Book Review: Pride and Prejudice Manga

Title: Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

Adapted by: Stacy King

Art: Po Tse

Release Date: August 12, 2014

Rating: ☕ ☕ ☕ ☕

My Thoughts:

I love Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. Love it. Which is why I unconsciously cringe every time I hear of a new adaptation, sequel, or inspired by… version of one of my favorite books. I tried to keep an open mind but time and again I've been disappointed, so now I go in expecting the worst. Miraculously I have read two really good adaptations this month. (see this post) One of them was the new manga adaptation from Udon Entertainment.

Adapting any book for manga is difficult and this was no different. Obviously certain scenes and characters were altered or removed in order to keep the flow of the manga. Editor Stacy King did a fairly good job picking the best parts to keep and made an effort to use as much original dialogue as possible. There were only a few panels that I felt were not true to the spirit of the original text, but they didn’t affect the rest of the story so I was able to overlook it. Of course this wouldn't be a manga without the stunning artwork by mangaka Po Tse. Everything was beautifully done, from the characters to the background, even the SD panels were well thought out. The lines were clean and there was lots of detail, which is remarkable considering the volume is nearly 400 pages. You can tell Po Tse did a lot of research and put a lot of time and effort into every panel. Although most of the outfits were accurate of the Regency period (but the Bennet family was dressed a bit too nicely for their station in society) there were some outfits (mostly outerwear and accessories) that had a Victorian look to them. That is just the history major in me being nit-picky.

However there was one issue I had with the text that bothered me, lack of consistency with names and prefixes. Ladies would never refer to a gentleman by their last name only, but Elizabeth frequently says ‘Darcy’ instead of ‘Mr. Darcy’. The other glaring example was Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Sometimes she was referred to as Lady Catherine and other times she was called Mrs. de Bourgh. I know it sounds like a minor issue but it sticks out like a sore thumb when the editor put so much effort into everything else.

While the die-hard Jane Austen fan may not enjoy it as much as I did, just for the art alone it is worth reading. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys Jane Austen, manga, or romance novels. 

**A copy of this manga was provided by Udon Entertainment through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**