Review of Monster

This was my first anime, needless to say, it set my expectations up too high. If this was a novel, we would be studying it in school. Every side character is written better than most protagonists. There is hardly any music, it's mostly dialogue and ambience, and in result when music does play it creates breath-taking tension. If you told me Dostoyevsky had written this story I would've believed you. One example I would like to use to illustrate how well-written this show is is of a side character that appears in one episode: One of our main characters, Nina, works in a restaurant. We learnthat Nina was planning to ask the restaurant owner to teach her how to use a gun. She has figured out that the owner used to be a high-end assassin. The owner puts a tremendous amount of sugar in his coffee.

The owner shares his story with us: he used to be an assassin. The pay was good, he showered himself with expensive food, and yet he didn't "taste" it. One day, he was doing his usual work, ready to shoot a man, when he saw him putting the 6 teaspoons of sugar in his coffee. He couldn't kill him, he couldn't strip a man of his daily miracles, his casual pleasures.

Then he says a quote I will never forget: "Killing people is easy, you just have to forget how good the sugar tastes."

And mind you, this is a side-character that appeared for one episode. The main characters are even more complex and beautifully written.

From Johan to Tenma, everyone there is a realistic human being.