Review of Monster

Never seen a show so highly regarded and begin with a solid premise only to waste at least 80% of its runtime on episodic BS, splitting up the characters for no reason, pointless external conflicts, red herrings and distractions that endlessly delay the actual plot. You had 74 episodes to weave a meaningful murder thriller story, and very few of these episodes are actually interested in anything of the sort. If the plot isn't moving forward, are we developing the characters? No, like I said, arbitrary external conflicts or the characters just up and leaving instead of having conversations always leads the characters to being pawnsof the plot. They never have clear motivations or goals in terms of how the story treats them--they just do things and react to Johan, Tenma's actions and movements. Emotions and feelings are never expressed that show deep character movement or progression. They just look sad, forlorn about 'oh no I have to kill Johan', humanity is bad, murder make me sadge, cri cri. The rest of the time is just filled with recap of prior events (that are also not meaningful).

Is it realistic? In some ways, yes, in many ways no--it has plenty of contrivances, conveniences or deus ex machinas that any story often has. It's realistic sometimes but actively obstructs its plot and mutes its character motivations when the writer hasn't decided what to do yet.

Mid at best, often worse than mediocre, waste of time.