Review of Monster

*Note spoilers from the 1st episodes are contained Monster is perfection. From the very beginning the story greatly intrigued me. I was fascinated by the corruption of Eisler Memorial Hospital and the darkness of humanity in general. It goes with a theme from "Parasyte", another masterpiece, that humans do things that only benefit themselves. Monster is about a brilliant Japanese doctor living Germany, Kenzo Tenma. Dr. Tenma has it all: incredible skill at his work, a rich and beautiful fiancee, and a promising career at his hospital. All of that is aboutto change with one critical decision that Dr. Tenma faces one night—whether to save the life of a young child or that of the town's mayor. Despite being pressured by his superiors to perform surgery on the mayor, his morals force him to perform the surgery on the young child, saving his life and forfeiting the mayor's.

All of a sudden, Dr. Tenma's world is turned upside down by his decision leading to the loss of everything he previously had. A doctor is taught to believe that all life is equal; however, when a series of murders occur in the vicinity of Dr. Tenma, all of the evidence pointing to the young child who he saved, Tenma's beliefs are shaken. As chief suspect of the murders, Tenma did not get an easy life. As a matter of fact, it seems that the boy he saved was much more than he had appeared to be… Now to clear his name and to correct his past mistake, Tenma must get to the bottom of these and other murders, and investigate the truth of the Monster who is behind all of this.

From the start, Monster intrigued millions. The series has very dark undertones, and the series is almost completely void of anything lighthearted. All of the characters have relevance in the series. The villain is absolutely terrifying. To this day, this is the only anime series that has ever given me a sense of fear because of the realism of the series as a whole. Most of the characters are developed very well, but some more than others. One can see Dr. Tenma's development from the first 3-5 episodes as he changes from the doctor he was in the first series.

The author is very knowledgable on everything; he really did a lot of medical research and historical research on Germany while the country was divided.

However, a series this good cannot be without flaws. Monster suffers from incredibly slow pacing at times, with 2-3 episodes slowing down the narrative as it removes our "protagonist" Tenma from the episodes completely and focuses on other characters. However, as I said previously, the characters are all very interesting, and the narrative picks up after masterfully developing them in a handful of episodes.