Irene: [i]There’s another explanation for Javert’s suicide which I think is almost as valid - that he both accepts that Valjean has changed, and that the right thing to do is to let Valjean go. But, looking back on his past, he has to wonder how many other lives he’s ruined as a result of his misguided efforts to maintain order. Which isn’t to say that Javert’s an incompetent policeman in the slightest - quite the reverse, in fact, as intelligent, honest men are hard to come by in any profession - but he must have made a few mistakes of this caliber before. Fantine’s case, for example, comes to mind.[/i]

That seems to be the road the anime took with sorting out Javert’s motive for both wanting to commit suicide and for finally accepting mercy into his life. I don’t think he thinks of Fantine specifically during his mental maelstrom on the bridge in the book, but he does in the anime. He certainly acknowledges that Valjean is a good man now, which mainly causes his confusion. Someone had the English subbed episode on youtube at one point, but it has since been taken down. :(

Javert MUST die!

Come on, people. In Japan, suicide is an accepted and admired thing… they are not f***in’ Catholics! Japanese kids hear the story of the 47 Ronins as an evening tale. So why the hell have they let Javert live?! This is just laughable.

BTW, I am grieved by the fact that no one’s posting here anymore. This was a lot of fun.

Well, I did get to see the episode, and my cerebral cortex exploded. At the part where Javert “saw the light,” I had a sudden flashback to Jim Carrey’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” It was one of the most awkward things I have ever forced myself to watch. I tried to do it a second time, and I just couldn’t. The rest of the episode was fine, just not . . . that one little part. Oy. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I actually understood what was being said. Somebody has got to sub this episode!

:)

Actually, I don’t think we could ever say that one character is bad in the book. Life hasn’t been easy for all of them but they’re not bad themselves.

Well, except Thenardier. ^^, I think he’s as close to “villain” as anyone gets in this book. But that doesn’t mean he’s not enjoyable to watch. I put Madame Thenardier as second-most villainous to her hubby because she genuinely loves her daughters. Thenardier’s motives are mostly self-centered (moreso later on when his family is dirt poor). So, yeah, there’s the whole nature vs. nurture issue going on there - to what degree can we blame people’s wickedness (strong word, I know, but sounds better than “badness”) on their personality, or their environment? No, no one is 100% evil, just as in real life, but there are certainly people who tend to lean to the dark side rather than the light.

Well, I finally saw the trailer for the next episode. Is it just me, or was Javert’s name mentioned, like, three times? At least it looks like Gavvy’s all better.

Anyway, the reason Javert is my favorite character is that even though he appears to be one-dimensional, he’s actually a very complex character. There’s so much we don’t know about him and what it was in his past that made him the way he is. He’s not a hypocrite, either, which is why I’m worried that the creators will ruin Javert’s character in this anime by having him let Valjean go and be totally okay with it. If he’s not going to kill himself, they should AT LEAST have him resign from the force.

I actually had the cute but incredibly unlikely and completely uncanon idea of Javert adopting Gavroche and his “boys,” making a sort of parallel with Valjean and Cosette. This would also resolve the problem of what will happen to these gamins once Gavroche recovers. Completely impossible, but so cute to think about.

I beg to differ on this matter. Javert doesn’t kill himself because he can’t accept that Valjean has changed. Hugo himself says that Javert understands this, though he doesn’t come to that decision without a struggle. Javert kills himself because he realizes that he couldn’t possibly turn Valjean in - not after he’s come to realize all that Valjean has done - but, on the other hand, his moral code won’t allow him to simply let an escaped convict go free. For the first time, he’s confronted with a situation where doing what is right by the law would, in fact, be morally wrong. Simply rejecting the law is no easy matter for Javert; after all, these are the rules by which he’s lived for fifty years. Like angedemystere said, he can’t handle that - so he decides to remove himself from the problem.

There’s another explanation for Javert’s suicide which I think is almost as valid - that he both accepts that Valjean has changed, and that the right thing to do is to let Valjean go. But, looking back on his past, he has to wonder how many other lives he’s ruined as a result of his misguided efforts to maintain order. Which isn’t to say that Javert’s an incompetent policeman in the slightest - quite the reverse, in fact, as intelligent, honest men are hard to come by in any profession - but he must have made a few mistakes of this caliber before. Fantine’s case, for example, comes to mind. We know from his behavior in M-sur-M that he’s as hard on himself as he is on everyone else - just look at his attempt to resign after he “mistakenly” suspects that Madeleine is Valjean - and, in his mind, that can’t go unpunished. But “How to resign from God?” he wonders, and he resigns from his post as inspector the only way he knows how.

Either way you look at it, Javert doesn’t kill himself because he’s cold and heartless. Javert isn’t even cold and heartless in the book. Like angedemystere said, I’m sure Hugo might’ve meant him to be, but Hugo was simply too good a writer for that, and his “great talent for characterization” (was it AmZ who said that? or Sythar? I can’t quite recall either xD) transformed Javert into the snarky, talented man we see in the book. There’s the Javert Hugo tells us about, and then there’s the one Hugo shows, and frankly the one Hugo shows - which I’m far more inclined to accept as the “real” Javert - is anything but cold.

All in all, though the concept of Javert not killing himself is extremely shocking, I am not quite ready to pass judgment on this series. The questions that are most important right now are: What is going to happen to Gavroche and Javert? Will we actually see Javert again, or is he gone for good? Will Gavroche stay with Marius and Cosette? Will he be reunited with his “boys”? Will he return to his former life as a street urchin? These are going to be crucial issues that I hope the creators will be able to resolve adequately. I’m keeping my fingers crossed . . .

Because the characters we knew and loved through the series died so early, we get shown the cold and hard reality of the revolution, and Les Amis are basically engaging in something that can quite easily kill them. Compare this with a similar anime that refuses to kill off its characters: there’s no sense of tension because well, the characters won’t die anyway, so why should we bother to care for them? Of course, I say this without knowing what kinds of effects the deaths of Gavroche and Javert had in the book. Were there people who cared about them? Did their deaths influence the people around them in any way?