I figured they really pared this down but I thought that they did a decent job of showing the complexity of chang's character...at least his inner struggle with his sexuality vs his open homophobic attitudes in front of Ed..from the movie scene to the graveyard. He had to rape his love interest to finally accept his attraction to men, specifically Ed. I heard that in the novel, the rape was much more violent like he was trying to physically break Ed and also that ride home was portrayed more like he dumped Ed's body. Is that accurate?
Not just Chang's scenes tho
Where can i read the novel in english?
Compared to the novel, the manga cut too much of Chang's scenes, whether it's the reminiscences or their sex, the novel is far more than that, just some of the chapters I saw, say some difference
1Chang said, "Did I do too much？" in front of McQueen. He was not unscrupulous, but he was afraid that Ed would disappear from his side. In fact, since they had sex, he became humble
2 Ed was not without consideration of Chang's terms, but when Chang stated that it was "relief", Ed was outraged.
3 The most unsatisfying was that the comic's portrayal of Chang and Ed's sex scene was almost all truncated. In the novel, Chang even uses his hands to do Ed's anal dilatation.
4 Regarding Chang's memories, this is the most censored, there are few scenes of Chang himself, and even fewer after being censored, Chang's grandmother, which should be said to include the family around him, was not very kind to him, and the love of the whole family given Xiao ling - the dead brother. Chang survived as an outcast. "Though the body grows, the heart remains stuck in the memory of abandonment." His bad native family brought him a bad personality, which is barely reflected in the 60th chapter of the comic.
5 On the ending of Chang, Chang deliberately doesn't say sorry to Ed's face because he feels that the present Ed has changed, that "the object of desire is gone," and that in the end he still likes the once Ed and lives forever in the memories of the past
6Why Chang likes Ed? There is no clear description in the novel. Just because Ed looks like his brother. And it made him feel bad. At that time, Chang did not know how to deal with this emotion. I guess it was because this homosexuality like brother's incest made him overwhelmed.
Conclusion: Jaxx's adaptation of comics has changed the character of the novel. If you only read comics, you will often find that Chang is very inexplicable. There is no doubt that he is a despicable rapist.
But if you read a novel, you will know that his heart is also full of contradictions and struggles.