#Cal blogs Gankutsuou

[gankutsuou-feels]

Hi, I love your posts on Gankutsuo! They're so well thought out and illuminating. You have such a sharp eye when describing this show, so I was wondering if you could a question about the show that's been bothering me for a while. Do you know why Andrea wanted revenge against Eugenie? Why did he want to make her life hell and not Valentine or Eduard, since they were also his half-siblings? I never got why he wanted to hurt her specifically. Do you have any idea why? Thank you for reading!!

Hey there~

Thanks a lot, I do my best! But honestly, the only reason I am even able to get so much out of this show is because there is just so much THERE...! 8D

Concerning your question, I think there are a lot of reasons, the most important one of course being that the Hakushaku ordered him to focus his attention on the Danglars-family. The Hakushaku enables Andrea to take revenge on those who have abandoned and betrayed him (a sentiment the Hakushaku can very much identify with), and in turn, Andrea does his bidding.

He spies on Baron Danglars for the Hakushaku and insinuates himself into the Barons’ confidence to get engaged to Eugenie, which in turn will leave Albert devastated and disconnected from his friends, making him more vulnerable to the Hakushaku’s influence.

Another reason is because both in a meta and an in-universe level, there is a certain connection between Andrea where he sees himself in Eugenie, or rather the life he should’ve had. Maybe she looks most like him out of his half-siblings, maybe it’s her personality, but something about her in particular makes him feel like she is the one who took his place. The fruit of betrayal that must be plucked from the tree, he has decided, is Eugenie.

And as I said, we’ve got a whole meta level to take into consideration there. After all, Eugenie was originally supposed to be the Andrea-like character in the show and even looked exactly like him.

Last but not least, I think it was plot convenience. Eugenie needed conflict and there had to be an obstacle that her and Albert must overcome to be together.

[krokonoko]

I've started a new blog.

You can find it over here: Gankutsuou-feels.

As the url implies, it's about the anime series Gankutsuou.

Or more specifically, a blog about me, a fan for seven years, re-watching Gankutsuou for the two hundredth time, and talking about it. About meta-stuff, like characters and their motivations and development, symbolism and narrative, or just about how much I love pretty much every single thing about this show.

Cause there's a LOT to say about it.

[gankutsuou-feels]

yess image posts are working again so lemme add one more thing.

This very moment was the last chance. This was the last chance the Hakushaku had to turn back. And he wanted to. If he didn't, he hadn't even turned his head. You look at him and you know he would like to turn around, go back to Albert, accept his love and... IDK be whatever these two wanna be together.

After this, there won't be any more opportunity to change his mind. It's not too late yet, he could still call the whole thing off, and share this one true goddamn love that would never betray him that he has been looking for so long. If he would only allow to let himself heal instead of pressing always onward.

These are his crossroads between healing and revenge.

But the moment is gone before the Hakushaku can quite realize it, and the Gankutsuou already has Edmond in their hands.

[gankutsuou-feels]

The Hakushaku is aware of what he is doing, and the whole paradoxical thinking on which his convictions are based. The reason why he is wrecking everything is because he got betrayed, because love is a farce, because nothing is worth anything and all that matters is revenge.

But he has seen a boy who is just like he was, who is proof that love does exist, which somewhere deep within is all Edmond ever wanted to know!

However, he is now about to do what has been done to him, he is about to destroy within Albert what has been destroyed within him: The faith in love! He is about to betray him! What he does is what he hates, and what’s left of Edmond knows that, and it pains him, and hates himself for it.

But he cannot stop himself, as Edmond has no power anymore.

And if there is love, why didn't he have more faith in it before? He could have found it in Albert, which would mean he is hurting all these innocent people even though there was a different way, one of reconciliation and friendship!

...And also, if there is real love, then why have Mercedes and Fernand turned against him?

You see, with Albert's love comes a whole avalanche of questions, some identity-wrecking, down on the Hakushaku.

But in the end, what wins is the Gankutsuou and the belief that the whole world is rotten. The flower is wilted and dead. And all those who are still so naive to believe in trust deserve nothing else but to be disillusioned, as it's gonna happen anyway. And after all, all he does is showing them the truth, right?

Welcome to Hakushaku brain gymnastics.

[gankutsuou-feels]

Albert in his confusion can't do anything but yell the Hakushaku's "name" over and over again as if in a litany of "why"-questions. Albert just opened himself up completely to the Hakushaku, almost confessing his innermost feelings. And the Hakushaku makes weird allusions about Albert finding out the truth, tells him they are never going to meet again and tells him goodbye! And all that Albert demands is at least to know WHY all this is happening.

It is said that the Gankutsuou gets rid of every single bit of feeling. We have again and again seen the Hakushaku express emotions. But all these instances could just be him faking, usually in order to gain the trust of. Well mostly Albert. But this right here, this is not a single bit fake. This is 100% Edmond and that look in his eyes is the knowledge that Albert is exactly like he was all these years ago, and that it is him, Edmond, who is betraying this trust.

Maybe it is just now beginning to dawn on him. Maybe he has seen Albert's feelings for him as nothing but an adolescent infatuation before, as I said to protect himself in a number of ways. Maybe he is just now coming to realize just how deep the feelings of this boy for him are.

And. It. Hurts.

[gankutsuou-feels]

BECAUSE YOU KNOW THE THING IS. Albert was such a good friend. And Edmond would have been incredibly happy and honoured to have him as a friend. And he absolutely sees himself in Albert, before he got betrayed. And he does regret it.

He feels all these things, but the Hakushaku is still going to pull through with his plan. Because he is no longer just Edmond. He is driven by powers far beyond him, which have eradicated any feeling of friendship and regret from his mind.

He tells Albert goodbye because he knows next time they will meet, they will both not be the same. Albert, he assumes, will have found out the truth about him and thus turned against him. And there will be no Edmond anymore. ...Just that there already should be no Edmond anymore.

Schrödinger's Edmond all over the place.

Albert is just in free fall.

[gankutsuou-feels]

The Hakushaku has planned for all this to happen, and he knows it did. So you could say he holds some responsibility for what is going to happen to Albert throughout the next days.

Yet there has been no time before and there will be no time after this when the Hakushaku is ever going to wear that expression again.

It looks so. Open. And. Honest. And caring. And even kind of. Innocent. And it's conflicting so strongly with what he is saying. Remember Schrödinger's Edmond? Cause this right here, that's him. We're gonna see more of him in a second.

[gankutsuou-feels]

Albert's expression is so VACANT look at him he is just completely out of it! He is so confused and he is staring into this vast space that he cannot even begin to fathom and there are so many things in his life right now that he doesn't understand, and to top it all the Hakushaku has just turned him down in so many ways and he just doesn't know WHY and it's all so woolly!!

[gankutsuou-feels]

since tumblr doesn't seem to accept image posts rn, I'm just gonna continue my live blogging with text posts.

You know, Mercedes is aware that her husband changed his name. After all, she did, too. This didn't just go past her. We know that she played along, and is struggling with it. But now she realizes what the true reasons behind this were.

I'm not sure whether we will see these two interact with each other after this. Knowing how good they are at playing the denial-game, probably not much at first. But that is going to change.

[gankutsuou-feels]

We haven't seen Edmond a lot yet, so this is one of his very first appearances. He is depicted right in the middle of his defining struggle: Behind bars despite his innocence, symbolized by his completely white clothes and the white rose.

[gankutsuou-feels]

You said the count and albert are "spiritually, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to each other". Now i'm curious, in how far is there anything sexual between the count and albert?

I take it you have read the posts I have linked in the one you just quoted. Now I have claimed there is sexual tension between Hakushaku and Albert there. But I see it is kind of difficult to imagine that there should be sexual tension between a not-yet-16-yo-boy and a man in his forties, especially in an anime that is not advertised as “boys’ love”, not to mention how the Hakushaku is basically a father figure to Albert.

Still, we shouldn’t forget the plans Mahiro Maeda had for Gankutsuou. From the original material (like the old trailer, story boards, the manga, etc), you can see that he intended for Gankutsuou to be a lot more sexual than it is now.

Even Albert gets depicted in a slightly different light by him. What we have seen in the anime during the Hakushaku’s and Albert’s trip into space was a heartfelt confrontation revealing intense feelings. What we tend to forget was the scenery. They were still doing drugs in space, slouching around on pillows. See what I’m getting at? No? Well have a look at a piece of official art drawn by Mahiro Maeda:

…I mean. Look at where Albert’s hand is resting. And how it’s holding on to that cup. It may seem like a taboo to us to depict a fifteen years old boy like that, and we automatically jump to the conclusion that we are reading too much into things. But in the manga, there is a chapter where Valentine is shown having sex with Héloïse, her adoptive mother, in front of her father. So the original plans for this anime included way stronger sexual as well as incestuous themes.

These got tuned down quite a bit. I suspect it is because they decided to direct the show to a younger target audience. This lead to the narrative focusing on Albert, rather than the Hakushaku.

With that in mind, looking at the Hakushaku’s and Albert’s relationship, it is not so inconceivable anymore, that the narrative would acknowledge sexual tension between them. I have counted numerous occasions of this being alluded to in canon itself, for example here, here and here. I will also remind you of Albert almost blurting out a love confession this episode.

And let us not forget about this piece of official promo art:

The Hakushaku’s right hand is outright reaching into Albert’s shirt down there. This is not even metaphorical sexuality anymore. Of course it is not what is happening in the show. At least not literally. But it depicts what a lot of the show is about: The Hakushaku seducing Albert. Including sexually. Yes, that is effed up, but nobody ever said that their relationship is super healthy and perfect the way it is.

I rest my case.

[gankutsuou-feels]

"That's not true! You... To me, you're..."

Well actually he says "boku wa anata ga...", which is hard to translate cause Japanese sentence structure works different from English sentence structure. What he is saying literally is as simple as "I you...". But what is implied with this sentence is that it will continue in a certain manner. And these words are often followed by "suki desu" or even "aishiteru", which would mean "I love you". If you wanted to nail the beginning of Albert's sentence down on that, a correct contextual translation would be "I have fallen in..." or something similar.

But the thing is, I think it's better to keep it like it is. The "To me, you're" leaves it as open to the English viewer what Albert could have said as it does to the Japanese viewer. Yes it COULD have continued with "suki desu", but we don't know.

Why? Certainly not because Albert does not love the Hakushaku, cause one way or another, he does.

The problem is both that Albert is being kind of stepping out of line with what he is trying to say, as well as the fact that he does not know what he is trying to say.

I have talked about the ambiguity of Albert's and the Hakushaku's relationship again and again and again. And look at all the expressions Albert is going through in a matter of seconds. There is hurt, surprise, denial, and a whole lot of longing in there! He himself is so confused as to what exactly it really is that he feels for the Hakushaku that he can't put it into words.

[gankutsuou-feels]

Albert is expressing his profound love and admiration for the Hakushaku. Which even the Hakushaku is kind of overwhelmed by. He can't believe that Albert really loves him this much, and does something very interesting. He could have accepted Albert's. Let's call it a love-confession cause honestly that's what it is.

I mean, that is what the Hakushaku wanted all along, right? He wanted Albert to trust him, he considered their friendship a farce, means to an end. But now that Albert reassures the Hakushaku of a way deeper love than he would have expected, he does not play along. He even reacts with something that could be interpreted as honest regret.

Regret at what. At the fact that he will have to betray Albert and that he will have to taint these deep and true feelings and this innocent boy with hatred?

Or at his own belief that Albert's love is not as deep as Albert thinks it is, just an expression of a young, passionate and superficial boy. The Hakushaku has heard love-confessions before, and all who have uttered them to him have betrayed him. The Hakushaku claims to have turned his back on love and trust. But, as I said before, he keeps setting stages for the concept of friendship to demonstrate its validity, already expecting its failure and in order to prove how fickle the human loyalty is. YET every time he sees the expected and planned failure arise, he is deeply disappointed by it and feels the pain of the betrayal against himself again.

Through denouncing Albert's love as fickle and superficial, he does two things. First, he reassures himself that there is no true love or loyalty, cause that is the foundation of his existence. To quote myself:

The belief that love is a fragile thing and in the end, every person is selfish and cruel, has become his raison d’être, his purpose and his origin. If friendship is not disposable, if love is not fragile, if innocence is not there to be destroyed, that would mean there are moral standards in this world. It would mean that his justification before himself would be faulty.

It would mean that he could’ve held onto something when he didn’t.

Second: He is in danger of feeling guilty (which means he would have to accept that there IS true loyalty out there, and that HE is the one betraying it right now). So he downplays Albert's love and the meaning of his words, to make it easier for himself.

[gankutsuou-feels]

Albert man, beautiful tiny Albert. You would expect him to start losing all hope in friendship and love, and that's what he did. He wanted to protect himself from ever getting hurt again through never letting anyone close to him. But he can't do that, even if he consciously decides it, because it's Albert. And he sees that he could not live like that. He totally got what the Hakushaku was getting at, he knows how lonely and bitter the Hakushaku is, even if he's not aware of it yet. 

And what Albert does instead of giving up his faith in love in the face of all this bitterness and desperation, is offering, no, wholeheartedly begging the Hakushaku for a friendship that he can trust in.

His reaction is the complete opposite of what the Hakushaku probably expected. Albert does not resignate and despair, but instead decides to help both himself and this lonely person that means so much to him. Albert can't just stop feeling and reaching out to other people, so to the Hakushaku's surprise, that's what he does.

[gankutsuou-feels]

While the narrative does draw parallels between our two tragic trios, there are also crucial differences. Both Albert and Edmond are mutually in love with their female friend, and their "third-wheel"-friend is crossed in love with one of them. In the case of the Edmond-Mercedes-Fernand-triangle, Fernand is in love with Mercedes (as far as we know. Imho, things were a bit more complicated than that. But I will probably get to talk about that later). Franz on the other hand is not in love with Eugenie, which would be the case if the trios were completely mirroring each other, but with Albert. Plus Franz is not consumed by self-doubt and envy.

However, these differences are usually overlooked by the Hakushaku, who tends to see the whole world only in relation to himself. This is why he sees every friendship as vapid, as a farce, an empty word. And all that because of Fernand. Which means he assumes the friendship between Albert and Franz is probably just as fragile, and that they will turn on each other any given moment. Little does he know that this firm belief is going to be his downfall. In all the ways possible.

[gankutsuou-feels]

There is an old Chinese legend which is celebrated in the Qixi Festival. Several versions of the tale exist, but they all centre around the two lovers Zhīnǚ (the weaver girl) and Niúláng (the cowherd). Essentially, their love was not allowed and due to opposing forces - in some versions the Goddess of Heaven which in one tale is Zhīnǚ's mother - they have to live on opposing sides of a river with no bridge. This silver river symbolizes the Milky Way, as they both symbolize stars.

Once every year, however, all the magpies of the world take pity on them and form a bridge across the river so they can meet for one single night.

This tale is in its essence exactly what the Hakushaku tells Albert now. It will also tie in with his backstory, which he is going to talk about as if it was an old tale as well. This means that the divided lovers are a metaphor for Edmond and Mercédès.

It is also said that if it rains on the day of the Qixi Festival, the magpies can't come to form the bridge, which means the lovers will have to wait for another year.

As the celebration day of the Qixi Festival ranges from early July to late August, it is likely that the Hakushaku chose this day to travel into space for a reason. Probably, it is this certain day that the Festival is held and that the lovers are said to be able to meet.

But remember when the Hakushaku picked up Albert, he was standing in drenching rain. Looks like the lovers will have to wait another year before they can meet again...