Review of Monster

Monster is a reasonably good anime with a lot of flaws. I found that it did everything right, but still managed fail as entertainment. Not to say that Monster is a bad anime, but it was a sore disappointment to me after all the hype. I'm going to take a somewhat critical view of it in this review, but it has many positive qualities too. If you want to know what these are, you can look above me at all the people who rated it 9 and 10. Story: If one thing can be said about the story, it's deep. It deals with a lot ofmoral and ethical questions and explores psychology. One thing it isn't is entertaining. There are a few cool plot twists here and there, but they don't manage to overcome the fact that this anime is *slow*. The plot is well-written, but could have been told a lot better if the series had 48 fewer episodes. The story itself is good, but not mind-blowing. It also fails at creating horror and suspense.

Art: The art is very unique. It aspires to be more realistic than other anime and along the way falls into the same trap so many first-person shooters succumb to: it just isn't nice to look at. The art makes everything feel drab and lifeless, like you're looking at a cardboard cutout. The color pallette is limited to muted tones and browns. Some may say it fits with the series, I agree. It's boring and not something I want to watch for 74 episodes.

Sound: The music for the show is fairly good. Not rush-to-download good, but reasonably fitting to the scenes, with a few tunes (particularly the show's main theme) that stand out and really add emotional impact. The two EDs are some of the most unpleasant music I've ever heard, although I suppose that could be by design too.

Character: The characters in monster are similar to the rest of the show, boring. OK, I'll admit I liked Runge a lot. Other than that, they really didn't do much to grab me, they're just too...normal. You also really don't get to see them react to that many different situations, so don't really know them that well. There are way too many characters on top of that. Of the 100+ character cast, only Tenma, Anna, Johan, and Runge recieve any real development, and the show continues to throw more and more characters at you right up until the very end, none of which you can really care about.

Enjoyment: As you can probably tell by now, I didn't really enjoy this anime. I rate it a 7 because objectively, it's a pretty good piece of work. I had to quit watching twice for long periods of time to get through all 74 episodes. It just didn't grab me. I didn't want to watch it. I kepy waiting for "the good part", but it never came. The last 5 episodes are fairly entertaining however. Overall, a decent anime, but not worth the 37 hours of your life required to watch it.