Partial Review of Gankutsuou
Oct. 1st, 2010 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiOn ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skinintheway's recommendation, I have been watching Gankutsuou, a science fantasy anime adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. I've liked it overall but did not get through the last four episodes, so this is a partial review based on what I've seen. Note, I would have gotten through the last four if I'd been able to access them in a timely fashion, while the mood was still upon me. But a snafu with Netflix that made the disc arrive late and the fact that said disc was unplayable seemed a sign from God not to fight my increasing fatigue with the series. (This happens to me a lot; it doesn't mean it's a bad series.)
Spoilers Follow
The art is weird. It uses CGI for almost everything, including bizarrely immobile designs for clothes and hair (i.e. when someone moves, the design doesn't, so a flower on the sleeve becomes a flower on the chest, etc.). This has the effect of making the Count's beard blend in to the background in some scenes, which makes him look like he has a very cute, foreshortened chin. Other than that, I liked it okay. The clothes are actually quite pretty. My personal interpretation is that, in the future, everything has a hologram overlay. That seems to fit with the ridiculously vast wealth in which most of the characters wallow.
This story is dark. Is The Count of Monte Cristo that dark? I haven't read it, but as I recollect the TV movie I saw as a kid was not nearly so dark, but it may have been lightened for network TV. I liked the darkness of Gankutsuou; it's my second favorite thing in the series. The way the Count's revenge slowly wrecks the lives not only the people who wronged him but their innocent children and children's friends is a very powerful critique of vengeance, very realistic, insidious, and made the creepier by the fact that we do want, in part, to sympathize with the Count. He was, indeed, horribly betrayed by a group perfidious people with very little to recommend them. (Speaking of such people, the story gives an excellent sense of what hell it must be to be filthy rich.) The pathos of this basic situation is exemplified by Albert's bonding with the Count, whom his father once betrayed, and then being betrayed by him in the name of revenge on his father.
Another highlight of story is the slow romance between Albert and Eugenie. Eugenie herself is a likable cute, perky, teen romantic heroine, which you don't see every day. She is smart and sensible. Her inability to stand up at her forced wedding and take the perfect opportunity of a public event to say that she doesn't want to marry the man who raped her I put down to the story being based on a 19th-century novel and following its plot outline quite closely. I like how the relationship of Albert and Eugenie grows slowly from childhood friendship/lukewarm engagement taken for granted to a more genuine understanding and love for each other. It felt real.
My favorite aspect of the story is Franz, Albert's best friend, who ultimately takes a Sydney Carton-like fall in dueling the Count in Albert's place and being killed. Franz's life-defining love for Albert is handled just right. It is obvious while understated. They are lifelong, mutual best friends, and yet it is clear that Albert has no clue how central he is to Franz. He is Franz's true love, not in a sexual sense--or if it is, it doesn't matter. He is Franz's most important person, the one around whom everything else is organized. (As Franz notes at one point, there are more ways to love people than marrying them. He says this as advice to a friend but the application to himself is obvious.) This feeling is not mutual. That's part of Franz's tragedy.
The larger part, however, is that it is not expressible ("non-narratable," as lit crit circles would say). Franz has no way he can tell Albert how he feels. If he tried, Albert would not comprehend it. He would either a) completely misunderstand and see it as just a profession of their long, mutual friendship or b) read it as "gay" and be scared and confused or c) be baffled and sad that he can't understand or reciprocate something big and difficult. So Franz is trapped in the unenviable position of loving in silence, his only means of articulating the depth of his love being ultimately to die.
While the death is a bit grandiose, the rest of the situation is spot-on psychologically realistic and a lot more common, I daresay, than we realize because for us, as for Franz, it is non-narratable, a type of love that, by definition, suffers in silence to its end.
skinintheway's recommendation, I have been watching Gankutsuou, a science fantasy anime adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. I've liked it overall but did not get through the last four episodes, so this is a partial review based on what I've seen. Note, I would have gotten through the last four if I'd been able to access them in a timely fashion, while the mood was still upon me. But a snafu with Netflix that made the disc arrive late and the fact that said disc was unplayable seemed a sign from God not to fight my increasing fatigue with the series. (This happens to me a lot; it doesn't mean it's a bad series.)Spoilers Follow
The art is weird. It uses CGI for almost everything, including bizarrely immobile designs for clothes and hair (i.e. when someone moves, the design doesn't, so a flower on the sleeve becomes a flower on the chest, etc.). This has the effect of making the Count's beard blend in to the background in some scenes, which makes him look like he has a very cute, foreshortened chin. Other than that, I liked it okay. The clothes are actually quite pretty. My personal interpretation is that, in the future, everything has a hologram overlay. That seems to fit with the ridiculously vast wealth in which most of the characters wallow.
This story is dark. Is The Count of Monte Cristo that dark? I haven't read it, but as I recollect the TV movie I saw as a kid was not nearly so dark, but it may have been lightened for network TV. I liked the darkness of Gankutsuou; it's my second favorite thing in the series. The way the Count's revenge slowly wrecks the lives not only the people who wronged him but their innocent children and children's friends is a very powerful critique of vengeance, very realistic, insidious, and made the creepier by the fact that we do want, in part, to sympathize with the Count. He was, indeed, horribly betrayed by a group perfidious people with very little to recommend them. (Speaking of such people, the story gives an excellent sense of what hell it must be to be filthy rich.) The pathos of this basic situation is exemplified by Albert's bonding with the Count, whom his father once betrayed, and then being betrayed by him in the name of revenge on his father.
Another highlight of story is the slow romance between Albert and Eugenie. Eugenie herself is a likable cute, perky, teen romantic heroine, which you don't see every day. She is smart and sensible. Her inability to stand up at her forced wedding and take the perfect opportunity of a public event to say that she doesn't want to marry the man who raped her I put down to the story being based on a 19th-century novel and following its plot outline quite closely. I like how the relationship of Albert and Eugenie grows slowly from childhood friendship/lukewarm engagement taken for granted to a more genuine understanding and love for each other. It felt real.
My favorite aspect of the story is Franz, Albert's best friend, who ultimately takes a Sydney Carton-like fall in dueling the Count in Albert's place and being killed. Franz's life-defining love for Albert is handled just right. It is obvious while understated. They are lifelong, mutual best friends, and yet it is clear that Albert has no clue how central he is to Franz. He is Franz's true love, not in a sexual sense--or if it is, it doesn't matter. He is Franz's most important person, the one around whom everything else is organized. (As Franz notes at one point, there are more ways to love people than marrying them. He says this as advice to a friend but the application to himself is obvious.) This feeling is not mutual. That's part of Franz's tragedy.
The larger part, however, is that it is not expressible ("non-narratable," as lit crit circles would say). Franz has no way he can tell Albert how he feels. If he tried, Albert would not comprehend it. He would either a) completely misunderstand and see it as just a profession of their long, mutual friendship or b) read it as "gay" and be scared and confused or c) be baffled and sad that he can't understand or reciprocate something big and difficult. So Franz is trapped in the unenviable position of loving in silence, his only means of articulating the depth of his love being ultimately to die.
While the death is a bit grandiose, the rest of the situation is spot-on psychologically realistic and a lot more common, I daresay, than we realize because for us, as for Franz, it is non-narratable, a type of love that, by definition, suffers in silence to its end.
