alt title(s): Earl Cain; Godchild
Describe
Count Cain here.
Oh, dear. Where to start?
If you love
Elegant Gothic Lolita, you'll probably like this. If you like incest, you'll probably like this. If you like murder mysteries, you might well get along with it.
Firstly, it's a
Kaori Yuki manga. Set in a...Victorianesque world (probably not meant to be actual Victorian England), the series centres around a young Earl (Count in the
Scanlation), Earl Cain Hargreaves. Cain is seventeen, apparently orphaned, rich and eccentric. Unfortunately, his eccentricity doesn't manifest itself in collecting stamps.
Everybody in Cain's family, we are told, has a habit of studying poisons. Cain is no different. He uses his knowledge of poisons for good - or, at least, what passes for good in his world. He can identify many poisons at a glance - or else he gets his manservant, Riff, to test them. More often he uses his knowledge to seek justice for murder victims, usually by poisoning the murderer.
Count Cain is big on morality tales.
Like, say,
CSI,
Count Cain brings up just about every kink under the sun, primarily for sensationalism. It's like a manga version of Victorian penny dreadfuls. It loves its gothic tropes, it loves its
bad steampunk science. Most of all, it loves its blood and death and tragedy. And madness. Don't forget the madness.
The series suffered something of a
Macekre in translation, though not as bad as some. The series was originally split into two halves, as Yuki Kaori took a break from it to work on
Angel Sanctuary. The first part consisting of four arcs collected in five volumes; and the second, titled
Godchild, a continuation begun some years later. Viz translated
Godchild first. Not to mention the numerous mistakes made in translation (and not corrected later).
This series provides examples of:
- Anti Hero
- Arranged Marriage
- Art Evolution (The art has changed a lot from the first volume to the fifth; then Yuki Kaori took a break from Cain to work on Angel Sanctuary and when she took up Cain again, the art style was almost completely different from where she'd left off.)
- Author Appeal (see: Brother Sister Incest, Ho Yay, Foe Yay...)
- Ax Crazy
- Battle Butler (Riff, subverted when he has his Face Heel Turn
- Beauty Equals Goodness (subverted hard in "Scold's Bridle")
- Best Served Cold
- Brainwashed
- Brainwashed And Crazy
- Break The Cutie
- Brother Sister Incest
- Cartwright Curse
- The Chessmaster
- Defrosting Ice Queen (Emmeline, to a certain extent)
- Did Not Do The Research (Siobhan the French maid, among other things. Of course, see below.)
- Disposable Woman
- Distressed Damsel (most of the sympathetic female characters end up like this at one point)
- Doomed Appointment (Neil in "Zigeunerweisen")
- Dysfunction Junction (most of the cast)
- Elegant Gothic Lolita (Merryweather, plus half the female characters Cain encounters)
- Face Heel Turn (Riff)
- Foe Yay (Cain and Jezebel)
- Freudian Excuse (averted: Cain would have some justification in invoking it, but he never does. Also played straight - Jezebel does.)
- Good Scars Evil Scars (Cain's scars, while horrific, are easily hidden; the villain in "Scold's Bridle" has hers on her face and wears a mask to hide them)
- Heel Face Turn (Riff, among others)
- Hikaru Genji Plan (Oscar and Merryweather)
- Hollywood Science
- Ho Yay (Cain and Riff, most obviously)
- I Want My Beloved To Be Happy (subverted with Cain and Riff)
- In The Blood
- Ironic Nursery Tune (to the point of abuse)
- The Jeeves (Riff, subverted when it's revealed that he is even more mentally unstable than Cain is)
- Jesus Taboo
- London Town (Where The Streets Are Paved With Excrement version. It is Victoriana, after all)
- Lost In Translation We could get a field day just mentioning them, some examples are: Merryweather =/= Mary Weather, "primrose" = "prom rose", Baraba company =/= Barabba company named after the thief, Lucia =/= Rukia =/= Lukia the romanization may be really different but mangaka herself made talked about st. Lucia in her freetalk, there is no excuse)
- And that's not even mentioning Viz changing for no good reason 'Count' to 'Earl' despite the former making up part of the title. The Viz translation is so hated by some Kaori Yuki fans that they refuse to aknowledge it, let alone buy it.
- Count was likely changed to Earl as an attempt to correct the historical inaccuracy— Count is a Continental title, and Cain is English. Given the epic levels of Did Not Do The Research in the work, however, it's definitely a lost cause.
- However, the Japanese original has Cain's title in Japanese translation (hakushaku which can mean both count and earl) so it's not like Viz deliberately mistranslated it. (It's more like the scanlations translated it the wrong way.)
- And this troper is just plain confused as to why anybody would translate hakushaku as 'count' and not 'earl' when the title in question is an English one and held by a male. Quite literally, the only difference between a count and an earl is that one title is Continental and the other is English, and it's not like this is obscure trivia...
- Love Hurts
- Love Martyr (Merryweather, in "The Little Crooked House")
- Mad Love
- Mad Scientist
- Magnificent Bastard (Cain, Alexis, and ultimately, Augusta)
- Man Child (Gilford)
- Manchurian Agent
- Naive Everygirl (Merryweather)
- Not Brainwashed
- Older Than They Look ( Cassian )
- Psycho Serum
- Rape Is Love (or so Alexis claims, subverted in that the assault drove the victim mad. Further subverted in that it wasn't really rape and the victim actually planned and provoked it herself for her own sick purposes.
- In a less confusing and way more spoileriffic explanation: Alexis while feeling atracted to her sister, merely threatened to rape Augusta to scare her a bit, what he didn't count is that Augusta was 1)way more wicked that him 2) Knew perfectly what was going on about him having the hots for her 3) reciprocated completely the atraction. Cue to Augusta taking his hand in a very sugestive way the exact moment he was trying to forget the subject. The rest is history. )
- Royally Screwed Up
- Scary Shiny Glasses (Jezebel)
- Shown Their Work (Kaori Yuki likes to point out that she often has done the research...and jettisoned it in favour of a more interesting development which might otherwise be prevented)
- Split Personality
- Stuffed Into The Fridge
- Tarot Motifs
- There Are No Therapists
- Why Couldnt You Be Different
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity
- Yaoi Guys (Riff and Cain)
- Cute Shotaro Boy (Emile)
