Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo II

Rating T+ Genre manga Author Manga: Mahiro Maeda; Scenario: Yura Ariwara Publisher Del Rey External Links Buy Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter 2.

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas’ wonderful classic of revenge, is one of those stories that has been remade dozens of times.  I guess when dealing with remakes such as this, there are two main questions: Is it faithful to the source material, and does it bring anything new to the story?  Well, there’s a lot of yes and no to both of those questions, so I shall head straight into the plot summary.

Starting out in volume II, the Count already has his sights set on Gerard de Villefort, the man who falsely sentenced him to prison twenty five years ago.  The Villefort family is facing some family issues as of now.  Valentine, Gerard’s daughter from his first wife is to be the sole inheritor of her grandfather’s fortune.  This would leave Eduard, the son of Gerard’s second wife, Heloise, with absolutely nothing.  Monte Cristo is perfectly aware of Heloise’s concerns and uses it to exploit her.  He leaves her a bottle of poison and lets the family do the rest.

I will first touch on the interesting art style.  When I first saw it, I was vaguely reminded of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (the manga, not the anime).  Not from the character design, but from the way the panels are shaded and drawn.  It was an interesting similarity (not one that I would normally catch).  But I looked into the artist’s repertoire and found that he actually had helped animate the anime.  A bit ironic that it reminded me of the manga, but he had only worked on the anime, but it’s an interesting trend nonetheless.  It takes a little getting used to because it looks so unconventional, with dark outlines, heavy contrast, and dark shading lines, it isn’t quite what you expect when you see the cover (which looks more like the cover art from a Castlevania game).

The story itself is quite faithful to the original story, although not drawn out as much.  It does get a bit hard to follow at some points, however.  We may see a character in one scene and then another, but we aren’t entirely sure it’s them because they may have a different hairstyle or outfit.  And then there is a bit of confusion when the artist draws something that is supposed to be figurative, but it is taken literally.  There was one panel where I wasn’t quite sure if Heloise was supposed to have been killed or not.  When she came in later in the story, however, I realized that it was just there for aesthetics.  Plus there’s the fact that there’s a laundry list of characters that you’re supposed to be able to follow, all with French names and convoluted relationships (the daughter of the son of the wife, etc…).  It’s definitely a volume that is worth a quick reread.  Once that was done, I was able to really appreciate the manga for what it was. One failed aspect of the story, however, is the whole futuristic world.  It’s supposed to be futuristic, and yet with the exception of a couple cars and talk of galaxies, there was no futuristicness to be seen.  I’m not saying they need to have a stereotypical world, but if you’re going to change the time period of a classic story, why not take advantage of it?

While I wouldn’t call Gankutsuou a good entry-level manga series by any means, it’s still a great story executed in an interesting, albeit flawed, way.  It has its moments, but it relies a bit too much on implication and things that happens in-between panels for the casual reader.