Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (S1E1-2)

This review was comissioned by @Marta Ayanami.


This 2004 anime is apparently a scifi adaptation of the original 19th century novel "The Count of Monte Cristo." I don't know how close it hews to the original story, apart from being set many centuries later in history, but it's apparently fairly well liked either way. There's a manga too, but the anime came first in this case. I'll be covering the first two episodes, "At Journey's End, We Meet," and "Until the Sun Rises Over the Moon."

"Gakutsuou" means something like "the cave king," it seems. Presumably referring to the imprisonment whose premature ending starts the count's revenge quest. If we're doing a scifi version, then the prison might have literally been miles underground or something, so "cave" could be literal.

It's been a very, very, very long time since I read (an abridged version of, back in literal middle school) the original, so I'm not going to be able to judge the faithfulness of the details. I do remember the broad strokes though.

Also: @Marta Ayanami was very specific that I make sure I stick to a good localization, because this series has some bad ones. As such, I'm going with the crunchyroll version. Unfortunately, CR has gotten much more thorough in their anti-piracy measures lately, and so I'm not going to be able to take screenshots. I might go back and nab a few images from elsewhere after the fact, depending on how easy it is to find, but otherwise no screenshots for this one.


So. The first thing I noticed about this series, and which only took more and more of attention over the initial two episodes, is how much weirder it is than the premise alone makes it sound.

The original novel was set in France, Italy, and a few other parts of slightly-before-the-time-of-writing Southern Europe. This version keeps France as France, but replaces Rome with an absolutely bizarre paleo-reactionary regime ruling a terraformed Luna. Aristocracy seems to be fashionable again on at least some parts of Earth, but on Luna they actually take that shit seriously and accompany it with a deranged aesthetic and social mishmash of garish and/or gruesome features from throughout early modern European history. The first couple episodes are set entirely on Luna, so Earth may later turn out to be equally weird in its own way.

Next, the eponymous count. In the novel, Edmond Dantes in his "count of monte cristo" guise is a cold, morbid man with a dim view of human nature and society, and whose pale skin and unsettling mannerisms at one point cause a minor character to think him a vampire. In Gankutsuou, he looks like this:

Complete with fangs, glowing eyes, and a seeming imperviousness to stab wounds.

Notably, none of the characters react to the milk-colored skin, needle-like canines, or giant bat ears, but they do get spooked by his ice cold body temperature and unstabbability. I'm taking this to mean that his appearance is within the realm of what an eccentric rich guy might do with body modification in this setting without raising too many eyebrows, but that he really has something else going on. Either Edmond literally is a vampire in this version, or he's using a bunch of high-tech tricks to make himself seem like one.

Space Monte Cristo, sure, fine. Vampire Monte Cristo, also fine. Space vampire Monte Cristo feels like a little too much. Maybe that's just me.

On a less bizarre note, Gankutsuou does what I think perhaps the original novel should have done and starts the story midway through, around the equivalent of the book's thirty-somethingth chapter. Instead of following Edmond from his false accusation and imprisonment onward, we open on the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo making a splash with his surprise arrival on Luna during its bizarro-carnival celebration. Our POV characters in this version are Franz d'Epenay and Albert Morcef, a pair of friends and relations (respectively) of one of Edmond's revenge targets who he manipulates into helping him. Limiting the audience to their perspectives turns the entire thing into a mystery story rather than a standard adventure tale. It plays out almost like a more spooky, more violent, more what-the-fuck version of The Great Gatsby, sort of.

So. The plot. The pilot starts the same way that the Rome section of the original novel did. Young Franz and Albert are newly minted spaceship officers making a Bizzaro-Carnival visit to Luna, where they meet Animu Space Dracula Edmond Dantes in an opera house. The "Count" is famously rich, ellusive, and the owner of a place called Monte Cristo somewhere in the outer system. Rumors have it that he's a genetic experiment, or a shapeshifting alien masquerading as human, or something like that. Nobody seems to have guessed "actual vampire" yet, but again, that maaaay not actually be what he is. After making their acquaintance, Edmond invites them to watch a traditional Lunar Carnival event with him. Namely, the public execution by guillotine of some local criminals.

Gankutsuou's version of this scene - which serves as the first actual subplot and tone-setter of the series - is a fever dream.

In the novel, they watch the execution of two criminals, one of which Edmond already knows (and tells his new friends) will receive a last minute pardon, and the three of them comment on the crabs-in-a-bucket behavior of the condemned when the news reaches them.

In this version, there are three convicts. One of them tearfully admits that he committed a robbery to feed his destitute family and ended up killing his victim in self defence when he was caught in the act. Another is convicted of murder, but desperately insists to the last that he's innocent. The third is a career criminal who killed an entire family of ten because they happened to get in his way; he cackles and dances on the stage like a circus performer and gloats about how much fun it was. Edmond tells Franz and Albert that he has somehow gotten a blank check letter of pardon from the Cardinal of Luna, and that he can write any one name on it and pass it to the local government before the execution.

He then takes out a trio of playing cards, sets them facedown on the table, and makes Franz and Albert - who in this version are from a place that does not publicly execute people by beheading and do not consider it remotely normal - choose one at random. While giving an unhinged speech about justice and cruelty and the glorious thrill of power over life and death.

Franz refuses to take any part in this; he never wanted to watch this fucked up shit in the first place, and doesn't think Albert should either. Edmond taunts Albert by saying that if he doesn't choose a card, three men will die instead of two, and there's a 66.67% chance that he can save one of the sympathetic ones if he picks a card. And, when the card he picks is the gloating mass murderer, the Edmond congratulates him on the good deed he's done and then pressures him into watching the two others get beheaded because "not seeing the consequences of your choice with your own two eyes would be cowardice."

In the book, Edmond had secured the pardon of one of the men himself in return for him doing Edmond's dirty work. I can only assume that in this version a blank-check pardon is something you could only ever get gullible offworlders to believe in, and Edmond wrote the same name on all three cards just to fuck with them.

Instead of shrugging at the Count's strange behavior and then running off into the festivities to get laid like in the novel, Albert finds a quiet place to be traumatized away from all the festivities until a pretty girl randomly comes up and tries to comfort him. In both versions, the girl is an agent of notorious sewer-dwelling crime lord Luigi Vampa sent to capture a dumb, horny, rich nobleman for ransom. Gakatsuou's version twists the knife much further by having the thug who she leads Albert to for capture none other than Peppino, the mass murderer who Albert thinks he just saved from execution (but who doesn't know that Albert thinks he saved, and wouldn't ever believe him if told).

Franz gets the ransom demand, including the stipulation that it must be paid before sunup (and Lunar nights are not long!) or else Albert will be gruesomely tortured to death. Even though the banks are all closed until then and the emergency financial services are down due to solar wind interference. It's being done like this so that Franz has to go running to Edmund - the one very rich person he knows in town - to beg for his help, of course, but the thugs are being way more obvious about it in this version.

Well, at this juncture they are. That turns around when Edmond actually does come to the rescue. Instead of politely handing over the gold to Luigi Vampa himself in a suspiciously civil manner, he throws the bag of money at Peppino hard enough to knock him flat and then forces him to lead them to Vampa's lair. Instead of a car or a hovercar, they travel in Edmond's Roma-style wagon coach pulled by black robot horses with red LED eyes. And, he goes in alone without Franz and terrorizes the bandits with his (real or simulated) vampire powers, along with apparently some secret infiltrators that he'd already had among the gang, in a way that lets him release Albert (who was juuuuuuuuust about to be tortured to death with a branding iron).

It's also at this point that he intimidates Luigi Vampa himself by introducing himself to his secret alias, known and feared throughout the criminal underworld: the Batman Gankatsuou.

If the criminals are play-acting here, then they're doing a really, really good performance. I'm starting to think that it really was just Peppino and a few others who were in on it in this version, with the rest of the gang (including Luigi himself) being saps. Or else, again, just really good at acting (though it seemed like Edmond was taking pains to ensure neither of the French boys saw too much of it, so I don't know whose benefit it would have been for).

Anyway. The boys thank the spooky Outer System count for saving them at risk to his own safety (and poooossibly finances? He might have let Peppino keep the bag of money he hit him in the face with, It's very unclear. Though I don't think he'd have let the boys know about this, if so, to be fair). He tells them they can thank him by helping him set up his plans to spend time on Earth, in France, soon, and to introduce him to the local noblemen. This is just as in the novel.

The episode intros and outros are an interesting clash. The former seems like it belongs to a direct, faithful adaptation of the original novel, both visually and musically, albeit leaning more into the romance and tragedy angles of it than the scheming and murdering aspects. The latter is, well, anime space vampires. Also, the more violent and energetic theme coming at the end while the quiet, emotional piece plays at the beginning is the exact opposite of how anime usually does things, come to think of it.


Sooooo.

In a surprising number of ways, this improves on the original, and not just in the sense of the longwinded nineteenth century dialogue being pared down to something palatable to modern audiences. The two young noblemen are much more interesting and sympathetic characters here than I recall the originals being. I understand that this wasn't the intent or even within the possibility space of the book, but having them be from a place where public beheadings aren't a normal thing - and having Edmond cruelly fuck with their minds about it - is just way, way more powerful. Ditto how the fallout of this leads into Albert's staged kidnapping, and how Franz desperately running around trying to get the money before dawn before finally turning to the Count reinforces his care for Albert and his wariness of Edmond much better than the original. And, like I said, starting with the "Count of Monte Cristo" persona already established and giving the audience only an outside perspective of him really changes the whole nature (and even genre) of the story for the better.

As for everything else...well...it's weird. Really weird.

The juxtaposition of moon colonies and stellar comm delays with 19th century Europe retro-aesthetics with Netflix Castlevania Dracula is a lot to digest. I'm especially unsure of how to feel about how much darker they decided to make Edmond's character, even assuming he isn't actually a literal vampire. The incredibly intricate and horrifying psychological tortures, inflicted seemingly for very little practical reason, are pretty far beyond the merely ruthless and vengeful original (Book Edmond did do some fucked up mental torture, but only to his actual revenge targets. He was pretty pragmatic otherwise, at least as I recall).

The art style also does this subtle shift into a more dreamlike style whenever Edmond is onscreen, which sort of reinforces both the possibly supernatural aspect of him and his affinity for mindfucks, giving this already very strange and twisted scifi setting an almost nightmare-like quality. The abrupt transitions between decadent, indolent finery and no-punches-pulled grimy street violence are also an aesthetic rug-pull that has similar effects. There's also one thing that I thought was just a cool art detail at first, with a lot of the characters wearing smartclothes that o this holographic shifting pattern when they move around; just seemed like interesting scifi fashion, but as the story got increasingly surreal they started to seem almost hypnotic.

But that said, it doesn't seem like it's trying to be horror, exactly. Maybe? I'd have to see more to know.

It's very well made. I've seen too little of it and its weirdness is too overwhelming for me to know I can call it good, but it definitely isn't bad either. I'd happily watch more just to sate my curiosity about where the hell this is going.