Thermae Romae Novae: An Anime about Ancient Roman Bath Houses

Thermae Romae Novae: "The New Roman Baths," an anime based on a manga about bath houses.  And not the sexual kind, the ancient Roman/modern Japanese bath houses that you use when your apartment doesn't have a shower.  Sounds like a very limited premise, but there will doubtless be lots of scenes of semi-naked hunks.

Scene 1: Montage of people in ancient Rome getting hot and sweaty: a gladiator, a chariot racer, some guys at a feast.  A boy named Lucius (David Wald), running to bring lunch to his grandfather, is accosted by bullies.  The leader, Titus, throws the lunchbag over the bridge -- lost forever!  It's not that big a deal -- you're obviously not poor, and they had fast food stands in ancient Rome. Just buy him a new lunch.

Scene 2:  Sobbing, Lucius approaches Grandpa, an architect working on a new construcgtion project.  Grandpa consoles him, but Apollodorus, the manager, yells at him for being a wimp.  He runs away -- past a fast food place, where his teenage friend Marcus offers him a kebab.  

Scene 3:  Lucius and Marcus eating.  They discuss the new tower, built to commemorate Emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars (105=106 AD).   Marcus helped build it; he wants to be a stonemason when he grows up.  Lucius doesn't know what he wants to do. (Does he have a choice?  Don't Roman boys follow their fathers' careers).

Scene 4:  After Marcus' extremely muscular father drags him back to work, Lucius walks past the bath house, and flashes back to his own extremely muscular father telling him that thermae are not just places to bathe: "They're a celebration of our way of life."  I could say the same thing about gay bathhouses.  We zoom across the extremely muscular patrons, all men; two look like they're going to wrestle or have sex.

Next, Lucius flashes back to hearing about his father's death in a scaffolding accident.

Scene 5:  Lucius in his room, reading a scroll.  Grandpa announces that he's going to take a bath, and forces a reluctant Lucius to go with him.  Whoa, beefcake fest! A few butts, no penises.   

Grandpa explains the procedure: first a soak in the hot caldarium, then the cold frigidarium, then a body scrub and back to the caldarium.  Uh-oh, while Grandpa is off getting scrubbed, the bullies attack.  Lucius ducks under water to escape them, and comes up in a bath house in modern day Japan!  I hope there's a Latin scholar around.  

He screams, ducks under water again, and is back home, disoriented and confused.  "What just happened?"  

Grandpa is rhapsodizing about the bath house, "an essential part of our culture," where men go to "share moments together in hot water" (tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?)   Flashback to his father going even farther: "We have the duty to build the future of Rome."  Ok, this is getting too hyperbolic.  It's just a bath house, not a temple.

After Grandpa leaves, the bullies return.  Titus insults the thermae.  This makes Lucius angry.  They fight.  The bully pounds him, until the other men pull him off.

Scene 6: Night.  Lucius and Grandpa stop by the fast-food stand for a beverage.  Lucius says that he wants to become a thermae architect.  Grandpa makes him promise to make baths "that wash away anger."  

Scene 7: Years later, the adult Lucius (Hiroshi Abe in the 2012 movie) is living in Athens.  He goes home to visit his mom and grandma.  I'm glad he's not going to be a ten-year old through the series.  He wants to take a bath before dinner, so it's off to the old bath house of his childhood, where he runs into his former bully, the extremely muscular adult Titus.  They catch up: Titus is a butcher with a young son, and Lucius, of course, is a thermae architect.  

When Titus tells him that he is married with children, Lucius gets a strange wistful look.  Is he interested in Titus, or is he upset because he doesn't have a girlfriend?  

Postscript: A documentary about the manga artist, Mari Yamakazi, conducting research on Japan's bath house culture.  First up: the Kusatsu Onsen hot springs.  The water is so hot that it has to be cooled down through a splashing-technique called yumomi, which she will incorporate into her stories.

Beefcake:  Everywhere, in the bath or out.  Except everyone has weird hashtag marks on their cheeks.  At first I thought they were dirt smudges, but they never go away.

Other Sights:  Lots of exteriors of ancient Rome.

Time Travel:  Barely mentioned.  One would expect it to be an ongoing theme.

Gay Characters:  No one except Titus expresses any same-sex interest, or any heterosexual interest. In the manga series, Lucius gets girlfriends in both ancient Rome and modern-day Japan, so maybe that will be happening in future episodes.

My Grade: B.