
Member Reviews

A great adaptation of Macbeth. The art is beautiful and makes it easier to understand the dialogue/scene if you’re not familiar with the story.

Another excellent Shakespeare classic adapted into a Manga Classic. The art was attractive and detailed. The story was true to the original and was clearly portrayed in a way that made it easier to understand. My favorites scenes were all of the ones that had the witches and the ones that really showed Macbeth's descent into madness.
My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher Udon Entertainment, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read a digital copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I thought the artwork was fantastic but I wish the text had been contemporary English. Alas I dont have much more to say. Brilliant artwork and if the language used had been contemporary this would have been five stars from me. I will not be leaving a full review on review websites because I think my review is subjective.

Manga Classics: Macbeth by William Shakespeare keeps the original text from the play, complementing it with gorgeous manga artwork. Macbeth is one of the Bard's most famous dramas, and my personal favourite of his dramas. As much as I love both the play, and manga style artwork, this book didn't resonate with me so much. It was good, don't get me wrong. I think it just really messed my mind up to have the classic text with this quite modern artwork. However, if you're a fan of the Manga Classics series, or of Macbeth, definitely check it out!
***Many thanks to Netgalley and Udon Entertainment for providing an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Macbeth is one of my favorite play from Shakespeare, it's full of deception and intrigue and very intense. :)
I love reading Shakespear's plays in this form. It adds a whole another dimension to the story and makes it come alive. Macbeth is such a good play, with many twists and turn.

Another good manga classic. It was a bit hard for me to follow the Old English, but the art was as good as all the others.

I don't know how to rate this. I don't completely hate it, but I didn't love it either.
I liked the story but at the same time, didn't care for it at all. I'm just really meh about the whole thing. I just really don't care for anything Shakespeare, really. Who would've thought. Actually, I knew. Please don't hate me.
Let's talk about something very positive, tho. The artwork. Hot damn, the artwork was just fantastic and beautiful and just everything that made me actually like the book enough to keep going. Damn, they are good.

Loved this version! The artwork it captivating, and really brings the story to life. I think it's such a cool idea to bring well known classics to life using manga style artwork, and these are beautiful and something that would add beauty and brilliance to anyone's library!

Thank you NetGalley for letting me read an early edition. If I were a high school teacher, this is where our study of !Macbeth would begin. The layout is visually pleasing. It makes reading the Shakespearean tragedy much easier and more entertaining especially for young people.

I just recently read Macbeth because I've been wanting to read it for way to long, and when I saw this, I just decided to go for it. Only to learn this is actually the freaking Original Text!! The synopsis I read didn't say it and the book's cover was tiny and I didn't see it written there... So basically I just read Macbeth twice.
I've read only one play by Shakespeare before and to be honest, this one was slightly more difficult to read, although I loved it even more. This is such an intense story and I loved to read it in manga format! My original edition is the Folger Shakespeare Library and it helps to understand some words/expressions. But so did the manga, because by seeing the characters, their actions and emotions it also helped visualizing it more!
This is an incredibly tragic, dramatic and bloody play and I was all for it! I love all the mysteriousness and darkness of it and how crazy everything turned out! It's not very easy to talk much about this play without spoiling it, but I do have to say this... Those witches give me the creeps! after those prophecies, everything just came down and well... That end was just WTF. I was NOT expecting it and I think it's amazing. That's all I'm gonna say.
The manga design was really good and quite detailed like always, pretty much like Romeo and Juliet, but in my opinion even more expressive, which is not one of my fav things, but it does fits the drama quite well. My fav design was of Macduff. I just really liked how he was portrayed.
Overall I really liked reading this and it made me finally read the original classic, which is always a plus. I really didn't know what to expect before reading the original book's version, but I'm actually happy I got to experience both and I LOVE that this contains the actual Original Text. I believe it invites more people to read classics and in this case to actually read the full novel in a more enjoyable and accessible way! It's a great idea and I'm a BIG fan of the Manga Classics collection. I really think you guy's should give it a try!

This was a case of “it’s not you, it’s me”. The art style of this manga was amazing, but English is not my naive language and I usually don’t read lots of classics, so reading this was kind of a struggle. I’m pretty sure people who’ve already read something Shakespeare or who are more used to reading classics might love it.

As a big fan of mangas and of Shakespeare, this was one of my favorite reads out of the Manga Classics!
With amazing art, it follows my favorite play by the book and it was a beautiful read! Totally now on my list for buying to my friends that have not yet read Macbeth!
Five out of five stars with full recommendation!
Thank you NetGalley and Udon Entertainment for this amazing chance to re-read Macbeth with a Manga so beautiful like this

A new approach to an old classic that breathes life into a good story. This Macbeth interpretation is a great place for younger readers to start to learn and understand some of Shakespeare's more difficult dialogue. Recommended for Manga fans, young readers, and fans of retellings for all ages.
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Book Review
Title: Manga Classics: Macbeth
Author: Crystal S. Chan (Adapted by), William Shakespeare & Julien Choy (Illustrations)
Genre: Manga
Rating: *****
Review: So, from all the manga classics I have read all stick very close to the original source material so I won’t be going in-depth into the story as most people have read Macbeth at some point in the educational lives or they are familiar with the source material. When I read Macbeth in Comprehensive school, I found it to be a very raw, gritty and visceral story so I was excited to see how the story would translate to a more visual format.
To summarize Macbeth: A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. I was correct about this particular play translating well into manga as it opens with a bang and Macbeth makes a great entrance into the story and from the moment, he meets the witches we can see his path laid before him.
One thing I love about Macbeth is a lot of the key scene are foreshadowed in earlier scenes, for example, when the witches first meet Macbeth, they reveal that he will someday be king, but they do not specify that he will obtain that position by murdering Duncan.
There is an astounding amount of the original information from the play in this manga, but most aren’t in dialogue although this manga does contain far more dialogue than there is in traditional manga. I found the way the manga was drawn really allowed the bloody and grim nature of the play to blossom in a way the original material doesn’t. However, I did find that much of the tension and suspense found in the original play are lost be seen a visual representation.
Overall, I really loved the version of Macbeth and seeing both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s decent in madness and eventual death and I highly recommend all the manga classics series, however, there is a fair amount of dialogue in all of them which isn’t common in manga.

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I know I’ve said this time and time again, but I sincerely adore the concept behind Manga Classics. I love that it gives me a new perspective on many of the classics I know and love. And for those I haven’t read it gives me an excuse to try them out and not be quite so intimidated (we’ve all come across that one classic that was so large it was impossible not to be intimidated by it).
I think it’s great that they’re working so hard to help expose more people to the classics by making them more approachable. Plus it’s fun seeing something so well known turned into a different medium (after all, that’s why movie and TV adaptations are so popular, right? Well, one of the reasons at least).
I can’t get enough of the Manga Classics, truth be told. It felt like I waited a year for the next one to come out, when it was really only a few months (which is a very fast turnaround time, I’d like to point out).
I’ve been hoping for a while now that they would do a manga version of Macbeth, and it looks like I finally got my wish! I’ll admit that even though I was looking forward to it, I was shocked by just how well it adapted into manga form.
It’s always interesting to see how these classic characters would translate into manga characters. I was a bit surprise by Macbeth’s, but I think that has more to do with how I picture him versus how he was described. I adored the representation of almost all of the characters, but some of the side characters in particular really stood out to me as being amazingly accurate (and no, I’m not really sure why they stood out to me in particular). I love the more stylized manner in which the witches were drawn as well. It really suited their more ethereal nature, and frankly it made them look creepier, so it was a brilliant choice all around.
The artist’s choice of including imagery in the background during specific scenes (usually the ones with more dialogue than most) was brilliant. It helped convey the deeper meaning and implications of the words, while not disrupting the immersion.
Overall I really loved this adaptation. It was everything I could have hoped for and more. And the best part? In the back of the book they listed the upcoming classics, and A Midsummer’s Night Dream is shown! All of my wishes and dreams have come true! I’m the happiest girl ever. Now I just have to be patient and wait for its release!

I read some of this but I just couldn't get into it. That's definitely more my problem than any problem with the book itself. I often have trouble getting into Shakespeare and understanding the language and I thought the manga format might help me with this particular title. Unfortunately it didn't really work for me, but it looks like a pretty good adaptation and I'm sure this will be very enjoyable for a lot of people.

Another great manga classic. Wasn't sure how the Shakespeare would translate but I think it worked really well. A great graphic novel series.

This is my first contact with Shakespeare and I had a bit of a hard time with it. This is my third manga classic and my least favorite, only because I couldn't get into the shakesperean writing style. The artwork is still gorgeous and it helps a lot to see what's going on.
Just not a big fan of Shakespeare literature.

It's been a long time since I've read a manga or a Shakespeare play so the combination of the two was amazing! Macbeth has always been a favorite out of Shakespeare's works so being able to essentially get a crash course through the story was a lot of fun. The artwork is beautiful and just really brings the story to life. Highly recommend!