Review of Monster

Monster is one of the most compelling and engaging shows I've watched. It features a long, intricate plot that's constantly evolving to remain fresh and interesting throughout its entirety. Atmosphere is handled very well through the characters, cinematography, and sound design. Unfortunately sometimes the atmosphere makes it fairly obvious what will/won't happen next, although occasionally this is subverted. The show is constantly playing with your expectations and manipulating or subverting them; sometimes I felt like I was playing a little dance with the show of back and forth expectations vs subversion. One of the highlights of the show was definitely the characters. It proves acharacter doesn't have to have a super whacky personality/design, or a long intricate backstory to be exceptionally likeable, compelling, and memorable. I fell in love with the vast majority of the cast, one of my favourites being Detective Lunge, who was initially set up to be an unlikable antagonist. As with all pieces of literature, characters are depicted as slight exaggerations of real people, however all of them felt very human and were very easy to empathise with. I think this was partially achieved through their character designs, most of which served as great reflections of their personalities, all while retaining an art style that makes them look like believable human beings (compared to many other anime art syles anyway.)

I also appreciate the show's somewhat unique setting, being set in Germany sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While I knew essentially nothing about this particular time and place, everything was made very clear. While of course it was a real time period, to me it felt like exceptional worldbuilding, and was very interesting to follow and piece together how everything worked at the time. Monster of course utilised many aspects of its historical setting into its story, which you might also appreciate if you liked shows such as Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu or Violet Evergarden (I'm aware 'historical' is a genre but I haven't watched a lot of them ok?).

I'm aware the show is often regarded as "deep," and while I have neither the experience nor expertise to support this claim, I will say the show explored some interesting moral and philosophical questions, while leaving them easy to understand for the casual viewer (myself) and supposedly leaving them open ended. I will say though that Johan's motives are a bit difficult for the casual viewer to interpret, for various reasons I won't go into. I got the general jist but I had to watch a YouTube video to get a clear picture. I'm unsure whether or not designing him like this was a good idea; perhaps it's more rewarding to an observant viewer, or maybe it was a necessary design choice to fully explore his philosophy.

One criticism I can acknowledge is that the show is a bit dramatic at times; although if you look at my rating you'll see this didn't affect my enjoyment at all.

TL;DR I like the show and you should undoubtedly consider watching it. 10/10