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EP. REVIEW: Arte


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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:09 pm Reply with quote
I was kind of hoping for interpretation that leaned less into shaming sex work. Sure Veronica sells her body, but she is a courtesan that is making the best of her situation as a woman of the time by being as close to as involved in high society as she can with power of powerful men, looking after her family, and living a pretty fancy life. Veronica is kind of a badass, not too fond of her character being shamed.

My perception was kind of that there was a problem with that client Arte talked to, since he got horribly jealous when she mentioned the portrait by demanding who it was for, and explaining that he can't stand her with other clients. That kind of feels like someone that would be a horrible fit for Veronica in her line of work, who presumably would be possessive of her, and prevent her from living under her own power. As far as we saw at the end, Veronica may have got the portrait for herself, as any other powerful person at the time, and like how it portrayed her as an intelligent person rather than just someone tempting and what might be thought as a prostitute.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:03 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Arte shouldn't be lifting her skirt at all for a curtsy, but rather bending her knees (not at the waist!) and dipping her head. (Her feet are correct. Hooray!) […] That's a nitpick, I know, but it does emphasize the underlying issue with the fact that for all four episodes thus far the characters have moved like modern Japanese people, not Renaissance Italians. It's a fast way to pull viewers out of the story[…]

Spot on. I had the exactly the same experience a few years back watching the mecha anime Schwarzesmarken, set in 1983 East Germany, when a military subordinate ended a conversation by giving a polite Japanese bow to her superior officer instead of a salute. As with Arte, it makes you think “oh, right, this isn’t really European at all, much as it wants and tries to be.”
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:26 am Reply with quote
The only way this show can save itself is to carry on from the end of episode four and dump Arte's crush. The closing dialogue suggested it might take that route. If it doesn't, then I'm going to dump Arte myself.
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Panino Manino



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 734
PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:40 pm Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:
The only way this show can save itself is to carry on from the end of episode four and dump Arte's crush. The closing dialogue suggested it might take that route. If it doesn't, then I'm going to dump Arte myself.


I believe people had already been warned about this?
No, there's no "romance" in this.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri May 01, 2020 8:32 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
and all you need to do is look at her library to know that she's done very well for herself; as viewers of Ascendance of a Bookworm know, this is not a time of easily procured texts

I guess they still weren't cheap, but I'd expect books to be way more commonplace after a century of press-printing.

yuna49 wrote:
The only way this show can save itself is to carry on from the end of episode four and dump Arte's crush. The closing dialogue suggested it might take that route. If it doesn't, then I'm going to dump Arte myself.

I mean, the point of the episode was to move away from that. They can't just discard the lesson.
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Princess_Irene
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Joined: 16 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Sat May 02, 2020 12:26 pm Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:

I guess they still weren't cheap, but I'd expect books to be way more commonplace after a century of press-printing.


Much more commonplace, yes, but not quite to the extent that Veronica's library has. It's still a sign that she's doing very well for herself.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sun May 03, 2020 5:50 pm Reply with quote
5

This is the first episode I finally noticed when she bowed to someone, but it didn't bother me. What stopped me in my tracks when Leo handed her the contract was seeing that apparently Arte can read fluently upside down (the doc, not her)! ;D
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Sun May 03, 2020 7:19 pm Reply with quote
^ Smile Does she get bonus points for it at least looking a little like Italian? I totally fixated on that and didn't even register that she was reading upside down! (And then neglected to mention it in the review, I now realize...)
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Mon May 04, 2020 7:00 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Semantic issues aside – a courtesan may be a sex worker, but at the time it was a very different profession; the word actually just used to be the feminine of “courtier,” suggesting a higher class' standards – there's nothing in Arte's behavior that to us would suggest that she sought Veronica's counsel. But during the time the show is set in, Ubertino would see her as acting in too forward a manner for a properly raised woman, and that very aggressiveness (which is still pretty tame by our standards) is what suggests to him an improper source.

Honestly, the impression I got was kind of the opposite.
Arte is someone who always wears her heart on her sleeve (as Leo comments, really) and she had already tried to negotiate with Ubertino so he surely had a firm grasp on her personality.
Then she comes the next week and completely changes her demeanor and vocabulary (and yes, dresses up) to something more... accomodating. That is highly suspicious. Ubertino also gets around a lot and is very sharp, so rather that the forwardness itself, it's how it weaves with her forced mannerisms that he recognizes form a different profession.

Quote:
and Arte using the word “crochet” for lace-making when I'm pretty sure it should be “tatting” (but I could be wrong)

The word she uses in Japanese is "amimono" which is just knitting in the widest of senses - you take yarn and give it a shape.
I want to say that what she showed looked more like embroidery (specially those roses) but that definitely wouldn't be "amimono". Then again for the sake of her argument it's just as refined; knitting or stitching, they're fine textile details whose making escapes the knowledge and perception of most painters, and she was talking about her education rather than the specific studies she brought.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Mon May 04, 2020 9:08 pm Reply with quote
I have to agree with Yuvelir here. Even from a 21st century view, her radical change in dress, speech and behavior made me cringe at first, because it seemed so try-hard. If she had merely taken the tips on self-confidence and salesmanship she got from Veronica, she'd have been fine without looking like she was trying to seduce him and/or flatter him with her humble grace. Either way though, someone needs to tell her to drag a comb through her hair. Smile

Tatting is a kind of lace formed from knots like macrame, but using a shuttle or tatting needle. It dates from the early 1800s, so whatever kind of lace this is, it's not tatting. It's probably needle lace, and the ones with the faint grids visible in her sketches might be reticella. I don't expect them to be that detailed, but maybe they should just have had her ask how many painters have learned lacework.
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Tue May 05, 2020 6:30 am Reply with quote
Thank you both for the lace-making information! I'd only heard "tatting" in relation to it, so I was confused. (Obviously.) My only fabric-making skill is weaving; I totally lack the coordination/fine motor skills for anything else.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2020 5:30 pm Reply with quote
You're too much of a history geek for your own good :p
It reminds me of the usual nerd complaining about a sci-fi work because of scientific inaccuracies (starting with sound in a vacuum in FTL travel).

Arte presenting herself might have been inaccurate? Eh, probably. But in the end it's useful to outline Arte's willpower and "NO U" attitude, both in private and in public. This girl is determined to reach high places through her willpower, but she's also determined to not let anyone step over her or cast her aside - which is something you can't really demonstrate just with tasks that don't involve any of her haters - she forcefully grabbed their ears, whether they wanted to ignore her or not.
In the end this is historic fiction, so it will and should bend accuracy whenever it's necessary to drive a point home (and to make characters more familiar. Sure they could be less modern Japanese-y, but they would trade accuracy for relatability).
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2020 12:41 am Reply with quote
So were all those servants part of the original dowry, or did she hire them after she got the money back? If they came with her, then her cries of poverty don't quite ring true. But if they were part of the dowry to be given or returned like furniture, that's a bit more like chattel slavery than I was expecting. Was that a thing in Renaissance Italy?
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Panino Manino



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 734
PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2020 8:29 am Reply with quote
This adaptation is a disgrace, what they did with Dacia... inexcusable.

https://i.imgur.com/fY6765l.png

I'll have to repeat myself here also. I get the impression that the producers thought "let's make this 'feminist' anime, but not much". Why? Because I feel that the male characters are receiving a much better treatment than the female characters, that the female characters are suffering for being defined by how they relate to other man/male characters. Do you know? Arte Manga passed the Bechdel test! Laughing Can we say the same for Arte Anime?
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2599
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2020 9:34 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
Was that a thing in Renaissance Italy?


That's a good question that I don't fully know the answer to. There were slave traders active in the late middle ages/early Renaissance, primarily in Venice, I believe, so it may not be entirely out of the question. (If I had fewer research papers to grade, I'd do more digging!)
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