Japanese Title: Gankutsuou
Similar: Gungrave
Watched in: Japanese & English
Genre: Supernatural Drama Mystery Science Fiction
Length: 24 episodes
Positives:
- A thrilling story of revenge and corruption.
- The Count of Monte Cristo is a multi-layered and fully textured (in more ways than one) character. One of the greats.
- That creative art style, that texturing, utterly beautiful.
- Manages to take a 19th century story and place it in the 6th millennium without feeling out of place.
- A soundtrack fit for the style and themes.
Negatives:
- Some CG stands out too much.
There’s always a degree of tension when adapting a famous classic, even more so when to a medium that couldn’t be more different from the source. First, you have the fans sitting in their beds, eyes glaring over the top of novels, ears twitching as they sense someone touching “their” property. At the other end, there’s Alexandre Dumas peeking out of his grave in the Pantheon of Paris. And in the middle, you have the small crew of anime artists. It’s a The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Mexican standoff, each party eyeing the others, wary of disaster. Dr Seuss in the stands screams, “Don’t let ‘em do it, Lex!” waving his ‘I hate The Lorax’ flag. Thankfully, the new team came through.
High up in a private opera box, a man, his hair like rivers of cosmic ink, his skin an ethereal blue, awards a bouquet of flowers to the opera singer. The theatre gasps. Who is this count? The mysterious figure invites young Viscount Albert and his friend Baron Franz over for dinner. He doesn’t eat, though the food is superb. He plays with fate, gambling lives – Albert sets a criminal free. Illusion of choice. The naïve, idealist Albert is enthralled, frightened, by this stranger, yearning to see the galaxy, escape his confined life of arranged marriage. His handshake was cold, like ice.
Gankutsuou is the story of a man out for revenge, adapted from Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo novel. The narrative doesn’t show the betrayal like in the novel; instead, the anime opens with the first stage of the revenge, using twenty-three episodes to execute every detail of the Count’s plan. If you haven’t read the book or seen the film, this adds extra layers of mystery to the plot; however, if you are familiar with the original, then fear not, as Gankutsuou has plenty of surprises in store. Everything fits to the original, yet feels fresh. They still have duels, only they fight mechs. By setting it in the distant future, the writers could incorporate several new elements like aliens instead of foreigners, some of them supernatural. The Count has a horse for a spy – need I say more?
Though we see through Albert’s perspective, the Count is without a doubt the star. He uses his unfathomable wealth, charm, and guile to play everyone like pieces on his board. The aristocrats of Paris with their decadent lifestyles, worlds of opera, flirtations, and palaces are a feast to his talents. He is a master manipulator. The way he gets into people’s heads without them realising is a delight to watch. He plays on their weakness while charming them as well so they don’t notice his ploy. Rather than outmanoeuvring them on the battlefield, he creates situations where his enemies can’t resist exposing their true natures, where people discover darkness they didn’t realise was there, and they don’t notice it was the Count who set it up.
He has a constant aura of mystery about him (as he intends, I am sure) that is both captivating and frightening. In a world of high tech cars and ships, he rides in a sleek black carriage drawn by black horses – the sort of thing Batman would have. The artists fuse high intensity orchestral pieces of heavy brass, tragic opera, theatre, and literature to create a rich world around him, both beautiful and grim. There are detailed paintings in shots that last a couple of seconds, taking more effort than entire backgrounds from other anime, all to reflect his character and those of his enemies.
A true delight is to understand the Count, or try to, at least. Which actions are manipulations and which are real emotions? Is everything he does part of the grand plan? It’s heart breaking to see a good man so consumed by revenge, as it tore me between my sense of justice for him and wish for him to find peace.
Gankutsuou is the sort of show that keeps me in anime. It reminds me that no matter how bad an anime I have seen, there will always be a few artists who can create something unique and captivating. I leave you with a quote from the Count that illustrates his complexities: “I am now no longer alone in my solitude. For I am now surrounded by the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance. In the darkness, I awaited the dawn. And once dawn came, I cursed my flesh until night fell once more. I even prayed that I would lose my sanity. But those prayers went unheeded. I even strove for death, but the Devil’s cold, pitiless hand held me back.”
Art – Very High
The most unique art in anime. A kaleidoscope of texture and colour. You could take just about any screenshot from Gankutsuou and it would be a piece of art. It’s fun figuring out where you have seen that texture before. Is her hair a thumbprint? While the texturing does blend much of the CG into the scene, some of it still looks out of place when in prominence.
Sound – Very High
The voice work is great in either language; it’s a matter of preference. I preferred English for the use of French honorifics in a French setting. Strangely, they changed the French introductions from the Japanese track to English in the English track – I would have thought they would do it even better with a bilingual English actor. The count’s deep voice is suave yet menacing. Gankutsuou exhibits a fantastic soundtrack. There’s no out-of-place J-pop here, just piano, opera, harp, and a few English and French lyrical tracks. The piece used for mystery makes the heart race with excitement at the unfolding drama.
Story – Very High
This anime is excellence in storytelling with well-implemented science fiction changes to the original novel. To see the Count manipulate people in such cunning ways makes for a gripping tale.
Overall Quality – Very High
Recommendation: A must watch. Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo shows how much the anime medium can achieve when adapting a foreign literary masterpiece, maintaining the core of the source material while making it their own. From the characters to the marvellous art, every facet comes together in an unforgettable series.
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Awards: (hover mouse over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)
Positive:
Negative: None.
Nefarious Reviews 