Manga Adaptation of Hamlet:

I really had high high expectations for this but unfortunately I was a little disappointed… I thought a manga adaptation would may make Shakespeare’s work more accessible and easier to read but if anything this made everything a little bit confusing.

 

Title: Manga Shakespeare: Hamlet

Authors :Richard Appignanesi (Adapter), Emma Vieceli (Illustrator), William Shakespeare

Length: 204

Source: Purchased

 

First of all the major adaptation to the story was that Hamlet was set wayyy in the future, which I felt like unnecessarily complicated things. I’ve never read Hamlet before so I already don’t know what’s going on… But now having to figure it out this new futuristic world and having illustrations along the way, it was a bit much.

The illustrations were very interesting… at the beginning. I loved the concept of having an illustrated version of Shakespeare’s work, but I found that instead of them making the story easy to follow they complicated it. The art made all the characters look very similar so for half the time I literally had no idea who was who and WHAT the hell was going on.

The nail on the metaphoric coffin was the actual writing… it was still written in the original except now only certain excerpts were included. I personally felt like the text that was included didn’t really help the reader understand what was going on and it was incredibly difficult for me to follow the story.

I finished this in about an hour, not because I particularly enjoyed it but because I kept reading through to waiting for the story to make sense. Anyone out there that isn’t really familiar with Hamlet and the storyline will be very VERy confused (as was I until I read the summary at the end :))

It’s definitely a fun idea but I’m not really inclined to pick up the adaptation of The Tempest I have on my shelf any time soon…