Requiem of the Rose King

薔薇王の葬列 (Baraou no Souretsu)

6.4(14,303)

MAL Score

Ranked #8478

Popularity #3132

Action
Drama
Supernatural
Historical

Episodes: 24
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jan 9, 2022 to Jun 26, 2022
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Richard Plantagenet has spent his life hardening himself for the battlefield, determined to stand beside his father, the Duke of York, in the fight to seize England’s crown from King Henry VI and the House of Lancaster. Yet behind his resolve lies a secret he keeps hidden—one his mother condemns and the merciless voices in his mind refuse to let him forget. In the midst of that private torment, his father’s affection remains one of the few comforts he can trust.

As the War of the Roses intensifies and violence escalates, Richard’s ambitions sharpen along with the conflict. Loyalties that once felt unbreakable begin to fracture, and the pursuit of power threatens to twist both Richard’s fate and his family’s march toward glory.

Otaku Consensus

Requiem of the Rose King earns respect for its grim shoujo treatment of Shakespearean history, its charged Richard-Henry dynamic, and a handful of political reversals that land with real tragic force. The verdict is split but consistent: the writing has teeth, while J.C.Staff’s adaptation is widely criticized for rushed pacing, static staging, and animation that rarely matches the intensity of the material.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Requiem of the Rose King if you want court politics, identity horror, and doomed intimacy without the clean heroism of a standard medieval action series. It scratches a similar itch to the political cruelty of Vinland Saga and the theatrical fatalism of Shakespeare-inspired anime, but filtered through a shoujo sensibility where glances, bloodlines, and self-loathing matter as much as battlefield outcomes. The appeal is not spectacle; it is watching a historical tragedy become psychological pressure. Viewers drawn to anti-heroes, adult casts, LGBTQ+ themes, and literary adaptations will get the most from it, especially if they can tolerate a production that often feels more like an illustrated stage tragedy than a fluid action show.

Key Characters

H
Henry VI(VA: Hikaru Midorikawa)
Henry VI stands out as the series’ fragile spiritual counterweight, a monarch whose presence turns political conflict into a question of mercy, faith, and emotional dependency.
R
Richard III(VA: Mitsuki Saiga)
Richard III is the show’s magnetic anti-hero, discussed by fans less as a simple villain than as a figure shaped by gendered rejection, dynastic violence, and relentless self-mythologizing.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The anime is credited to Aya Kanno as original creator with William Shakespeare listed for the original plan, making it a direct collision between manga melodrama and the legacy of Richard III and Henry VI.
2
Its AniList profile leans unusually hard into Historical, Classic Literature, and Politics tags, with LGBTQ+ Themes and Shoujo also prominent, positioning it closer to literary tragedy than conventional action fantasy.
3
J.C.Staff produced the full 24-episode TV run from January to June 2022, but the adaptation’s reputation is defined by compression: critics repeatedly singled out rushed pacing and static presentation as the main barriers to its stronger material.
4
Kou Ootani’s music and Yoshikazu Iwanami’s sound direction support the series’ gothic-theatrical mood, giving many confrontations the feeling of a chamber drama rather than a battlefield epic.
5
The series uses a primarily adult cast and an anti-hero focus, which gives its political betrayals a harsher texture than youth-centered royal fantasy anime.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: William Shakespeare is formally credited in the staff data under Original Plan, while Aya Kanno is credited as the original creator, reflecting how the anime’s lineage runs through both classic theater and modern manga.
Fun fact 2: The two central listed roles are voiced by veteran performers Mitsuki Saiga as Richard III and Hikaru Midorikawa as Henry VI, anchoring the series around vocal contrast rather than a large ensemble spotlight.
Fun fact 3: On AniList, the show’s highest tags are Historical at 100%, Classic Literature at 94%, and Politics at 93%, which accurately signals that its identity is built around adaptation and power struggles more than genre action.
Fun fact 4: Its reception numbers show a sharp niche divide: a 6.42 MAL score and 56/100 AniList score sit alongside a recurring fan argument that the series is underrated because the underlying drama survived the uneven production.
Fun fact 5: The anime finished its broadcast as a two-cour 24-episode series, airing from January 9 to June 26, 2022, rather than being split into separate seasons.