Is the manga Emma a retelling of Jane Austen's novel?

Question

I haven't read either, but was wondering if the manga Emma is the same as the novel by Jane Austen under the same name.

They have several similarities:

• They're both set in Victorian England.
• They both have the same title
• They are both romance stories

Jane Austen is a famous author, and it's conceivable that someone could adapt her novel into a new graphic format. However, none of the descriptions I've read of the manga mention Ms. Austen.

Are the series related?

Answer 1

It's a reasonable question (see Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo), but I think the answer is no. Note that I also have not read either work, but from looking at the Wikipedia articles for the manga Emma by Kaoru Mori and the novel Emma by Jane Austen:

• The manga Emma is set in 1895 in the Victorian Era. This is much later than the novel Emma, which was published during the Regency Era in 1815.
• One of the defining features of the title character in Jane Austen's novel is that, unlike the heroines of earlier Austen work, she is independently wealthy and runs her own household. The anime's Emma is a commoner, kidnapped as a child for a brothel, who escaped to the streets and was taken in and brought up as a maid by a wealthy family. She is a diligent and hard worker, whereas Austen's Emma was described by Austen as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like" and is said on the Wikipedia article to have "a strong sense of class".
• Anime's Emma lives in London, whereas Jane Austen's Emma lives in a small country estate in Surrey.

It is possible that the manga's author, Kaoru Mori, incorporated some influence from Austen's work, since she's a self-declared Anglophile,

The author and illustrator of the manga, Kaoru Mori, is a self-professed Anglophile, [...]

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But overall, it doesn't look like a direct adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma.

Answer 2

If there is any relation between the two, it is scarce at best. While I didn’t read Austen’s novel, I watched the anime adaption of Emma, the manga. A pretty long scene (I would almost call it a key scene) is set in the Crystal Palace which was built for the 1851 Great Exposition. Austen’s novel was published in 1815; way before anybody even thought of the palace.

It would be conceivable that some other publicly accessable exhibition site housed a similar scene in Austen’s novel, but then why go such great lengths transferring the entire scene and thus the entire work to a point in time decades later? I think it’s just way too unlikely; that’s not really the kind of thing you do when adapting a story.

Answer 3

That's a yes but also a no. Very interesting that both are set in England in the 19th Century.

On the side of yes, there is a manga that is a direct adaption called Emma: Manga Classics by Stacy King (who performed the adaption), Jane Austin (who of course wrote the original story, and Tse (who was the illustrator)

By contrast, the series of manga simply titled Emma by Kaoru Mori is a completely different English tale from a similar time period but about 50 years removed.

Answer 4

Actually, there is a manga named Emma and which is based on Jane Austen's novel, and it's from an artist Yoko Hanabusa.

I think you're confused because there are two mangas and animes with the same title and pretty much nearly everything else but the role of the major character.

Answer 5

They are not the same at all.

I have read the novel and I watched the first 2 or 3 episodes of Emma. It's like saying Michael Jordan and Michael J. Fox are the same because they have the same name.