Gankutsuou (Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo)

In the year 5053, French aristocrats Viscount Albert de Morcerf and Baron Franz d'Epinay attend the festival of Carnival on the moon city of Luna. While Franz is just looking to have fun, Albert is seeking something more to fill his life—but he finds more than he bargained for in The Count of Monte Cristo, a mysterious and charming self-made nobleman who meets his gaze during an opera performance.

Through a few twists and turns, Albert befriends the Count and introduces him into French society. The Count, however, has more on his mind than just friendship; he plots to finally unleash his vengeance on those who wronged him years earlier. Gankutsuou follows Albert and the Count's intertwined destinies and the ultimate price paid for enacting revenge.

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Adaptation:

Gankutsuou, Gankutsuou

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Characters & Voice Actors

The Count of Monte Cristo

Main

Nakata, Jouji
Japanese

d'Epinay, Franz

Main

Hirakawa, Daisuke
Japanese

de Morcerf, Albert

Main

Fukuyama, Jun
Japanese

Tebelin, Haydée

Supporting

Yajima, Akiko
Japanese

Gankutsuou

Supporting

Torii, Yoshinari
Japanese

Peppo

Supporting

Nakahara, Mai
Japanese

Danglars, Eugénie

Supporting

Nakamura, Chie
Japanese

Cavalcanti, Andrea

Supporting

Seki, Tomokazu
Japanese

Bertuccio, Giovanni

Supporting

Ishii, Kouji
Japanese

Morcerf, Fernand

Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maeda, Mahiro

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Original Character Design, Key Animation

Tsuruoka, Youta

Sound Director

Kanbe, Hiroyuki

Episode Director, Key Animation, Special Effects

Katou, Toshiyuki

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"We Were Lovers" by Jean-Jacques Burnel (eps 1-22,24)

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Ending Theme

	1: "You Won't See Me Coming" by Jean-Jacques Burnel (eps 1-23)
	2: "We Were Lovers" by Jean-Jacques Burnel (eps 24)

Reviews

Jan 10, 2009

KC_Writes

Recommended

When I first browsed through my friends shelf of anime I didn’t pay Gankutsuou much mind, he had told me how good it was and that I would like it but I thought I had better things to do than watch it. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. I eventually picked it up and began watching it and at the end of the first episode I was hooked on it. It was like a drug that I needed to continue pumping into my system, and even now that it is over I crave for more. So now I shall take an in depth ...

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Mar 8, 2011

DirtyMidnighter

Mixed Feelings

While I will admit that I have not read of the classic revenge novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, Gankutsuo certainly appears to be a more interesting entry into the ever-growing heap of remakes of this tale. However, it failed to make a real impression. It certainly has some commendable qualities, but in the end, its jumbled and inconsistent visuals, stilted dialogue and murderously slow pace ruin any chance of redemption.
The most immediately striking thing about this series in the visual style. Let me make this clear- there is a difference between visual style and animation. The show's visual style is rather stunning. It's main ... trick is that it employs complex textures and patterns in the coloring of any and everything. This looks pretty cool as long as things are still. The animation, however, suffers greatly because when all of these detailed textures begin moving, all depth and illusion of real texture is lost. Instead of the designs moving with the items that they are transposed on top of, they just stay still. Thing look like jarring kaleidoscopic acid trips more often than not and its just way to much to take in. Interestingly, this visual style is actually extremely reminiscent of the way that thing seem to form complex patterns when under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. Perhaps the first anime conceived on acid? Somehow I highly doubt it, actually.
Gankustsuo, overall, just ends up being a case of the good being slightly edged out by the bad. There is a good foundation plot from the original source material… but the they end up adding mechs, immortal demons, space travel and a plethora of needless non-sequitors. The story actually ends up in a very different place than the original tale, actually. While there is some genuine moments of emotion near the end of this overly-long series, the majority of the plot points are played out with the stilted melodrama of a high school play. The English voice actors, aside from the titular character, are awful. The main protagonist, Albert, is possibly the most whiny, insipid character I have witnessed in an anime, ever. The dialogue between him and best friend Franz is particularly uninspiring. It really is an example of just how bad anime translation can get, both actors doing what they can to make sense of a conversation that has more holes and ridiculous lines than the Matrix movies.
The setting of the show is a rather baffling juxtaposition of 19th century aristocratic France and science-fiction space-opera. The characters travel in space freely and battle in giant mechs, yet they still write letters on parchment and travel in horse drawn carriages. It's like the artists couldn't decide on a consistent motif so they just threw all of their influences into the tub and saw what came together. All of these sporadic technologies and settings create a lack of believable space and time. If you have no relatable setting and no relatable characters, what is there? Just a somewhat-interesting story which takes entirely too long to reach its climax. This series could have easily been a 13 episode series instead of a 26. My mind literally goes blank when trying to recall important plot points from the middle of the series. The big question of the series, whether or not the Count is really evil, just ends up being answered 3/4 of the way through when we find out his back-story. The 15 episodes after the beginning but before that are often mind-numbingly boring. I honestly struggled to finish this series along-side Lucky Star. Lucky Star, dammit!
Gankutsuo is actually pretty critical acclaimed and I'm not really sure why. Perhaps it's story is a subtle one, revealing itself slowly through repeated viewing ala Neon Genesis Evangelion. Maybe the dub is just garbage and left a bitter taste in my mouth. However, I really don't feel like this should weigh so heavily on the overall experience. Plenty of great pieces of entertainment has cheesy, stilted dialogue. Quentin Tarantino, anyone? Maybe it's the visuals, filled with ambition and moments of beauty but ending up looking like a few too many ideas thrown together. Gankutsuo wants to be a series that is sophisticated in the classic sense of French materialistic excess. However, as we see here, all that glitters in not gold.

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Dec 1, 2018

Necriptos

Not Recommended

To be honest this is an insult to Alexandre Dumas' genius and his masterpiece.
this review contain slight spoilers.

let's get into it:

Story 1/10:
First of all they start the anime by the middle of the books, and put the start of the books at the end of the anime, they then took an insignificant character from the book and turned him into the main protagonist, then they took the protagonist of the book and made him the main vilain/antagonist of the story. They took random names of characters from the book and put them here and there, created new characters out of thin air instead of ... using the multitude of characters from the books and made some important character being completely useless and unimportant here (poor Bertucio...). then they tried to follow the books story but by the middle of the anime diverged into incoherent and poor alternate story that is to me a slandering attempt at the book. and then the ending is so awful i refuse to mention it here.

They have some good ideas here and there, i like the whole sci-fi setup, supernatural and alien elements, spaceship instead of ships, even the mech battles were ok in my books BUT why did they have to denature and take a piss on the original story is a real mystery to me, everyone saying this is a faithful adaptation is really out of his mind. If they had kept the same story this whole show would have been a solid 8/10 for me.

Art 1/10:
You are gonna love it or absolutely hate it, i'm the latter. the issue is not the cgi that was actually good for it's time, nah the real issue is just the constant mix between an acid trip and a david bowie clip. with those "psychedelic rococo" textures splattered on absolutely everything. It is headache inducing and made me want to puke multiple time during my watching of this abomination.

Sound 6/10:
the only redeeming parts of this whole anime was the solid seiyuu acting of Jouiji Nakata as Monte Cristo, and the soundtrack during the episode with some of the classics played. rest of the characters acting was just average if not flat, mc with the most annoying voice, the opening theme was not fitting for this kind of story at all, it felt like they just looked for a french singer able to sing in english because they wanted to be a link with france somehow. the ending theme is just bad. oh also as a french the broken french narrator voice at the start of each episode was impossible to understand, had to mute it and read the subs instead...

Character 1/10:
Only good character was Monte Cristo, but they decided to make it the main vilain instead of the hero of that story, doesn't make any sence, all the others were your traditional cliche and devoid of emotions anime characters (i admit i laughed at Eugenie being a tsundere) besides that nothing much to say here.

Enjoyment 3/10:
If you do not care about the book or haven't read it you might find some enjoyment there to be had if you treat that as an independant story, but the pacing was atrocious and they even had the luxury to skip lots of development from the books to show you random stuff that have no link whatsoever with the source material.

Overall 3/10:
They are plenty of far superior adaptation to the book, and this one is absolutely not one of them, if you had to watch a good adaptation the one i recommend the most is the 1998 tv-drama movies with Gerard Depardieu as the Count.

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