Once a Stranger

So Catie (Bless her ^^) recced Gankutsuou to me, so I watched it. She had promised to me it had nice slashiness and I would like it. She was totally RIGHT ! I loved it. Actually I cried. That makes... errr... two anime that makes me sob like a baby (not counting Graves of the Firefly, that'd make it three >_>; but it's cheating)

*cough*

Alright first, the aesthetics. It was absolutly lovely. I don't usually pay attention to this, because mostly I'm a story girl and I don't care if the art is lousy as long as the story is good, but in this case the graphism were gorgeous. They did this weird pattern imprit over flat surface that I found lovely. Sometimes it was a bit too much, but given it was XIXth century Paris (except in a futuristic way, but nevermind that, detailes, detailes...) we're talking, it was fitting perfectly with the baroque and over the top dramatics of the story.

For the uninitiated, Gankutsuou is an anime adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo. Except in the year 5000 and a few. With a strange vengeance immortal spirit possessing the Count. And with Mecha, but not many of them (thankfully). Since Alexandre Dumas is the person who ought the least to complain about unfaithful adaptation (he lost that right when he made that quip about rapind History but to give it beautiful children) it works wonderfully well.

Anyway the story focussed principaly on Albert who balances between being the kind of moronic oblivious lambda anime hero you want to slap repetedly until he stops being so stupid, and being a lovable stubborn naive idiot.... errr well, I haven't made up my mind yet, but though he was on the verge of earning my hatred several times he never quite got it, as he meets the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo and introduces him to the Parisian society, and his family. All of this works very well for the Count who is setting up a complicated and most cruel revenge upon the people who betrayed him twenty five years ago. *doom !*

Most of the characters are very likeable. I was totally under the charm of Franz and Eugenie. Franz because he kicks into my unrequitated love kink plus being so selfless, cheerful and earnest at the same time about it, and Eugenie by being a lovely garçonne with a vivid personnality without being as annoying as many female characters would be in that role. I also liked Haydée a lot (but I liked her before in the novel, so no surprise).
In general I absolutly adored the character designs, they fitted the characters perfectly from what I imagined in the books (of course I don't remember a lot from the novel, actually I still don't remember Eugénie at all from the novel, but what I did fitted perfectly) Especially Mercedes and Fernand.

The reproduction of the Parisian society was wonderful. Cruel, lively, proud, colourful, cynical, enthousiastic and ever so fickle. Some of the details made me laugh like the quick mention of the Queen (a quite famous gay night club on the Champs Elysée...) It serves as a great background for the dramatic tale of revenge unfolding.

The story in its adaptation is darker and more tragic than the one by Dumas. Overall, I like it better ^^ but so sad ;_; There's some weird stuff (like why the hell keep Caderousse when they don't do anything with the character ?) but it keeps you on the edge for the whole 24 episodes. I watched them all in two days because i couldn't stop myself (all right I had time too) ^^