Review of Monster
Why has it taken me so long to get to this? Seventy Four episodes. After Naruto, Bleach, and attempting One Piece and getting about 70 episodes in and having had about 1 hour worth of actual content, anything else this long was looking ropey. But then I watched MSG 79 and Zeta, 100 episodes worth with very little filler, restoring faith in the longer form series. So what's good about this? EVERYTHING. Imagine if Broadchurch or early GoT quality of writing, but even better . This is my new standard for ALL media - it can be done... Respect must be paid to Masayuki Kojima, the director.Instead of "adapting" or rather "screwing it all up by inserting their ego that they're better than the original writers that made the thing in the first place" (anything the current crop of exceptionally low quality US writers get involved in > Netflix's exceptionally bad Cowboy Bebop), he's done a direct adaption and it's all the better for it. Similar to what he more recently did with Made in Abyss.
Art - No CGI! Yes, it's getting there with things like Demon Slayer. The art has been adapted directly from the manga, and all the better for it.
Story - Genuine wow: Naoki Urasawa IS clever. He has done his research on psychology and on Europe. The amount of effort he put in pays off for all of us. Everything hinges together > it's both character driven and story driven > and is perfect. Going back to my opening, 74 episodes whiz by because every episode counts, unravelling the masterfully setup mysteries one by one, all paying off satisfactory as they're not abysmal Damon Lindelhof "mystery box with no actual answer".
Music - Another highlight - from opening and general OST by Kuniaki Haishima to the ED by David Sylvian... perfect.
Anything wrong? That second EP music - really doesn't fit.
So bad, the community took it on itself to run through all of it and put the David Sylvian ED on ALL the episodes.
Whomever did this deserves a medal.
Why are others hating on it? They've missed the point or don't have the experience or learning to understand this.
They don't understand trauma and it's reactions, grief, upbringing - they all hate on the same things "It's slow there's so many other extra characters, Oh I hate the ex-fiance she's such a shrew". Guess what these people exist in real life and they're are all examples of sympathetic monsters. My favourite complaints are "why didn't Tenma shoot him, I'd have shot him, I'm a big man" cause the low IQ will always think they're big men.