Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

This week was rather uneventful aside from coursework and reading again, so I thought I'd do something a little different. Over the weekend I finally finished Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo and am prepared to avow that it is absolutely the best adaptation of Dumas's novel I have come across. So instead of talking about me reading in the library this week (yawn) let's talk about The Count of Monte Cristo, shall we?

This edition has pretty good notes, if you care.

Believe it or not, I happen to have a dark and emotional history with this novel: in fifth grade my slightly eccentric teacher, apparently overexcited to be teaching a child as bookwormish as I, made the assuredly well-intentioned but shockingly misguided decision to suggest this novel to my ten-year-old self for a book report project. Obviously it was an impossible task; the novel, even in the abridged version that she gave me, still comes in at 400 pages (the unabridged page count is something more akin to 1,300), which is a little much for a ten year old's two-week-long book project. As you would expect, the complicated themes and involved plot went way over my fifth grade pigtails. The only thing that stuck with me, for some reason, was the name "Mercédès" and an impression that the novel was damp and dark, garnered, apparently, from the portion of the story where Edmond is imprisoned in the Château d'If. Scarred by this frustrating experience, I went through life without picking this hated book up again--that is, until last summer.


I really read The Count of Monte Cristo (in unabridged form) for the first time last August, mostly because Drew had the book lying around and was bugging me to read it. This time, probably on account of the fact that I actually understood what I was reading, I fell instantly in love. Despite the outrageous length of the book--such wonderful prolixity, I am certain, can only be found in novels born into the nineteenth century--I was left wanting more.

 Crap.

Naturally I turned to the the 2002 movie adaptation starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pierce, since I had heard from some people (you know who you are) that it was a fantastic film. Well. Let's just say that, upon viewing, I found myself in humble disagreement with that assessment. Actually, I thought it was frakking horrible. 


The intricate plot was parred down to its simplest elements; the characters whittled away at until they were merely bombastic caricatures. Edmond did not become the Count of Monte Cristo, he just put on some fancy clothes--there was no sense of transformation, no evidence of the unwavering conviction that drives the Count throughout the latter portion of the novel. The Parisian younger generation, with the exception of Albert, had also been completely cut out of the script in the interest of streamlining the plot. And poor Albert, who happens to be one of my favorite characters in the novel, was reduced rather inelegantly to a plot device, the screenwriters cheerfully rearranging his parentage to achieve a tidy happy ending to their film. No, this adaptation was certainly not for me. 

But this is where Gankutsuou comes in. A 24 episode show made between in 2004 by the sorely-missed animation studio GONZO, this is, as I said, the best adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo I have ever seen, and a work of art in its own right. Able to spread the story over twenty-four 22 minute episodes, the show is allowed, unlike the movie, to take its time with the characters and plot, leading to a rich, complex story that captures much of the spirit of Dumas's work without slavishly binding itself to every detail of the original, creating something that is much like The Count of Monte Cristo, but also contains enough fresh material and original twists to make watching it an adventure even to those familiar with the novel.


Gankutsuou takes a scifi twist on The Count of Monte Cristo, transplanting the story from 19th century France to a futuristic setting where the ships travel through space rather than the ocean and the exotic Monte Cristo, about whom there is something literally alien (let's just leave it at that--no spoilers), comes from "Eastern Space" to a futuristic Paris where Danglars trades stocks through an AI broker and Beauchamp takes photos for his newspaper on a digital camera. Yet the setting, while intriguing, is still hardly the most interesting thing this adaption has to offer.

See the textures? The whole show's like that.

Certainly the first thing one notices upon viewing Gankutsuou is the unusual visual style. The animation makes use of intricate patterns and textures layered into digital animation, rendering even simple character designs unexpectedly elaborate and calling attention in unexpected ways to the movement of the figures on screen. And while this technique tends to give the animation a flat, two-dimensional quality, it is contrasted visually with liberal use of CGI for backgrounds and vehicles, adding to the futuristic, almost surreal setting of the narrative. Although I'm usually not a big fan of CG 3D-ing up my traditional animation, in this instance it really works, and the contrast between the flat textures and the CGI elements complements the setting that meshes futuristic science fiction elements with features of 19th century Paris. It's something that one really needs to see in action to fully appreciate, but suffice it to say that the art in this series is like nothing you've ever seen before.

Now for the story: let me begin by introducing you to our young protagonist. No, not Edmond Dantès--that's Albert de Morcerf there on the left. Gankutsuou is told from the perspective not of Edmond Dantès/Count of Monte Cristo but instead from that of the child of Mercédès (Edmond's fiancee) and Fernand (the man who stole her from Edmond). This change in perspective is, I think, the real genius of this adaptation.


Albert occupies an extremely interesting position in the novel, because he is simultaneously the child of the woman Edmond loved and the man that he hates, rendering Monte Cristo necessarily ambivalent towards him (an ambivalence which comes to a head in the duel between the two in Ch. 90 of the novel). Meanwhile, Albert himself has complex feelings towards the Count, seeing him first as a close friend, almost a father figure, and later as a bitter enemy. The switch in protagonists allows Gankutsuou to make these tensions and ambivalent feelings the focus of the narrative, and in doing so, Albert emerges as a foil to Monte Cristo, an echo of the young and naive Edmond that we catch only glimpses of in this adaptation, soon to be betrayed by the Count just as Edmond was betrayed by Albert's own father.

The extended saga of Edmond Dantès's life, while lovely in a long, expansive novel that can afford to take its time with its narrative, is the death of film adaptions. Instead of wrangling with the lengthy exposition and multiple time-skips, Gankutsuou drops its viewer directly into the Parisian milieu--in medias res, as it were--and into the shoes of Albert, voiced by the wonderful and talented Fukuyama Jun (who at least two of my readers also know as the CV of Lelouch Lamperouge). The Count, voiced by the deliciously sinister Nakata Jouji, becomes a looming, mysterious figure; the viewer is swept up in the cares and concerns of the younger generation as their familiar lives are dismantled by a ghost from their parents' past. 

As I said, this is a fabulous adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo; however, don't expect it to be faithful to the novel in every point. While starting out incredibly close to Dumas's novel, Gankutsuou does go on to depart from the source material significantly later on in the show. I feel like I shouldn't spoil it in case this post actually inspires any Count of Monte Cristo enthusiasts to go watch it, but let's just say that episode 18 ("The Duel") left me crying like a little girl because I did not expect it to end the way it did. The resolution of the show is also quite different from the book, and while I'm still not sure how I feel about the way it ended, I still immensely enjoyed watching Gankutsuou's take on Dumas's enduring tale. 


I could probably go on a while longer comparing the novel to the show, but not without the risk of severe spoilers and boring you all to death. In fact, if you're still reading at this point, I commend your perseverance. I'd better take my leave here, since I've already spent far too long on this post when I should probably be reading about books as gifts in the seventeenth century England, not opining on Japanese television adaptations of French novels. Anyway, I hope I inspired some of you pick up The Count of Monte Cristo or rent Gankutsuou from Netflix (NB: for the love of all that is holy, please don't watch it dubbed); next week I promise I'll talk about Oxford again, so stay tuned!


Au revoir,
KQ