Review of Monster

***Warning There Are Spoilers*** You know what… I’m just going to say it… The show kind of sucks actually. And you know what is really stupid?! Almost everyone on MyAnimeList thinks that it’s the greatest thing since canned bread. But it isn’t. The biggest reason why it’s bad is because it gleefully abuses the mystery box approach. In other words, the show rather pointlessly withholds the villain’s backstory and motivation from the audience for as long as possible until the very end. This results in the audience having next to zero idea as to who the villain really is outside of his name. Furthermore, this causes his relationshipto the other characters to be extremely underdeveloped. What’s particularly egregious is that the villain barely has any screen time whatsoever, electing to have his lackeys do his work for him. This would have been acceptable if we got any sort of development for him through these various henchmen… But that doesn’t happen. Even worse, the writers actually tried to redeem him towards the end of the story and my jaw dropped in disgust. This guy – to put it bluntly – does not deserve any sort of redemption. He is a sick sociopath that killed hundreds of people. He even killed his twin sister’s foster parents. And now the story wants to act like “he wasn’t so bad after all”?! What the actual [bleep]!

Another reason why the show is horrible is because of how convenient the plot is. Almost all of the important players bump into each other exactly when they need to! This makes the world feel very small. This wouldn’t be so bad if this only happens a couple times, but that’s not the case. This is a pervasive issue that I keep rolling my eyes until I legit lost the ability to see. There’s no introspection, no discussion, everyone is exactly where they need to be. This is made even more egregious when you realize that there were several points where the main character could’ve killed the villain. But then he just doesn’t…even though the whole purpose of the show is for the hero to kill the villain. And there’s no really convincing rational as to why. It just feels like the story artificially keeping the villain alive to pad out the series.

I also feel that the majority of the characters do not have a cohesive character arc. Almost everybody is exactly the same as they were at the start of the show. This is partially because the main character is a Gary Stu. Aside from saving the villain at the start of the story, he never does anything that would be considered a mistake that was a result of his actions. He is still as altruistic as he was at the start. He never makes a mistake which makes him experience sufficient introspection to come out as a fundamentally different character by the end.

Another point of annoyance is the twin sister character. She freaks out at everything constantly. Especially towards the midpoint of the series, there isn’t a single moment where her eyes are twitching constantly and she is not panicking. I almost wanted to go onto the TV and slap her so she would shut up. I don’t even think she does anything of importance aside from just giving the audience more useless exposition. I know that she was supposed to be the victim here… But the writers overplayed her trauma so much that I was laughing my ass off at several points.

And don’t get me started on the main character's wife (or ex-wife depending on what point of the story you’re at). I understand that she was supposed to be unlikable. That part I’m fine with. But her redemption arc was absolute bullshit. Her her sudden and inexplicable emergence of compassion came out of nowhere and was completely unearned. It was almost funny when she started crying because it felt so random to me. She was the picture perfect cold stone [bleep] for most of the story only for her to suddenly become it’s somewhat caring character. And there was no attempt to bridge this transition whatsoever.

So yeah the show is garbage. It’s literally just a bloated and pretentious mystery box with characters made of cardboard. I don’t know which is worse: the fact that I just wasted my time, or the fact that it took me this long to realize that it sucked.

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