no matter how far apart we are, we'll always be together . . ."
Ending the year with one of my most beloved anime that is completely unknown in the US, Romeo's Blue Skies. I discovered the stage musical version of it recently and it rekindled my deep love of this show. If you're a Ghibli fan looking for a 90s animated series with similar vibes, check out this charming show about chimney sweeps in 19th century Milan. It's now available free to watch on Tubi with subs! World Masterpiece Theater, which this show was a part of, was worked on by Miyazaki and Takahata pre-Studio Ghibli and their influence shows across the adaptations this series made.
I've always wanted to try doing a shoot as multiple characters and compositing them, and figured this would be the perfect opportunity since no one cosplays from this show lol. Costumes, photos, and edits by me. I actually first made my Alfredo costume ten years ago, back when I first watched the show, so I fixed it up and added some details like distressing and a new wig. I got super lucky with second-hand finds for Romeo and was able to piece his whole outfit together without scratch making anything. I just had to do some hand-dyeing, alterations, and distressing.
I have some more fun photos and edits from this shoot coming soon!
Forever appreciating how perpetually nostalgic Arabs generally are, because Romeo's Blue Skies is airing again on SpaceToon. Classic anime just airing on TV, casually…
Arabs are so nostalgic, there's multiple channels dedicated solely to airing old shows and movies again. Space Toon has plenty of new shows, but it also has old classics fairly regularly.
I'll never understand why they gave an Italian pre-teen living in Milan in the late 19th century a NON ITALIAN name
Nikita's my favorite female characters from the series and her name's not even italian, but Greek/Slavic : why? Why? If you're going to set your anime in a foreign country keep the consistency of the naming at least : (
Due to this I'll keep calling her the way the Italian dub renamed her, with a unisex ITALIAN name: Andrea ✨
It was Alfredo and Bianca's birthdays this weekend, so here's a cover I did of the piano arrangement of Bianca's theme as it is played in Episode 24. I thought it would be fun to learn it and play it in my Alfredo cosplay. I imagine Alfredo would play this song more tenderly and approached interpreting it this way in comparison to Bianca's rather aggressive playing lol
Here's the sheet music for anyone interested in learning it:
I have the smartphone wallpapers like these and other World Masterpiece Theater shows for few years. These came from an old official website of World Masterpiece Theater which no longer exists. Sharing these if you're fan of the show and wanted to have a smartphone wallpaper or cover based on it.