, also known as Count Cain, is a gothic shōjo manga series written and illustrated by Kaori Yuki. Earl Cain consists of five parts or "Series": , , , , and the sequel series .
Debuting in the Japanese manga magazine Bessatsu Hana to Yume in December 1991, the manga was eventually transferred to Hana to Yume, where it ran until 1994; the chapters of the sequel, Godchild, appeared between the May 2001 issue and the October 2003 issue in Hana to Yume. Together, the series spans 13 volumes, with five for Forgotten Juliet, The Sound of a Boy Hatching, Kafka, and The Seal of the Red Ram and eight for Godchild. Two drama CDs based on the series were also released. Set in 19th-century England, the series focuses on a young earl named Cain Hargreaves who solves murders while encountering his father's secret organization, Delilah, that experiments with reviving the dead.
Earl Cain is licensed for English-language release in North America by Viz Media, which published Forgotten Juliet, The Sound of a Boy Hatching, Kafka, and The Seal of the Red Ram as The Cain Saga. The first volume of The Cain Saga was published in October 2006; the final volume was published in June 2007. Godchild was released simultaneously, as well as being serialized in Viz's manga anthology Shojo Beat from July 2005 to June 2006.
The setting of the manga was inspired by "the darker, grislier side" of the Victorian upper class and her admiration of films set in the Victorian time period. For Godchild, she traveled to London to do historical research and visited seven historical sites there. In the series, she refers to the Bible as well as real-life literary works, films and people. Reviewers have found a range of themes in the series. Critical reaction to The Cain Saga was mixed: some felt that the mysteries were well-done with detailed art, while others found the art crude and the short stories confusing and predictable. Reviewers praised Godchild as an overdone, entertaining series with detailed and distinct art.
Plot Characters Set during the late Victorian era in London, the series focuses on its eponymous protagonist the seventeen-year-old son of Alexis Hargreaves and Alexis's elder sister, Augusta. Abused physically and emotionally by his father for her subsequent insanity, Cain poisoned him, after a dying Augusta warned him to escape. Before Alexis plunged into the sea, he cursed his son to have a miserable life and die alone. Cain inherited his father's title of earl as a result of his presumed death. Accompanying him is his twenty-eight-year-old butler , a former medical student with whom he shares a close bond. Cain's uncle and legal guardian tends to become upset with his behavior and course of action. Often annoyed by Cain's relationships with women, Cain's ten-year-old half sister, the outgoing and strongwilled also lives with them. Previously, she lived on the streets as a fortuneteller, after her mother died to protect her. One of Cain's friends, Oscar Gabriel, becomes her self-proclaimed fiancé to win back his father's attention. As the series progresses, he risks his life to protect her, and she realizes that he genuinely cares for her.
and his secret organization, Delilah, serve as the antagonists of the series. Delilah conducts experiments to revive the dead, creating "deadly dolls" or resurrected corpses surviving on the fresh blood and organs of others. The deadly dolls each possess a supernatural ability, such as seeing the future. Among the deadly dolls is the spider-controlling , who is a doll of , Augusta's daughter and Cain's childhood love. Cain's half brother and Alexis's illegitimate son, works as a doctor for the organization, conducting experiments on humans. Although Alexis physically abused and emotionally traumatized him as well, he refuses to escape from him, and simultaneously despises and envies the bond between Cain and Riff as he believes unconditional love does not exist. His thirty-five-year-old assistant , whose body stopped growing due to a rare strain of dwarfism and who was subsequently sold to a circus as a child by his parents, shows concern for Jizabel and his involvement with Alexis and Delilah.
Story Having vowed to end Delilah's experiments with the dead, Cain solves murders while periodically running into Jizabel and other members of Delilah. After encountering Mikaila, who professes her one-sided love for him and wants to become Suzette, he becomes obsessed with destroying the organization and learns that it is secretly building a memorial temple. Meanwhile, despite Jizabel's efforts to delay Riff's second, hidden, and cruel personality from awakening, the hypnosis suppressing it breaks. Riff later declares to Cain that he secretly works for Delilah: the loyal, kind-hearted Riff Cain had known is an alternative personality used to deceive others. Alexis had intended for Cain to develop a close bond with Riff, only to break it, to remind Cain that he is unloved. After Riff's departure, Cain resolves to confront Alexis and promises Mary that they will have a tea party after the conflict with Delilah ends. Led by Cassian, whose brain has been transplanted into an adult body, he reaches the tower within the temple where Alexis plans to sacrifice the brainwashed people of London to revive Augusta. Within the tower, Riff reveals his intent to overthrow Alexis. Unconcerned, Alexis divulges that Riff is Delilah's longest surviving doll and will soon die. Riff attacks Cain, but Riff's other personality resurfaces, causing him to deliberately shoot himself. Riff's loyal personality triumphs over the cruel one, but he and Cain are separated. Because Riff's wound cannot heal, Jizabel commits suicide so Riff can use his blood to briefly remain alive and return to Cain. Meanwhile, Cain successfully poisons his father and with his death, the tower begins to crumble. Cain, unable to escape and hurt by the falling debris, reunites briefly with Riff. However, the ceiling collapses and Riff tries to push him away. Cain embraces him, choosing to stay.
After Cain's disappearance, Mary becomes head of the Hargreaves. Augusta possesses Alexis, and seeks out Mary in the mausoleum Cain had built before leaving to confront Alexis. Augusta reveals that she manipulated Alexis into abusing his sons and trying to resurrect her for her amusement. Before she can kill Mary, Augusta triggers Cain's trap in the mausoleum and dies. Years later, Mary is married to Oscar and pregnant with their child, although she still waits for his return. Crehador, a medium close to Cain, sets up a tea party for Mary, fulfilling Cain's promise; he then reminisces on how he found Cain being held by Riff's corpse within the ruined tower. The bunkoban-exclusive epilogue expands the ending slightly. It shows an elderly Mary, who lies on her deathbed attended by a woman nearby and hears the laughter of Jizabel's ghost as he plays with his pet sheep. Sensing a presence nearby, she dies, and taking the form of her ten-year-old self, her soul joins Cain hand-in-hand at a tea party with their friends and loved ones—although they exist as spirits, a boy nearby can hear them.
Development
Earl Cain was Kaori Yuki's first major manga series. Early in her career as a manga artist, Yuki had had difficulty selling her manga stories and had then switched genres to write romantic comedies, such as "Orange Time Bomb," following advice from older colleagues that she would not be successful with the kind of stories and illustrations she had previously been creating; after receiving increasingly favorable reader responses to a "dark" miniseries of hers, her editor decided that she should be writing similar stories. The next story concept that she pitched was Earl Cain. She chose the Victorian era as the setting because she liked films from that time period and was inspired by "the darker, grislier side" of the Victorian upper class. Yuki considered Kafka, a vampire-themed mystery which introduced the secret society led by the protagonist's father, to be the beginning of the series' plot. The "pretty risqué theme" of Kafka "embarrassed [her] at the time." After completing the first four parts of Earl Cain (Forgotten Juliet, The Sound of a Boy Hatching, Kafka, and The Seal of the Red Ram), Yuki was uncertain about continuing the series. She wrote her supernatural fantasy manga series Angel Sanctuary (1994–2000) and the chapter "Solomon Grundy's Sunday" as a "self-introduction" which convinced her to start Godchild.
Yuki did historical research for Godchild, traveling to London, England, and visiting seven historical sites: Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, the British Museum, Thames River, and Hyde Park. Because of the gap of several years between the publication of the final The Seal of the Red Ram volume and the first Godchild volume, Yuki included the characters in order of previous appearance with past episodes, and short explanations in the first Godchild volume. Yuki noted that her drawing style differed from her previous series. The darker plot of Godchild worried Yuki, but helped her to decide the series' ending. Her method of creating suspense in Godchild included adding "lots" of black screentone, "exaggerating" the characters' expressions, having an elaborate setting, and opening the chapter with an everyday scene to contrast with the "scary scenes".
Yuki believed that the original story was unclear and added extra pages to clarify the twist ending of the series. Because of her decision, the ending chapter of Godchild was eight pages longer than the usual thirty pages for a manga. Yuki was divided between a happy or tragic ending for Cain, noting how readers of Angel Sanctuary had wanted a happy ending for the protagonists. She felt that the ending of Godchild was ambiguous as to whether Cain survived because there is neither blood nor a fatal wound on him. Yuki chose the final line of Godchild from the rhyme "Simple Simon", joking in the postscript that at least the series did not conclude with the line "And then there were none". As of finishing the series, Yuki said that she has no plans for additional chapters or side stories. Despite this, she included a five-page epilogue in the 2010 bunkoban release of the entire series.
Influences and cultural references
Earl Cain contains references to real-life people and literary works. The first Godchild chapter, "Mad Tea Party", focuses on a mystery with elements from Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a work which Yuki has expressed her fondness for. Yuki's minor character, Victoria, was inspired by Carroll's character, the Queen of Hearts. Carroll's 1876 nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark, provided Yuki with the name of Jizabel's childhood pet, Snark. Additionally, the title of the third part of the series, Kafka, refers to the Austrian writer Franz Kafka, and a translation of the first line of his 1915 novella The Metamorphosis appears in the beginning of the volume. Yuki also based the story of Mikaila on the fairytale "Mermaid Princess". The chapter "Oedipal Blade" takes its name from the Greek character Oedipus Rex, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Yuki also incorporates tales for children and lullabies into the mysteries of the series; for example, the chapter "Solomon Grundy's Sunday" uses the nursery rhyme "Solomon Grundy", while "The Twisted Fairy Tale" refers to the Brothers Grimm fairytale "The Juniper Tree". References to the bible also appear in the series. The protagonist shares his name with the murderer Cain, and Augusta is compared to Delilah by her father. Additionally, the series alludes to the story of the Kiss of Judas, in which Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus of Nazareth to Roman soldiers by identifying him through a kiss.