Le Chevalier d'Eon

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I decided to read this after watching most of the anime version. I dropped the anime from lack of interest. I wondered if the manga version would be more interesting. And it is. Because it is completely different. (I'll go into those differences later, for those who are interested.)

In a highly fantastic and gothified 18th-century France, a mysterious woman prowls the Paris streets by night. Called the "Sphinx," she wields a sword, and destroys demonic creatures. She happens to actually be dead. Her true name is Lea, a murdered young woman, whose discontented spirit is inhabiting her ... brother, D'Eon. Most of the time, D'Eon is himself, working directly under the king. His day job as a policeman is a cover for his secret mission to root out the evil occult ring that killed Lea. But occasionally, he must don a dress and wig and allow his sister to take possession of his body to carry out her part of the mission.

There is a heavy supernatural and occult element. It draws from almost every religion and cult to create a mish-mash mysticism that is used predominantly by the baddies, but also exploited by Lea and others. It's rather hard to follow what's going on with that aspect. The crime ring seems bent on taking over France (which is why the king is especially interested in the case). People who are gifted as poets (which is a supernatural skill) are recruited by them, and eventually become bloodthirsty monsters who wreck havoc. (Which is where Lea steps in, to kill them.)

D'Eon often feels weak and timid compared to his sister, who is so ruthless. Even Robin, his young, faithful, pistol-wielding assistant, seems a more qualified fighter. He is also devastated to see ordinary people turned into monsters after receiving the gift of poetry.

There's a noticeable amount of horror. People are turned into dragonish monsters. Demonic rats attack. Creatures morph. We find bodies of women who have been sacrificed and beheaded. Some other gruesome violence. Not the worst stuff out there, but certainly not for little kiddies either.

There is a lot of action. I felt there was too much. Not so much the level of violence, but rather the length. Some battles went on for WAY too long. There was one that took up half a volume. There is also a lot of puzzle-solving and French word-play. For instance, the characters are trapped within a dimensional cage, and can only escape when they can solve a particular puzzle. But I as the reader couldn't solve it. It's something that only the characters could solve. So the reader can only sit back and watch, rather than be an active participant in the puzzle-solving.

What I enjoyed most about the manga was the art. It's very gothic and dark, and in the style of a fantasy-thriller. Many pages have more black than white. Thick lines are used. But it's not very rough, or even slashy. Lea looks like a beautiful goth-loli doll; D'Eon is cute. Surprisingly, the characters have very emotional faces. The style of the world the story takes place in is fairly unrealistic. Some of the characters wear clothes in keeping with the period. But Lea looks like a girl from the late 19th century, and D'Eon's police uniform looks like something from the early 1900's. The more eccentric characters dress like medieval or gothic joker types. So as far as historical accuracy...don't look for it here.

I haven't finished the manga (haven't gotten my hands on the final volume yet), so I can't yet say whether it ends well or not.

Concluding thoughts:
A decent manga. Has awesome art and cool style. Not historically accurate, but the artificial setting is interesting. I felt a good amount of emotional connection and sympathy with the main character (D'Eon). However, some of the the action sequences were interminable. And the puzzle-solving and mysticism went over my head. Some horror and violence, but not enough to drive me away. I'd recommend it if you like gothic art.

*****************
So what are the differences between the manga and the anime?

First off, even though each has a large cast, the only characters that the two share are D'Eon, Lea, Robin, and the king. That's it. The rest of the anime characters were manufactured.

The anime borrowed the concepts of:
-setting in 18th-century France
-brother who has his murdered sister's soul residing within him
-this brother working for the king to suppress a mystical cult that uses poets.

That's pretty much all that the anime takes from the manga. The anime uses a realistic setting and art style. So realistic, that I find it bland. Much more of the story occurs in the palace, there are more characters, and a love interest is added (there was practically no romance in the manga). Overall, I thought the anime was stodgy and stuffy, like the period drama it had been converted into.

Mercifully, though, the mysticism is much less complex. And there's no problem-solving. But I felt the horror was scarier (no monsters, but rather zombies, go after our characters; and when you slash their lead-gray skin, mercury comes pouring out).

The anime is shoujo, the manga is seinen. Two different style and storylines. If you like one, you might not like the other....

Le Chevalier d'Eon I only decided to read because it had a French name and I didn't want to suffer through another horrendous isekai manga.

One of the few things I could muster the energy to praise about this manga is the story, it was decent. It had some nice twists and turns that made it enjoyable to read. The gimmick of this goon of the week style manga is that they use poetry to fight, yes, poetry. It's essentially a generic action manga with swords, magic and monsters but all of the special moves are related to poetry and the characters, naturally, speak in poetry. ... It's like being in English class listening to the teacher explain the meaning behind all the obtuse Shakespeare lines all over again! Ah memories.

In this tale of woe (and poetry), the main character is a man working for the secret police that when an evil poet starts leveling up their evil poetry, he crossdresses as his sister and gets possessed by her and she starts hackin and slashin the evil poets for revenge as she was killed by a poet and wants revenge. Which is a story that exists now. The sister that possesses the main character is also nicknamed "Sphinx" because she asks a lot of questions and kills you when you don't know the answer, even if the questions are always about herself so all the villains are naturally, always confused as heck. There is an entire mystery surrounding Sphinx but they never really give you a reason to care about this character, they're by far the most boring and uninteresting character in the entire manga.

The fights themselves are okay, the villains are typically pretty cool looking and are just cool psychopaths where every single one of them speaks in rhymes, which is awesome. The fights actually have nice developments that use the current villains magic gimmick in fun and interesting ways. The main problem with the fights is that the way the overpowered main character defeats the enemies is usually lame and anti-climatic since it's entirely done with word-play using french and latin poetry.. Which is unique.. It just doesn't make for a good fight as most of the time you have to just accept what's happening as you don't have a vast knowledge on 18th century france, latin, or random mythology.

Since Sphinx is the pseudo main character, obviously, they have infinite knowledge and their skills in poetry is unmatched. The Sphinx starts as a measly level 3 poet in the patented evil poetry society leveling up chart (which is actually a thing that exists) but since they need a reason to somehow beat the stronger poets, they level up for no fucking reason and everyone is confused. I don't even think Sphinx themselves knows why, it is also unknown why Sphinx is even on the evil poets society leveling up chart to begin with, they just are. For the record, the evil poet leveling up chart I believe goes up to level 8 and the entire purpose of the secret police is to stop the evil poets from reaching this level and destroying france and the catholic church by maxing out their evilness the poet level, this manga takes itself 100% serious.

The instant you start this manga your eyes will actually be blasted with some of the ugliest art you've seen in manga. The character designs are hideous and so complex that sometimes it's hard to tell what you're looking at. I would feel bad for the artist that they had to draw these horrendously ugly looking characters, that is, if they actually tried the entire time. The artist sometimes just says fuck it and just draws the most lazy and incoherent crap I've seen in a manga. The proportions of the characters never made sense but sometimes it's honestly so embarrassing that I'm honestly surprised that the publishers allowed them to release some of those drawings to the public.

The absolute worst part of this manga is the ending or lack thereof. Just like the artist who couldn't give a single shit about this manga, neither did the publishers I guess, because during the final volume you could tell the exact point where they axed the manga and absolutely nothing is concluded! What a colossal waste of time that was, 8 volumes and absolutely nothing is concluded. No story elements are finished, no mysteries solved, some of the villains are still left undefeated. Just nothing. All we get is "tHe StOrY cOnTiNuEs!11" which is the most non-ending one can come up with. Fuck this manga.

All I got from this manga is a reminder to why I stopped liking manga and a deep feeling of sorrow as I realise how many hours of my life were wasted reading something that I'll never get to see the conclusion of. Even before the final volume, the manga was never that good to begin with but the non-existent ending really doesn't make this one worth reading very much.