Wow, two agreeing reviews! Not a good sign for the series, eh?
I didn't comment much on the characters in my review because I barely remember the original play, but you raise some great points about Mercutio/Tybalt. God knows why they'd turn the awesome that was Mercutio into the shmuck he was in this anime.
As for Juliet, her freakout can be explained by the fact that the Capulets kept the truth from her for fourteen goddamn years and then sprung it on her in the most heavy-handed way possible. I don't blame the poor girl for what she goes through. Really, the whole tragedy comes from her being screwed over by her so-called friends.
I totally agree with these reviews. I was eager to watch the anime because it was different from the play (which I didn't enjoy at all) and welcomed the differences the anime offered—and after a while, I was very disappointed and bored. And this is coming from a girl who enjoys romance-orientated media.
I liked it. I didn't think it was the best of stories, especially in the middle where it sagged with the mine stuff, and the ending which really felt tacked on. However I liked the music and a lot of the animation, and I thought that the romance was sweet.
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Could have been much better.
I didn't like it.
I'm not a Shakespeare purist, I didn't mind the setting change and plot expansion, I actually enjoyed it a lot in the beginning, even if the story did use some cliches. However, some point after Episode 7 ( Lancelot's death) I felt that the series started going downhill. The plot became weird and boring and poor characterization began to show. Romeo's storyline tended to be really, really boring and a bizarre fantasy element comes out of nowhere when the main La Resistance plot would have been fine. Specifically I had issues with Juliet, Mercutio, and Tybalt.
Our heroine is introduced as a badass vigilante who routinely gets into sword fights, but in a later fight she freaks out over wounding a mook, which completely breaks my suspension of disbelief and comes across as chickification as well as a narmy attempt at drama. You'd think the Red Whirlwind would jump at the call to overthrow Montague the tyrant, but Juliet just angsts about it and runs away with Romeo. She went from strong and capable to "love story character".
Mercutio is a smug, irritating jerkass who sucks up to the Montagues and pays for it in the end—why is Romeo friends with him? In the original play he was the comic relief, likeable, and straight man/foil to the idiocy going on around him. Why did they feel the need to change his character?
I liked Tybalt better when he was just a Hot Blooded asshole. The show doesn't need more family-related angst, Freudian Excuses, and brooding, I couldn't help but think of Sasuke. For me, the complicated family trees didn't add anything to the story.
In general, much of the series takes itself so seriously and tries to be epic and dramatic, but I didn't feel it. The characters' idealism is supposed to be heroic, but instead it's played up so much that it's unrealistic and wallbanger-inducing at times. I wonder if Romeo and Juliet will ever get bored of each other in eternity, as much of their dates when they weren't fighting for their lives were just blushing at each other and hugging. The series tries to fix the four-day romance = true love fridge logic from the play, but it's not any more convincing than any other anime teen romance. The series promises a lot in the beginning but ends up underwhelming.