Cover Image: Manga Classics: The Count of Monte Cristo

Manga Classics: The Count of Monte Cristo

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

I love this series of manga adaptations of classic novels - it provides a new way to access and enjoy these stories, and the artwork within is wonderful! <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i> is an immense work, and condensing it into this format does have its drawbacks. Much of the beginning of the story, and the details of Edmond's life are glossed over, and there are are various points in which the pacing suffers due to rapid summaries of important events.

It is, of course, expected that many of the subplots and side characters from the original book would be affected in this way, and the graphic novel does a great job at still conveying the main revenge plot effectively, and the emotions of the characters throughout. The number of characters and how they relate to one another might confuse readers who aren't already familiar with the novel - I really enjoyed the extra material at the back of the book, including summaries of events, adaptation notes, and a diagram of how characters' lives intersect.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this adaptation and would definitely check out more titles in this series of classics! Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Was this review helpful?

This is a perfect sum up to Dumas' masterpiece: every story line is represented in a simple and clear way, despite how complex the plot is. This makes everything easy to follow and understand, even if you don't know the original plot.
The illustrator has been wonderful bringing to life all those characters, showing their own personalities through body features and clothing.
This manga is the perfect adaptation for those who love "The Count of Montecristo".

Was this review helpful?

I like this manga version of The Count of Monte Cristo. I would probably prefer reading it in print over digital. I would read this again

Was this review helpful?

This Manga Classics edition of 'The Count of Monte Cristo' was immersive and fun. While the original book is incredibly long, this version of the story manages to keep it short but detailed. With an intriguing story and detailed art, I would definitely recommend this to others who enjoyed the original book, enjoy this format or other Manga Classics, or are looking for something new.

Was this review helpful?

*3.75/5

This is the classic story of a good man who is falsely accused and imprisoned on the day of his wedding, only to escape many years later, having become smarter, richer and having constructed a revenge scheme.

I enjoyed this one very much. It was very well written and beautifully illustrated.

But it wasn't without its faults.

I know this is a manga adaptation of a book that is around 900 pages long and sometimes you can tell that things have been left out because they had to save time. It definitely doesn't ruin the quality, but yeah, you can tell.

Some other things I was a bit meh about, had to do with personal preferences and expectations I had developed because of other Monte Cristo adaptations.

About the former, following so many minor characters and having to guess what Edmond was trying to do behind the scenes, wasn't the best or easiest thing ever.

And about the latter, I didn't expect Mercedes' husband (and one of Edmond's biggest rivals) to off himself in the middle of the story. I didn't expect Mercedes to leave, having never been forgiven by Edmond, and I also didn't expect him to end up with Haydee. Also, the fact that a man who was smart enough to bring his rivals' downfall in such a smart and masterful way, was not able to see that his young "servant" was in love with him, was a bit funny if you ask me. But yeah, in that regard, the story didn't end the way I thought it would.

But yeah, overall this was a great reading experience and I recommend it to people who love classics, mangas and to people who want to read the original The Count of Monte Cristo but don't want to commit to a big book. If you read this and like it, I think you will like the original book too.

If you made it this far, congratulations!
'Til next time, take care :) :) :)

Was this review helpful?

I am impressed with this. I love the original book, but it is very long. The story adaptors and artists did a great job of translating the original into a manga and still telling its story. They even included portions at the end explaining some changes and information about real locations within the story and a breakdown of the characters. I loved the artwork and the whole idea of making a classic into a manga. This was an enjoyable experience for me.

Was this review helpful?

I love the whole series.
The illustrations are always wonderful. Just hope to keep the vocabularies simple for younger students.

Was this review helpful?

Eine weiterer Klassiker von Manga Classics, der mich begeistert hat. Die Geschichte ist zeitlos und den meisten entweder als Buch oder durch die Verfilmung bekannt. Die Zeichnungen sind zugleich dramatisch wie auch anspruchsvoll. Ein echter Hingucker.
Ich habe jetzt schon mehrer Bücher aus dieser Reihe gelesen und hab es sehr genossen.
Klassische Literatur mal ganz anders, doch auch vertraut.
Ein tolles Lesevergnügen!

Was this review helpful?

I thought this manga adaptation was terrific! For those unfamiliar with the manga format, it is read from right to left. This is explained at the beginning of the book, along with some interesting notes from the illustrator about references, character design, and the visual development process. The original novel is long and dense, which can be intimidating - especially for younger readers. I’m so glad these Manga Classics exist to give those readers an alternative way of being introduced to classic literature, and perhaps be a gateway to getting them interested enough to read the original. The story here is condensed by necessity, and I felt like the decisions as to which characters and plot points were most important was well considered. The pacing is quick and the art and text came together beautifully.

I enjoyed this version so much I read it twice, and am looking forward to reading other Manga Classics.

Was this review helpful?

I think that this was a really excellent adaptation of Dumas' classic story. Since it is not an original story, my review will focus on the manga's ability to adapt the original story to this format. As a fan of the original text, as well as its movie adaptation, I think that presenting the story in this format was ingenious and well done. Naturally, this manga is quite long given its source material, but I think that it did such a great job of highlighting the important details of the story while not getting too bogged down. Additionally, the art style was stunning, which made the reading experience even more pleasurable.

Was this review helpful?

I am not fan of this book, but I thought I would give it a try. The art style is really good, but that's it. I do not like the story.

Was this review helpful?

I was very excited to read this book after reading all the rave reviews. I love the Count of Monte Cristo! It's one of my favorite stories and I had really high hopes for this manga. Unfortunately, the digital formatting made it impossible to enjoy the manga. The manga follows traditional Japanese formatting. The NetGalley app shows the book in American formatting. The artwork is beautiful, but again the formatting on the NetGalley app makes it very hard to follow the story.

Was this review helpful?

Who doesn't know the novel The Count of Monte Cristo? Its brilliant story and wonderful execution have made the novel hugely popular. Who doesn't know what this book is about yet, let me tell you a little bit about it.
The story starts with the arrival of Edmond Dantes ashore on the Pharaon ship. His excellent work has made him receive the proposal to become the captain of Pharaon. In addition, at home awaits his beloved Mercedes that he will marry in a few days. But his good fortune ends with the envy and complot from his enemies: Danglars and Fernand Mondego. The first one wants to be the captain for himself, and the second wants to marry Mercedes. They manage to jail Edmond for treason to the government. The innocent man had spent imprisoned for 14 years.
However, he shared his time with Abbe Faria with whom he learned many things and made a wonderful friendship. Abbe Faria told Edmond about a treasure that was on an island. After his death, Dantes escaped from prison and found the treasure to become a very rich person - a Count of Monte Cristo. And that's when our protagonist begins his plan to take revenge on those men who took away all his happiness and freedom.
Sounds good, doesn't it? For those of you who already knew the story, here's a wonderful manga of an exciting and adventure-filled classic.
It is clear that the original book has many more details and tells the story in a more extensive way. The manga focuses on the action, the lives of each character, the plans, and the development of the plot. It may be a little quicker but it's still great. Besides, in my opinion, it's a very quick and original way to get closer to Edmon Dantes' story. And if you've already read it, having this manga book where we can see the characters drawn, is a nice idea.
The drawing is nice and doesn't tire. That's something that made me choose this book to read it. And remember that you can't compare a manga to a book. I think this drawn classic can become a nice acquisition to our library.

Was this review helpful?

I am very much ecstatic about this art and adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo. I loved the beautiful illustrations and choices for this adaptation.

Was this review helpful?

Manga adaptations of Western stories sometimes work better than others - for example, Udon Entertainment's the manga adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe worked very well, capturing that sense of melodrama and morbidity that is central to Poe.
This one also works great, with the melodrama of manga pairing great with Dumas' dramatic flair.

Was this review helpful?

NOTE: I received a free preliminary, and likely unedited copy of this book from Netgalley for the purposes of providing an honest, unbiased review of the material. Thank you to all involved.

There’s always a tendency for companies to fall back on classical media and attempt to market it to youths in questionable ways: by making it modern, changing the setting, or re-writing it entirely. Sometimes this works great, I would say that the 1996 Baz Luhrmann adaptation of Romeo & Juliet was both very enjoyable and fairly true to the original story despite a modern setting, but you also run the risk of making films like 2006’s children’s film Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss, wherein everyone was replaced by anthropomorphized seals and any sort of tension was removed entirely to be replaced with jokes. Today, we aren’t talking about films, but a company called Manga Classics that has waded heavily into an attempt to market classical literature to fans of Japanese Comic books or Manga and one of their books I just finished. The following is an excerpt from the Company’s website:

"Intended for a young adult audience, Manga Classics™ are just as likely to be enjoyed in the reader’s free time as in the classroom. The gripping and intense story and the lush artwork will place them easily alongside today’s bestselling popular manga, with strong and accurate adaptations that will please even the toughest teacher or librarian! Manga Classics are also a wonderful way for adult readers to rediscover their favorite classics, or experience them for the first time!"

Luckily, this endeavor seems to have been rather successful to me (at least), as I just finished an edition of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Christo and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think this initiative is successful for many reasons, but chiefly it’s because it respects the material and avoids the failures of other companies that attempt to make a “manga version” of a property i.e. overly sexualized, overly cartoonish, constant slapstick humor, making things pseudo-Japanese (in a racist way, usually written by Non-Japanese) etc. It’s hard to express exactly why a lot of this misses the mark so bad, but things like “The Marvel Mangaverse” was a champion of this misguided approach for all those reasons. People always forget that Manga/anime is a medium, NOT a genre – any attempt to have it as such always blows up.

If you have never read the story or seen an adaptation of this story, it follows a young man named Edmond Dantès that seems to have it all, a promising new career, and beautiful fiance and wedding planned, and an ability to finally repay his friends and family for helping him in his success. Unfortunately, he has come into contact with men that want no more than to commit a total miscarriage of justice to falsely imprison Edmond out of jealousy. One man desires his job, one his wife, and one needs a fall man to protect his own family from treason allegations. After 14 years Dantès is able to escape, and becomes wealthy setting his plan in place – REVENGE.

This edition of The Count of Monte Christo is VERY accurate to the source material, it is cleaned up into modern language a bit, but for the most part, it hits every beat that Dumas intended. There are a few differences between the book and its source material, but the book has a handy section explaining these alterations and why they were made. I appreciated this addition quite a bit.

The original book of The Count of Monte Christo is somewhere around 700 pages long, and takes an insane amount of time to read. This book, however can be kicked back in a few hours which is a great incentive to look into these- not only for young readers that may be intimidated by such a large book, but people with busy lives, or those that have trouble keeping attention in long books. To me, these are classic stories everyone should know about, and companies like this are doing a great job making this available.

As you can see, I absolutely loved this – the artwork is great, the adaptation is well-written, and the pacing keeps you on the edge of your seat. I will admit, despite being a reader, I ignore books like the source material due to the size most of the time. While, I already know this story and have read parts of the original, this was a great way for me to know what has been left out of various projects. I definitely plan to get more books by Manga Classics – so far this has been my biggest book surprise of 2021.

Was this review helpful?

It has been many years since I have read The Count of Monte Cristo. While I still remembered the basic story, there were many things that I had forgotten. This manga really brought the story back to me and in a very fun way.

Was this review helpful?

This time there is a part of the series "classics in the format of manga", which he very much approves of. Some would say that it is unacceptable to read classic novels, "ruined" with pictures and in the form of comics, but I do not think so, can be because I'm of the people who would read any type of adaptation, as long as the story is worth it. "The Count of Monte Cristo" is my favorite book by Alexandre Dumas, even if I admit that as a child I could not appreciate it now, it may have been caused by I had grown up for it, I do not know. Over the years the Count's history continue to live in me and many adaptations have already passed through my eyes, many of which I also love.
Of course, in this specific adaptation one cannot talk about comprehensiveness and similar things. The comic style of storytelling interferes and will inevitably be omitted in some things in order to bring out the most important. I think the creators of this manga book did a perfect job of sifting through the story without destroying it. Admirations!
When I was choosing (and there are enough books in this series with adapted classic novels), I didn't like the bark at all. But I found that she was lying to the eye. The illustrations are wonderful, in manga style, extremely appropriate. Even from time to time the experience reminded me of the good old "Gankutsuou" - one of the animated adaptations to the same story, may be the craziest of all that I remember, leaves a particularly strong impression on me. Well, yes, the work of Gonzo Studio (the anime in question is one of their few strong ones, according to me) cannot be compared to the work on the book we are talking about, because it has created a set of different impressions (Gonzo's Count is vampire?), but the feeling of is so ... charming.
Wonderful work on this project! I recommend, then see this type of experiments arouse in someone interest in the "boring" literature.

I apologize for the possible mistakes. The official review is in Bulgarian, the link is below

Was this review helpful?

I was curious to see how one of my favorite books can be "squeezed" into a manga novel. I must say I'm pleasantly surprised.
Lovely illustrations, they managed to keep the spirit of the original Dumas in a completely new format. Before anyone asks, no it is not comparable to the book itself, which I would always recommend reading, but it is a brilliant way for those who aren't familiar with this amazing book, to become new fans. It's a classic for a reason and with good merit. I'm glad it was given new life!

Was this review helpful?

Um clássico atemporal da literatura francesa recebe uma nova releitura, agora voltada ao público jovem adulto e que curte Mangá e HQ

Com ilustrações muito bonitas, a edição merece ser lida.

Gostei bastante dos traços do artista e da adaptação.

Was this review helpful?