edgepedia

Arts and culture / Screen and stage / Film and television / Series and fictional screen worlds / Anime and manga / Anime series, episodes, and franchises / OVAs, ONAs, and streaming-original anime

General · Edgepedia6 min read

Thermae Romae Novae (テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエ)

Thermae Romae Novae (テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエ) is a 2022 Japanese anime series produced for Netflix, in which Lucius Modestus, a bathhouse architect in ancient Rome, repeatedly time-slips into modern Japanese baths and carries their ideas back to his own designs. It adapts Mari Yamazaki's manga Thermae Romae and consists of 11 episodes released worldwide on March 28, 2022.1 • 2

Key factDetail
FormatNetflix ONA, 11 episodes of roughly 25 to 30 minutes, released worldwide in March 20221 • 3
Source materialMari Yamazaki's manga Thermae Romae, serialized in Comic Beam from February 2008 and collected in 6 volumes4 • 1
PremiseBathhouse engineer Lucius Modestus, serving Emperor Hadrian, travels between ancient Rome and modern Japan and incorporates Japanese bathing culture into Roman thermae4 • 5
Manga pedigreeThermae Romae I won the 2010 Manga Taishō and the 14th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for short stories; the series surpassed 9 million copies6 • 7
Main castKenjiro Tsuda as Lucius, with Chikahiro Kobayashi, Satoshi Hino, Tsutomu Isobe (Emperor Hadrian), and Asami Seto3
Hybrid formatEach episode closes with a live-action segment in which author Mari Yamazaki tours a historic Japanese bath8
Age ratingRated 13+ on Netflix Japan; Common Sense Media lists it as TV-MA, noting partial nudity in the bath setting, drinking, and occasional strong language9 • 8

Spoilers

Premise

The story is set in AD 128, when the Roman Empire was expanding and its capital demanded amenities to match its status. Lucius Modestus designs thermae, the public bathhouses where Romans bathed, exercised, socialized, and exchanged news, but his classical styles are falling out of favor with developers. When he sinks into the water of a bath built by his grandfather, he is transported to a modern Japanese bathhouse. He returns to Rome with ideas drawn from Japanese bathing culture, and the resulting innovations make him famous, drawing the attention of Emperor Hadrian, who enlists him for the glory and stability of Rome.10 • 4

The comedy comes from the encounter between an ancient Roman and modern Japanese society. Lucius cannot speak Japanese and calls the Japanese the "flat-face race" (平たい顔族), yet he is astonished by their bath culture and mines it for ideas, which he then reinterprets with Roman engineering.4 The series treats the two bathing cultures with mutual respect, and the cultural misunderstandings are played for humor rather than mockery.8

The Roman setting is grounded in real history. The show references figures and places of Hadrian's reign, including the Trajan Bathhouse, the establishment of Aelia Capitolina, and the adoption of Lucius Ceionius Commodus, and one scene addresses Hadrian's relationship with Antinous.11

Source material and earlier adaptations

The anime is the second animated adaptation of Thermae Romae. Mari Yamazaki's gag manga ran in Comic Beam from February 2008 and follows the same premise: Lucius, a serious and curious bathhouse designer serving Hadrian, suddenly slips through time to modern Japanese hot springs and bathhouses, gathers ideas, and returns to build novel baths that attract attention in Rome.4 The manga won the third Manga Taishō in 2010, an award chosen by bookstore staff and other manga lovers, and the short-story division of the 14th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, and it had sold more than 9 million copies by the time of the Netflix series.6 • 7

Before 2022, the property was adapted as a flash-animation series in 2012 and as a live-action film, Thermae Romae (2012), directed by Hideki Takeuchi and starring Hiroshi Abe, which received a sequel.12 • 13 The 2022 Netflix series revisits and expands the original story in full animation, whereas the 2012 version was criticized in Japan as little more than animated picture panels with almost no character movement.12 • 7

Adaptation and structure

The Netflix series reorganizes the six-volume manga around episodes centered on bathhouse design projects and adds original content, including episodes about Lucius's boyhood.1 • 7 Reviewers note that the anime communicates the main elements of the manga's first-half stories faithfully, though the manga conveys a sense of elapsed time, roughly a year between Lucius's adventures, that the anime does not.10

Each episode pairs the animated comedy with a live-action travelogue. At the end of an episode, Yamazaki Mari herself takes viewers to one of Japan's historic baths, explaining the history and rituals of Japanese bathing culture, from foot baths and onsen eggs to steam baths, and connecting the segment to the episode's theme.8 • 7 This documentary component makes the series partly educational, and reviewers describe it as aimed at viewers curious about Japanese culture as much as at anime audiences.7

Cast and production

Kenjiro Tsuda voices Lucius, performing the role with high energy and earnestness; the character talks to himself constantly, and the production has him speak Latin while his inner monologue is in Japanese, an unusual choice for a voiced anime.5 • 7 The cast also includes Chikahiro Kobayashi as Marcus, Satoshi Hino as Regulus, Tsutomu Isobe as Emperor Hadrian, Asami Seto as Mari Yamaguchi, Shuichi Ikeda as Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Takahiro Sakurai as Yoshida.3 Netflix released the series with audio tracks and subtitle options in many languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, and Chinese.2

Reception and cultural footprint

The series is listed on Netflix in dozens of countries and remains available there by subscription, with no purchase or rental option listed in the markets tracked by availability guides.2 • 14 Reviewers have highlighted its originality, combining animated time-travel comedy with a live-action travelogue, and its celebration of communal bathing as a way of life in both cultures.12 • 8 Critics less taken with it describe the content as episodic and low on story, a "trivia-style" show whose appeal lies in bath culture rather than plot.7

The manga and its adaptations have also reached beyond entertainment. A touring Japanese exhibition, "Thermae: Ancient Rome and Japan Connected by Bathing" (テルマエ展), held at the Yamanashi, Oita, Panasonic Shiodome, and Kobe museums in 2023 and 2024, was supervised by the classical archaeologists Masanori Aoyagi and Kyoko Haga with Yamazaki's cooperation, and used Lucius as a guide to Roman and Japanese bath culture alongside more than 100 works of art and artifacts.15 • 16 A 2024 scholarly article on the franchise analyzes the series through the contrast of Rome as dystopia and Japan as utopia.17

References

  1. テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエ｜コミック図鑑
  2. Where to watch 'Thermae Romae Novae (2022)' on Netflix, Flixboss
  3. Assistir Thermae Romae Novae, JustWatch Brasil
  4. 「テルマエ・ロマエ」, 時事用語事典 imidas
  5. Netflixシリーズ「テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエ」津田健次郎インタビュー, エンタメOVO
  6. Japanese Book News Vol. 66, Japan Foundation
  7. Netflix『テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエ』感想・原作漫画と違い比較, CineMag
  8. Thermae Romae Novae, Parents' Guide, Common Sense Media
  9. テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエを観る, Netflix公式サイト
  10. Thermae Romae Novae (2022), Animation For Adults
  11. Thermae Romae Novae, Plugged In TV Review
  12. REVIEW: Thermae Romae Novae (2022), Arcadia Pod
  13. Plunging into the Gulf Between Ancient Rome and Modern Japan, New Voices in Classical Reception Studies
  14. Thermae Romae Novae streamen auf Netflix, OtakuPulse
  15. テルマエ お風呂でつながる古代ローマと日本, 青幻舎
  16. 『テルマエ展』公式サイト
  17. Rome as Dystopia and Japan as Utopia in Thermae Romae (2012) and Thermae Romae Novae (2022), ResearchGate

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Anime and manga › Anime series, episodes, and franchises › OVAs, ONAs, and streaming-original anime

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

© 2026 Biostate AI. Free to use with credit under the Edgepedia Community License. Embed a reference card.

Report an error

Thermae Romae Novae (テルマエ・ロマエ ノヴァエ)

Pick at least one reason.