Gankutsuou, Les Misérables: Shoujo Cosette Recommendations
Adaptations of ENDLESS (1000+ pages) French novels from well over 100 years ago. Typical of the anime community, Gankutsuou (The Count of Monte Cristo) has roughly as little as HALF the listing of other classics inspired by world-renowned literature, such as KissxSis, and no-one even seems to be aware of Les Mis' anime. I'm not surprised but I am pained by this blatant injustice.
In the transition from neverending walls of text to TV (which is almost an impossibility to pull off 100% faithfully), both stories had to have content removed and alterations made. Most notably, the lead characters were shifted. Naive Albert replaced Dantes in
Gankutsuou in order for a mystery genre shift to be made; allowing for the first 300-400 pages to be skipped almost entirely. In Les Mis there was nothing so extreme but, as its sub-title highlights, there was a shift from Valjean to Cosette--Les Mis' anime being a World Masterpiece Theater title and WMT titles following the tragic struggles of children.
As mentioned above, Dantes (Gankutsuou) was replaced as the main character from the novel, where as Valjean (Les Mis) - to the best of my knowledge - simply had the spotlight moved away from him a little. Had the adaptations been fully accurate, Dantes would've been depicted changing from a good-natured yet simple young man into a caculating avenger. This would've linked him to Valjean more strongly, in an ironic sense; a character that started out as a sinner then did a complete 180, opting to do everything in his power for the good of the people. It's these two all-time great characters and their respective journies which make the two series so epic in scope and fascinating to follow--truly worthy of favourite character spots.
As for how these adaptations are generally regarded by fans, Gankutsuou is referred to as the best Monte Cristo adaptation ever, in spite of the changes made and content cut. It was re-worked so it'd fit into 24 episodes when it'd need 50-100 to function as a full-on adaptation and is great in a different way than the source material. Les Mis is simply regarded as a far more kid-friendly version of the novel.
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Both shows have deep roots in the French classical literature, even so they do deviate at some points compared to the originals, and both are aimed at mature audience, despite the adaptation of "Les Miserables" looking quite child-friendly.
