Naoki Urasawa | JΛΠIMUZΞ ヤニムズ

A couple of weeks back I finally finished the Monster series anime. The fact that it only took me about a week to finish all 74 episodes is either testament to how awesome it is, or a sign that I need to start taking on some more projects here to occupy my time. I know this is somewhat an oldie… I’ve heard allot of good things about it, I’ve just never taken the time to watch it. Until now that is and let me tell you I am very glad that I did. I was, at first, afraid that it wasn’t going to live up to the reviews I’ve read – it certainly did. Written by Naoki Urasawa – known for his intricate manga series, and produced by Madhouse Studios (of Death Note fame, among many others), Monster is a great anime take on the classic horror / mystery style story. Here’s a trailer:

I think this is my new favorite anime to tell you the truth. It differs from others in that it’s a classic horror / mystery style anime, or Seinen. Despite it’s name, there’s no real “monsters”, strange creatures, giant robots etc. It’s in a very realistic setting and also very story based, which is typical for Seinen. It’s definitely a slow burner, being 74 episodes at about 22 minuets each, but like a good book that is hard to put down, I found it very hard not to watch just one more episode. And then just one more… And maybe just one more (suddenly realizing the sun has started to rise…). If you like a really good story-based series as much as I do, I definitely recommend this one – if you haven’t already seen it!

The story starts off in 1986, a divided Germany before the destruction of the Berlin wall. Dr. Kenzo Tenma is a neurosurgeon from Japan currently practicing at Eisler Memorial Hospital in Düsseldorf, Germany and is considered to be the best in the country. He is the head of Sugary and is favored by the chief of medicine, even poised to marry his daughter Eva Heinemann. One day, Tenma is pulled from a surgery on a woman’s husband to treat a more hi-profile patient, an opera singer who has suffered a brain trauma. Though the signer lives, the woman’s husband dies. She confronts Tenma hysterical, asking him why he abandoned her husband to die, why he didn’t perform surgery on him since he was first. This encounter makes Tenma start to ponder whether he had done the right thing in following the directors orders and operating on the singer instead.

After some time, Tenma is called in on another emergency surgery. Two young kids, twin brother and sister who had just witnessed their foster parents murdered were brought in to the emergency room at the hospital. The girl was suffering severe psychosocial trauma, but was otherwise physically alright. The brother however, had suffered a severe gunshot wound to the head and needed surgery to remove it. Just as Tenma was about to perform surgery on him, the mayor of the city suffered a stroke and was flown in to the hospital. Tenma was ordered by the director to stop the surgery on the boy and concentrate on the Mayor. Tenma however, certain that the boy would die if he did not perform the surgery, disobeyed the directors orders and operated on the him instead, letting other surgeons handle the Mayor. As a result. the boy lived but the mayor died.

Because of his disobedience to the director, Temna is stripped of his title as chief of surgery and demoted to the lowest doctor position in the hospital. Without his status and title his faience, Eva, rather curly breaks off their engagement. Tenma however, undeterred by this, carries on as a regular doctor, standing behind his decision to save the kids life, and that the director and his latch-key doctors were selfish uncaring jerks that might as well be “better off dead”… Well, a week later the director as well as several other prominent doctors are found dead, poisoned by contaminated candies. The boy Tenma had saved and his sister have also vanished.

Nine years later, Tenma has made a comeback. He is once again the chief of surgery at Eisler Memorial Hospital and is living by the code that “every life is created equal and deserves to be treated equally”. He no longer puts hi-profile cases above anyone else and he thanks the boy he saved for making him realize this.

However, there is an ongoing string of cereal murders is taking place across Germany and when Tenma treats a patient suspected of having ties to the killer, he will come face to face with Johan Liebert, the charismatic but psychopathic mastermind behind the murders, a man of pure evil who also just happens to be the young boy whose life he saved nine years prior. This attracts the suspicions of Inspector Heinrich Lunge who believes Tenma must be somehow linked to the murders. From this point on, Tenmas life will never be quite the same.

Like I had mentioned earlier, what really makes this such a great show is the extensive storyline and plot twists. Just when you think you have the whole story figured out and are wondering how it’s going to remain interesting for another 50 episodes, a new character comes in and a new story arch starts to develop, changing everything. There are some episodes that some have called “filler”, they aren’t. Every episode adds detail to the story so that you can see the whole picture when a new twist comes along.

The character development in this series is also excellent and rather prudent. Every seeming unimportant character winds up playing a larger role later in the story, especially as things start to change later on in the series. There will be times where the main story will leave you hanging, wondering if someone is dead or alive when the story suddenly forks off on someone new. However, it always meets back up with the main story line, adding to it to make it even more intense.

The “look and feel” of the series is very fitting to era in which it takes place. The older style of animation adds to the sensation of being set in the early ’90s. Character appearance also fits the personality of each person within the story flawlessly.

Again though, and I can’t iterate this enough, what makes this series is the story. If you haven’t already seen it you definitely should. You’ll find it hard not to forget sleep, work and social obligations and just keep watching. It used to be available on Hulu, but it has recently been pulled (because Hulu sucks hard when it comes to having any kind of selection whatsoever), but it’s on Netflix instance queue. If these aren’t an option (say, due to local restrictions) and you wish to watch, message me for alternative places where it’s streamed.

Photos and Character Bio Links from MyAnimeList.
Featured Image by mick347.