Forum - View topicNEWS: AIC to Replace Gonzo on 2nd Strike Witches Season
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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I'm not sure whether I really agree with you here or not. Are you saying that the people who complain about every small change in an anime adaptation are also missing the point? Because in that case I agree with you. But I have a feeling you're saying that both kinds are justified in complaining and the only proper adaptation is a slavishly faithful one. That is a position I can never support. A change in medium, a change in location, a change in century can utterly necessitate changes in storytelling.
How? The Count of Monte Cristo and Gankutsuou's primary difference is that the former is rather third-person objective while the latter is told from the point of view of an actual character. The result is that in Dumas' work, you, the reader, know everything that is going on and everything that is going to happen before it happens. There is no real suspense involved, and the narrative is bogged down by long digressions, and almost everyone speaks in essentially the same voice (Dumas'). Gankutsuou, by giving a set of eyes through which we see events unfold, means that we're in the dark through much of the story (even if you've read the book, Maeda changed the story radically enough that there are definite surprises). The anime then becomes suspenseful, uncertain, and much more morally ambiguous, because telling the story from the point of view of the younger generation points out tellingly how any quest for revenge leaves innocent victims in its wake.
"Cheap and lazy" I cannot buy, since I know how much work went into producing it. "Distracting" is a personal evaluation that I can't much argue against. But what I found fascinating about it is that the heavy use of CG and surrealistic style meant that 2D faces popped out, making them the firm center of the kaleidoscopic art.
I assume you mean "the" novel not "a" novel, because otherwise you seem to imply that all novels are essentially masterpieces, which is insane. I also don't see how the anime panders at all. One could maybe make an argument with the inclusion of the mecha, but they are so briefly involved, and given barely any attention the way they would in a true mecha series that they could hardly draw in that many fanboys. There's certainly no moe characters. Most casual anime fans I've known that would need some pandering dismissed it as "boring" because it didn't have the slapstick, action, giant robots, or bishoujo/bishounen harems of a typical anime series. If it was trying to pander, it failed.
I read the unabridged Penguins Classics edition translated by Robin Buss that left in all the things that the earlier Victorian translation left out, like the drug orgy and the horrible lesbian stereotypes. Honestly (since we like that word), what version of Gankutsuou were you watching? Or did you quit after a few episodes?
First of all, I hate when people use "it's a classic" as justification for whatever flaws something had. Part of me is just post-modern enough to challenge the very idea that there is some standard canon of "classics" that are always better than whatever adaptation anyone makes of them. But my biggest complaint about the original book, which I know didn't come through in my first post enough: it's dated, by which I mean it is horrifically dated in its portrayal of women. The good women in Dumas' work are all passive and submissive and barely ever take any action on their own. The assertive, talented, independent Eugenie thus must also be "mannish," unlikable, and in a lesbian relationship with her piano teacher (God forbid a man would ever want a woman like that!). From the promotional trailers for Gankutsuou, you can see that Maeda was going to go with that version of her, but wisely chose to change that and make her a heroine. I think part of that comes from needing a love story for its lead, but I hope that some of it was feeling that there needed to be better, less antiquated sexual dynamics. This applies to other characters as well. With Dumas, Valentine can't be with Maximillien at first because she would never dare act out against her parents (as opposed to having mixed feelings for her chosen fiance). Haydee lets the Count reveal Fernand's crimes rather than, as in the anime, doing the deed herself. In regards to its female characters, Gankutsuou is radically superior to the original work. I know it may be unfair to fault Dumas, as he was a man of his times, but hiding this sexism behind the veil of "classic literature" is repulsive to me. If you want to call this expansion of female characters "pandering," fine. I call it "improving." |
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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You're entirely entitled to your preferences, of course. But taking Maximilian and Valentine's story for starters, it is an incontrovertible fact that Gonzo took approximately 17 chapters, or about 200 pages of the original text, including the original text's conclusion, and sent it straight to the wastepaper bin. While perhaps not all that original (calling to mind very much Romeo and Juliet), Maximilian and Valentine's relationship was kept secret between the two of them with extreme discretion and was highly reactive to the many events that take place in the latter half of the story. spoiler[Gonzo's answer to all this is to have their own shockingly ham-fisted incarnation of Maximilian barge into the De Villefort home and beg: "ZOMG, AMBITIOUS AND VINDICTIVE JUDGE, I NO UR ONELY DAUTHERZ ENGAG'D, BUT I'Z LOEV HER & I WANTZ 2 MARRY HURR!1!" And De Villefort tells him to GTFO. But Gonzo decides to have De Villefort arrested a few episodes later and Maximilian and Valentine move to Marseilles to live happily ever after. And that's the end of that.] No disrespect whatever to you for being bored with the romantic trappings. From a plotting standpoint, the path it followed wasn't all that original, and besides your average male anime fan probably isn't that interested in this sort of thing. But it was extensive, and a lot of character exposition and development was tied into it, as was the novel's conclusion. It's hard to think of a standard by which Gonzo's marginalization of their story and decoupling from the overall direction of the total work can be called an improvement.
I'm all for equality, and if Eugenie was a real woman, I'd congratulate her for her success. But she is a character, and while changing her role significantly and making her independent certainly influenced the tone of the story and changed outcomes, I think it's a little reckless to conclude that the work is inherently better because she is independent in Gankutsuou while she was not in the novel. This actually points to a major complaint I have about Gankutsuou: Gonzo really seems to want to impose their own modern democratic moral code on a story that's founded in Aristocratic politics; to the extent that it almost seems like they want to criticize the characters for the beliefs adopted from the original work, as if the characters were real people. spoiler[I went absolutely crazy when Maximilian went full retard about the injustice of arranged marriages in episode 5! What are they supposed to tell him? "Sorry, we don't live in 20th century Japan? Let's forget all this revenge stuff and spend the rest of the show petitioning for a Constitution, yay?" I felt like I was watching Back To The Future IV. His thought process is much too advanced for his surroundings. There's no way for the characters to reconcile the differences in social philosophy he raises in that episode, and it was extraordinarily distracting from what was really supposed to be going on in the story at that point.  ]
But I digress. =)
The anime has visuals, yes, but deeming it vastly more dramatic on that count is your personal judgment. spoiler[The anime didn't even touch the pacha's flight from the palace, the part about how Haydee and her mother were terrified sleeping next to gunpowder kegs that the sentry was ordered to ignite if the fortress came under seige, and of course the final bloody massacre of the fort's inhabitants when General De Morcerf arrived and sold them out.]
Oh, Napoleon was present in the story though!  He was the nameless prince who was apparently assassinated in the box at the opera. This is actually an excellent example of the half-assed job Gonzo did with their original story content. Without setting up a dynamic and well-connected stand-in for Napolean Bonaparte, the connection between the story's four major families becomes fuzzy and the Count's revenge loses a certain measure of righteousness.
Gonzo didn't need footnotes, they needed more talented writers.
Which, of course, didn't happen in the novel and was only necessary because of Gonzo's own alterations to the plot that made the original conclusion to the story impossible?
It's not that I'm fixed on the book, my darling, it's because I read the novel and watched the anime for the first time back-to-back, and having full knowledge of how amateurishly Gonzo recast the events of the original text, it disappoints me for crediting Gonzo with "the greatest anime ever made"; when in reality what Gankutsuou really amounts to is a geek-friendly full-color flipbook drawn on the pages of one of the greatest literary works ever created. And a few post script comments with reference to your above comments to Keonyn:
OK, stop right there.  If this is your take on how things worked out, you need to bite the bullet and go back and read those omitted chapters ASAP. You're denying Dumas fair credit for the characterizations of his women. spoiler[Valentine's hands are tied largely because of the paternal, aristocratic, non-democratic social structure in which the Count of Monte Cristo is set. She and Maximilian could have fled Paris, but they'd be disgraced and outcast if they did. Valentine's ambitious father surely treats her like a piece of property under those circumstances, but Maximilian supports her every step of the way, offering his love and support but leaving matters of their combined fate almost entirely up to her to decide, and even placing himself in the compromising position of promising to always love her even if she went ahead with the arranged marriage and could not love him back. The Count had to reason with him numerous times to keep him from taking his own life as events played out with Franz and Noirtier.]
All this a stark contrast to the single-minded bull of a man Gonzo gives us in Gankutsuou. As a matter of fact... comparing that chain of events with the analog from Gankutsuou ("I love you! Want to get married??" "Okay! Teehee!!") I'm really not sure how you can proclaim Gankutsuou an improvement. At least in the novel Valentine is something resembling a sentient human being. 
Unless you read a different translation of the story than I did, this is an inaccurate statement.  spoiler[The Count's direct involvement in Morcerf's disgrace is as follows: 1) Bringing Haydee to Paris and 2) Suggesting Danglars write to Yanina to discover the source of the De Mercerf family's wealth. [Seeking an excuse to call off Eugenie and Albert's wedding.] Danglars is the one who tips off the newspapers, but Haydee is the one who publically ruins him on the floor of the assembly, just as she did in Gankutsuou. It doesn't bring her to tears in the novel either. The bastard sold her into child slavery after all...]
Picking up where I left off with my comments on Valentine above: spoiler[There's also Madame De Villefort, the poisoness, who takes control of the terrible fate of the house of the procurer du roi... Madame Danglars who is intimate with Debray in plain sight of her husband with no fear of reprisal, and her daughter who aspires to be a famous concert pianist... Mercedes, intelligent enough (in the novel) to recognize the Count seemingly upon first sight, and convicted enough to live with the consequences of her past and to live on without her husband even when Albert sails off to Africa in the end... and of course Valentine.] Very much unlike you it seems, I'm especially satisfied with the strength Dumas imbues in his women, irreparable factors of place and time taken into account. Unless I'm terribly mistaken, I'd say Dumas would be very much in agreement with both of us about the importance of strong female roles in the media were he alive today. |
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