Review of Monster
Overview: What happens when the world's nicest doctor accidentally saves the life of the world's most evil man? We get an amazing 70+ episode anime of course! Story: 10/10 The story begins in 1980s West Germany with a brilliant young neurosurgeon named Kenzo Tenma. One day Kenzo is about to operate on a Turkish construction worker, but is pulled out of surgery at the last minute to operate on an opera singer instead. The opera singer survives and the Turkish construction worker dies, because everyone in this hospital besides Tenma is criminally inept. The wife of the construction worker berates Tenma for not operating on her husband,when he arrived first at the ER. Although this isn't very realistic, it provides the series' first of many moral dillemas for our hero Tenma. A few days later a similar situation occurs with a young boy coming into the ER with a bullet wound to the head at the same time that an important mayor needs an operation. Tenma decides to follow his morals this time and operates on the boy that came in first. As a result, the mayor dies and Kenzo's career at the hospital comes to a grinding halt thanks to his scum sucking boss. Kenzo's career rebounds when all of his enemy's mysteriously die in a single night and the boy disappears. Years later Kenzo learns that he saved an absolute monster and ridden with guilt decides to hunt down this man and right this wrong. Much like some of my other favorite anime, Monster's plot often contains unrealistic coincidences, cliche' plot devices like amnesia, and other elements that make it fodder for snarky pseudo-intellectuals to rip on. What makes it good is that it builds suspense in the style of a classic Hitchcock movie. It is thought provoking and emotionally rewarding. When the protagonist must make a difficult moral decision, we the audience share his suffering. It is true that it is not very realistic, but that doesn't mean it isn't good. This is the writing style of Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and the majority of classic literature. You can go ahead and laugh at it if you want to, but you are missing a great story.
Characters: 10/10
The main character is Kenzo Tenma, who is an almost Christ like figure that must navigate an often cruel and cold world. He is relentlessly hunted by the well meaning but narrow sighted Inspector Lunge, who believes Kenzo is guilty of murder. This relation is pretty much lifted directly from Hugo's Les Misrables, but I'm not going to dock points for an anime having literary allusions that are actually well done. Tenma's nemesis is the anarcho-nihilist maniac Johan Liebert. Johan wishes to cause the maximum amount of suffering and destruction simply because he can. He has no fear of death and can't be persuaded with offers of money or power. He is not going to swear and sweat bullets if one of his plans is threatened. This guy simply doesn't give a FUCK. He’ll likely remind viewers of the Joker from The Dark Knight. However, Johan's pure level of frightening evil and frequent targeting of children with his hypnotic charisma reminded me even more of literature's original anarcho-nihilist monster: Nikolay Vsevelodovich Stavrogin from Dostoevsky's The Demons. The characters in Monster are larger than life and often far from realistic. I have already explained why I don't consider that a cardinal sin of writing. These are great characters and the viewer will get to know all of them very intimately.
Art: 8/10
I actually don't have that much to say about the art. It is quite good, but not the best I have ever seen. Interestingly the art does the opposite of the writing and follows a highly realistic style. There is no moe silliness, giant sweat drops, or fountains of blood coming out of people's noses. Asian characters actually look Asian and can be told apart from the European characters. This is a lengthy anime, but the art doesn't degrade in quality as the series goes on and it didn't blow its budget halfway through the series leaving us with a complete lack of animation at the end (cough Evangelion cough). Overall an 8/10.
Music: 8/10
The Music is often haunting and does a great job of building suspense. It doesn't have many catchy themes that you will be whistling in the shower, but it gets the job done nicely.
Enjoyment 9/10
Let me just warn you that Monster can be quite slow at times. In order to not get ahead of the original manga and not have to create a truckload of bullshit filler, Monster can sometimes move at a snail's pace. It is also very dialogue heavy and tends to lack action, that is when the Magnificent Steiner isn't there to grace us with his badassery! None of my friends made it past episode 5 of Monster, due to its very slow start. However, if you can make it past the first few episodes and have a little patience, it is quite the ride.
Overall 10/10
I absolutely adored this series despite its flaws. The manga is my favorite manga of all time, and this anime is a spectacular adaptation. Supposedly Monster is scheduled to become a live action HBO show directed by Del Toro. I am eagerly awaiting new developments on this since rumors started a few years ago. I recommend Monster from the bottom of my heart.