Oddaptations - The Count of Monte Cristo → Gankutsuou

One of these covers better communicates the reading or viewing experience to the audience. I'll leave which one up to you.

Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that turned out. Today's Oddaptation:

The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) (1844) by Alexandre Dumas (père) into Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (巌窟王 Gankutsuou) (October 2004-March 20005) Studio Gonzo, Series Director, Mahiro Maeda

Sure, Alfred Bester beat Studio Gonzo to the whole "Count of Monte Cristo in SPAAAAAAACE" thing by several decades, but, he did so in the same medium as the original, buh-ut, according to Wikipedia, Gankutsuou was initially meant to be an adaptation of The Stars My Destination, buh-uh-ut they couldn't secure the rights to Bester's very much copyrighted novel, buh-uh-uh-ut, Dumas's novel is very much in the public domain.

The Original: This is the story of a young sailor named Edmond Dantés. Things are going pretty good for Edmond until he's framed as a conspirator trying to bring about Napoleon's return from exile and sent to the Chateau d'If, an inescapable prison. While there he meets Abbé Faria, a former monk who teaches him all the mathematics, sciences, and languages a person might need to know to craft an elaborate revenge plot and – would you believe it? – tells him the location of a secret treasure horde on the island of Monte Cristo. When the Abbé dies, Edmond disguises himself as a corpse and is thrown off of a cliff into the Mediterranean. Then he disappears for a while while an unnamed gentlemen runs bizarre and mysterious errands. Meanwhile, the men who betrayed him are all doing quite well for themselves. Fernand Mondego, who denounced Edmond, is now the Count de Morcerf and married to Edmond's former fiancée, Mercédès, following his military triumphs in the Middle East. Danglars, who urged Fernand to denounce Edmond, is now a Baron and a wealthy banker. Gerard de Villefort, the prosecutor who hid evidence of Edmond's innocence because it implicated his own father, has been promoted from the lowly rank of Deputy Crown Prosecutor to the exulted rank of Crown Prosecutor. After orchestrating the kidnapping and rescue of de Morcef's son, Albert, in Rome, the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo descends on Paris, eager to befriend these pillars of the community. Smart readers have probably noticed a lot of details that tip them off to the fact that this Count of Monte Cristo guy seems a lot like that Edmond Dantés guy who was the main character for most of the beginning of the novel. Hmm, I wonder what to make of that. Anyway, suddenly all sorts of misfortunes begin befalling the de Morcerf, de Villefort, and Danglars families, including but not limited to: tanking stock prices, revelation of war crimes, mysterious poisonings, a plot to marry blood siblings, a plot to smuggle one of their daughters out of the country with her piano teacher/lesbian lover, etc. At the risk of spoiling a 170-year-old novel: by the end de Morcerf has committed suicide in disgrace after being disowned by his family, de Villefort is driven mad by the knowledge that his wife has poisoned most of his family and that the illegitimate son he buried alive survived and grew up to be a murderer and rapist and that the innocent man he condemned all those years ago had orchestrated all of it, oh, and the Count bankrupts Danglars but lets him live because he realizes revenge is bad. Also the Count ends up marrying his 17-year-old slave, Haydée. So just remember that "all human wisdom is contained in these words —'wait' and 'hope.""* Wait, what?

The Remake: "Mesdames, messieurs, bonsoir," as the narrator says at the beginning of every episode. This is the story of a fifteen-year-old nobleman, Albert, the Viscount de Morcerf. Oh, also it's the 51st century. While going to Luna's Carnival with his best bud Baron Franz d'Épinay, he's kidnapped by bandits and rescued by the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. I think you can see where I'm going with this. Anyway, the idealistic Albert is dazzled by the dashing count, but his more worldly friend thinks that this nattily dressed cross between Grand Admiral Thrawn and Frank Zappa is bad news. Anyway, they head back to Paris and hang out with their other friends like Albert's fiancée, Eugénie Danglars, and Franz's fiancée, Valentine de Villefort (though it's pretty clear that one of them would much rather spend time with his best bud than his fiancée (it's Franz)). Franz begins to suspect something is up when it looks like Monte Cristo is using Albert to gain access to Count de Morceft, Albert's father, a general and presidential candidate of a . . . kingdom? That can't be right, can it? Anyway, Monte Cristo is also quite eager to meet Eugénie's father, Baron Danglars for banking purposes, and Valentine's father, de Villefort, a prominent judge. Throughout most of the series Albert is like, "I dunno, Franz, sure the Count is a total weirdo who seems intent on seducing other men's wives, laughs at inappropriate moments, played a weird game in his mansion where the prize was a baby casket, and goaded me into dueling a professional soldier, but we also had a heart-to-heart talk once on the beach underneath his mansion, so I think he's probably an okay guy, deep down."  Franz meanwhile decides to do some digging after he overhears someone refer to the Count as "Gankutsuou" (the King of the Cave) and finds out that Gankutsuou is a malicious space entity that was locked away in an inescapable prison on the far side of the galaxy, the Chateau d'If. Meanwhile, Albert's mother, Mercédès is beginning to grow suspicious about the fact that his Count of Monte Cristo guy bears a striking resemblance to her former fiancé, Edmond Dantés, if he looked like a blue space vampire. Have I mentioned how much the Count looks like a gaudily dressed, blue-skinned space vampire? And yes, the whole show is that visually busy, and no it's never not distracting. Later in the series, it's revealed that Edmond Dantés was imprisoned in Chateau d'If with Gankutsuou and made a devil's bargain with the malevolent entity in exchange for the means to take revenge. Though it's never explained how they escaped. Anyhow, even though the Count is destroying Albert's comfortable lifestyle, Albert seems largely okay with it because he finds out that it was all built on a lie, though his devotion to the idea that the Count is a good person starts to seem frighteningly naïve after the Count murders Franz in a duel. Also, the Count had thought he was killing Albert, Franz had taken his place (they were fighting each other in mecha). By the end Albert manages to restore Edmond Dantés's humanity through the power of forgiveness, even though the Count had tried to kill him once again (well, actually twice more in quick succession). "Bide your time and hold out hope," as they say at the end of every "Next time on Gankutsuou" promo. Wait, what?

Fidelity to Source Material: Surprisingly high. Sure there several differences in plot specifics, but 51st century setting aside there is a lot of the original novel in this anime series.

Things That Survived Intact: Just, like, a whole bunch. The start of the series basically coincides with the introduction of the Count of Monte Cristo as a character in Dumas's novel. He shows up and saves Albert from kidnapping at Carnival (more on that later). The character dynamics are mostly the same (more on that later). The characters names and the names of places are all pretty much the same (even if some of them are moved to outer space). Heck, even the idea that people are still getting into sword-fights on the regular is there.

Smart Changes: Given that the moral of both works is that forgiveness is better than revenge (bold stance, I know), it's good to shift the focus from the Count to Albert and his friends(the novel actually does this to an extent as well, often describing the Count as he is perceived by others). In the novel, the Count's redemption following his forgiveness of Danglars doesn't really feel earned because even though the reader is on board with the idea that taking revenge is destroying Edmond's humanity, it isn't until a young child is poisoned that he realizes, "Oh hey! The children of the men who betrayed don't really deserve to suffer, do they? Except Benedetto, fuck that guy!" Now the anime does take this idea a step to far by personifying his drive for vengeance as a space monster that literally possesses him and turns his heart to stone. But it also doesn't really redeem him either. Like Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi the restoration of Edmond's humanity in Gankutsuou comes at the cost of his life. Albert's insistence on forgiving the Count for his misdeeds turns Edmond back into a normal human which means that his heart (which is no longer stone) is still pierced with a shard of Franz's sword from their duel. Oh, and let's talk about Eugénie for a moment. Like in the novel, the anime starts with her engaged to Albert, an engagement her father breaks so he can marry her off to the Count's protégé (look I taught myself all the keyboard shortcuts for diacritical marks for this, I'm definitely using as many as pøssîblė), Andrea Cavalcanti (actually Benedetto, and actually Eugénie's half-brother, but nobody but the Count knows that). So in the novel, this results in Eugénie disguising herself as a man and running away with her female piano teacher/lover (as mentioned above). This is mainly played for a cheap laugh later when the two are discovered in bed together (you know, because it was the 1840s). Meanwhile in the anime, Albert pulls a The Graduate at the wedding and takes Eugénie to the airport so she can fly off to music school in New York. I guess this is more of a lateral move, but it does at least mean that Eugénie's desire to live her own life rather than the one laid out for her isn't treated as a prurient joke.

Why it Works: I'll be honest, it kinda doesn't. The anime is a hot mess, too busy visually, and more than a little over the top emtionally (seriously, how many times does Albert stand outside the Count's mansion on the Champs-Élysées screaming "HAKUSHAKU!"? (Japanese for "Count"). But, as an adaptation of a novel that's overly long, overly complex, and generally over the top emotionally, it's kind of a perfect fit. So yeah, um, I guess it's a bit of a toss-up, but both of them are enjoyable in their own way.

*Dumas, Alexandre. The Count of Monte Cristo. Trans. Robin Buss. Penguin Books. New York. 1996. p. 1078.

Links:

So apparently the anime's US distributor has the whole thing up on YouTube. Man, remember when to watch anime you had to buy like four or five episodes at a time?

Someone has made this helpful(?) chart showing the character relationships in Dumas's novel. I commend them.

So the anime's theme song is in English, and is revealed to be diegetic music when Eugénie composes an instrumental version as a present for Albert's birthday.