#les mis arai

[sirgawainofgalifrey]

Okay don't come at me for this but I 100% judge any and all Les Mis adaptations almost completely by their design and characterization of Javert.

Like if he's not on point then I'm sorry, I'm done, I can't.

[secretmellowblog]

Finished rereading the Arai manga adaptation of Les Mis

[inmarbleimmobility]

ok nobody panic but.

i am starting the arai manga

[bobcatmoran]

Les Mis 4.9.3 M. Mabeuf

The barricades approacheth, and I'm gonna try to resume my Arai manga posting along with it.

Arai depicts Mabeuf's experimental indigo crops failing, despite Eponine's help, and him letting Mother Plutarch go, because he can no longer pay her.

His house and shelves are bare of anything else to sell. So when the crowd comes by his cottage on the way to the rebellion, heretofore unknown to him, he joins in. What else can he do?

[pilferingapples]

WAIT WAIT THE NEXT LM MANGA OMNIBUS IS OUT THIS WEEK?!?

[bobcatmoran]

Actually, it's even better. This is is Takahiro Arai's depiction of himself In Clever Disguise as Victor Hugo.

bringing your attention to Takahiro Arai's sketch of victor hugo:

exquisite.

[its-kapi-wara]

Current Obsession: Seeing in which adaptations Cosette (a.k.a Euphrasie) and Enjolras could actually fit into the "Siblings AU"

Shoujo Cosette (2007) - Nippon Animation

Les Misérables (2012) - Aaron Tveit & Amanda Seyfried

Les Misérables (2013-2016) - Arai Takahiro

Les Misérables (2014) - Crystal S. Chan

Les Misérables (2018-2019) - Joseph Quinn & Ellie Bamber

[yirafter]

I drew Javert by Takahiro Arai.

He is really beautiful.

[tlacuart]

Hello, I am from México and I recently bought the Les Mis manga.

Les Mis is not popular at all in the hispanic or Latinoamerican fandom, so, Idk, I was hoping to find some friends here? I have a lot of hype rn, and I need to talk to someone😭

I love the book, musical, anime, manga, I've seen almost all the movie adaptations, there is even a mexican one! But it's not of my favs.

It would be nice to do art trades or collabs, I have a lot of silly and tragic aus, or if yoy write I love to make fanart about fanfics!👉👈

[bobcatmoran]

For those who want the extra pain of seeing it (coming in an official English translation on December 5th!):

Did you know that in the Arai manga, when Joly gets shot, Bossuet screams his name and runs to him, but Joly weakly says, "Do not come Bossuet" because he didn't want Bossuet to leave his cover. But it doesn't stop him and Bossuet gets shot and dies anyways. Then Joly, bleeding out but still alive, seems to cry while looking at his friend's dead body? Did you know that? Well you do now.

[oldbooksandnewmusic]

@saltedpin Be careful what you speak into the universe because I'm actually at the end of my tether.

[airisusan]

i haven’t posted art on tumblr since middle school does anyone here like manga enjoltaire

[bobcatmoran]

I am ridiculously far behind on my Les Mis Letters/Arai Manga posts, but I couldn't let today's chapter of 3.4.1, "A Group That Almost Became Historic," go by without showing Arai's Les Mis designs from when they first show up (there's no direct equivalent to this chapter in Arai, but the characterization notes from it get woven in throughout the manga from here on out).

Les Amis are quite popular in Japan, possibly because the trope of a group of people from dissimilar backgrounds coming together for a common cause is much more common there than in US-based media, which tends to favor a lone hero (see: Super Sentai, and also, like, every shounen manga ever).

Anyway, here they are (in reverse chapter order):

Grantaire, looking even worse than he does for most of the manga, since he's clearly already VERY drunk:

Joly:

Bossuet, with this being one of the very few adaptations where he's actually bald/balding:

Bahorel:

Courfeyrac:

Feuilly:

Jean Prouvaire:

Combeferre:

And Enjolras:

Arai does explain the pun, with ABC and Abaisse being spelled out phonetically in katakana next to the Roman alphabet characters in Enjolras' dialogue (a-be-se and a-be-sse, respectively). Les Amis are generally known as "ABCの友," (ABC-no-tomo) or "friends of ABC" in Japanese.

[pilferingapples]

I've seen a few other people posting about the new Seven Seas English translation of the Arai manga, and I wanted to do a little comparison with the Japanese and French volumes!:D View of the spines all stacked! Going down: Japanese, French, English Omnibus!

Stack from above! You can get a better idea of how much wider and taller the English Vol. 1 is here:

And that pays off in bigger interior art! Even if I could read both the versions I have fluently (I....cannot) it would be worth picking up the new edition for this! Look at how that bottom panel of Valjean is now big enough to get more sense of texture! Don't let my terrible Android camera fool you, the print quality is excellent:

the B&W work looks great too!

if you can make out the text in the bottom panels, you can see the English is also doing something different in the translations! The French in the last panel says (roughly translating!) something like " The people were supporting the weight of the taxes" ; the English says "The Third Estate, bourgeoisie and commoners, suffered under heavy taxes and poverty." (I can't possibly attempt to translate the Japanese , please go look at @bobcatmoran's excellent posts for that!)

Also while there's no visible color difference between the interior pages of the editions in person, there IS a distinctly different texture--the English volume has paper that feels a lot more substantial and has a different tooth than the typical manga paperback paper of the French or Japanese editions.

Overall a very, very nice edition of one of the best adaptations of Les Miserables! Extremely recommended!

[your-villainous-neighbour]

can't stop thinking abt takahiro arai's evaluation of jean and javert's dynamic, coupled with the massive bold "LOVE IT!!!" at the bottom

exactly, mr arai.

exactly.

[secretmellowblog]

Les Mis Volume 4 is painful, and I love how well the Arai Manga adapts the opening chapters-- the ones describing Valjean and Cosette's relationship in Paris. So many adaptations cut these chapters, but Arai really understands what makes Valjean and Cosette's relationship so heartbreaking and compelling, and writes it with a lot of attention and care. So in honor of @lesmisletters being here, here's how Arai handles Les Mis Volume 4 Book 4 Chapter 1! After Valjean is injured in the robbery/ambush, he returns back home to a worried Cosette. (This is the point where the manga shifts point of view from Marius back to Valjean.) He refuses to see a doctor, probably out of a paranoia for his identity being revealed and also personal trauma, and Cosette begins to take care of him instead. This is basically word-for-word from the book. I love the moment where Cosette helps him up the stairs.

After this bit, as Valjean falls asleep, we transition to a flashback exploring everything that’s happened to Valjean and Cosette since we last saw them. We see Cosette’s childhood in the convent, the death of Fauchelevent, leaving the convent,…I really love the convent flashback pages (not including all of them, but here’s some of them):

After a Sad Fauchelevent Death Scene, we start exploring Valjean and Cosette's early life in Paris. We see Cosette being excited by her new home, getting Valjean to eat better by promising to eat whatever he eats, making sure he's warm by saying she'll spend time in his room so he has to keep the fire going for her...all these little things taken directly from the novel ;-;.

And eventually we get to this sweet little moment, where cosette has Valjean stay by her bed as she falls asleep.

Then we transition back “to the present,” where Cosette has fallen asleep by Valjean while worrying about his wound:

At which point Valjean helps carry her back to her own bed:

....Which is probably not a good idea given his wounded arm but that’s honestly in character. It really shows how much Arai understands the core of Valjean and Cosette's relationship-- how they're each other's staffs, taking care of each other whenever the other is hurt, mutually relying on each other for everything.