Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette

A few posts ago I checked out the “video game” adaptation of Les Miserables, (IT SUCKS!!! DON’T PLAY IT) I bring it up again because I thought back then it was the oddest adaptations of Les Miserables I’d come across so far…..I was wrong, because the Japanese made an anime version of the novel in 2007 called “Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette”

(That title actually makes no sense in English. The word “Shoujo” in Japanese translates to “Little”, but the name Cosette in French means “little thing”. So the title of this anime really means “Little little thing).

Thanks to a friend and fellow Les Mis fan I was pointed towards a full copy online ready to watch. Unfortunately what my friend failed to mention beforehand was that this version is comprised of 52 25 minute episodes clocking up to 27 hours in total! Oh yes! I just spent the last three days watching one of the most complete versions of Les Miserables ever made, in Japanese! Thankfully it had English subtitles, because I may be mad for Les Mis but I’m not that mad that I’d watch 27 hours of it in Japanese.

Honestly, I’m not really a fan of anime, or Japanese culture in general so I was really sceptical about this version, I wasn’t expecting very much from it. I was seriously wrong though, this was one of the best adaptations I’ve seen so far! I thought it was brilliant. It may even be the best one in my opinion, and if not the best then it’s definitely the most complete, and that’s something that’s always lacking in any adaptation I’ve seen. There’s always too much taken out of the book to be completely faithful.
For instance this adaptation focused a lot on Cosettes childhood with the Thenardiers, and then a lot more of her convent years which is usually cut out from the many adaptations I’ve seen. It had that stupid stupid graveyard scene though….you know the one; I had a huge rant on it back in the early days of this blog!
 

The biggest thing was that they included the plotline about Monsieur Mabauef and his books, which I was really pleased about, he’s never included in any adaptations! I was so glad they put him in it! And the two young boys who are Gavroches brothers are in it as well, they’re always cut out too. They got a happy ending which is something that was left ambiguous in the book, which kind of sucks because I just knew in the book they were most likely going to starve to death in the streets. I was kind of glad actually that those two boys got a proper ending.

I’m going to provide the link to part one of the series for you because I urge you to see this if you are a true Les mis fan, you won’t regret it! Shoujo Cosette Part 1

I won’t spend this entire post gushing over it though, it wasn’t completely perfect. One of the main stumbling blocks I came across when I began watching it was that I found this to be a very odd clash of cultures at times. The story is still the same as the book so it’s still set in Paris and all the characters are animated to look vaguely European yet they’re all speaking Japanese and I was watching it with English subtitles. At times it was hard to really get into the story with those three things going on at once but the more I watched of it the more I got used to it.

They also made some big changes to the story. (Spoiler alert!) I think this was made for kids, so Fantines prostitution storyline was cut out which I can understand to an extent as that’s probably a bit heavy for kids. Gavroche doesn’t die either, nor does Javert kill himself which was the biggest change. I kind of understand the need to cut out suicide and child murder, but the thing is though they still included the deaths of all the students so I don’t really understand where the line is….. Young students being executed by a firing squad is fine for kids to see, but suicide isn’t?

Also the animation bothered me at times, I’ve never really liked Japanese cartoons, the eyes on everyone are always so big and they never make realistic facial expressions. This wasn’t so bad on most of the characters in this but it made Marius just even more dislikeable for me, his dead eyed blank expression throughout the entire thing just made me want to slap him repeatedly. Also I felt the blank expression of Jean Valjean affected his character too, he’s supposed to be a loving father to Cosette, but he never smiled at all during the entire 27 hours. I suppose one could argue that it’s just part of his character not to smile, but to be honest I just felt it made him seem distant and unemotional. 

Some of the characters were really creepy looking as well, Javert in particular is so weird to look at I found it really off putting, and Thenardier just looks vile…..although he kind of does in every adaptation, so I shouldn’t really complain about that.

Sometimes just the sheer length of this was too much as well, about 6 hours of this was just focused on Cosettes childhood with the Thenardiers, which I know is important to the story but there’s only so many times you can see a child being abused before it starts to get old, and a little disturbing. See again I don’t get where the line is, child abuse is OK for an anime, but not suicide or prostitution! What is your logic Japan!!!

Another small criticism I have is that Cosettes voice doesn’t change from when she’s a child to when she’s an adult, so it was a little creepy having the teenaged Cosette talking about being in love with Marius when she still had the voice of an 8 year old girl, I really don’t see how that would have been hard to change, it would have improved the show significantly as well.

Apart from those small gripes, and the few changes they made to the story I really think this was one of the best adaptations I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot! If you have 27 hours to spare I can’t recommend this enough, I don’t think I have enough words to describe just how good this adaptation is, I think this may now be my second favourite adaptation after the 2013 movie.

I can’t believe the Japanese made this, I’m not trying to sound patronising or racist I’m just genuinely surprised. Seriously, who would have thought the Japanese would make the best adaptation of Les Miserables? Not the British, not the Americans, not even the French, but the Japanese!