Review of Monster

- Summary (TL:DR) - The show started strong and slowly meanders its way to the finish line. The characters were very much defined from the get go and changes very little throughout the story. personally, I didn't find as deep and complex as the fans of the show claimed it to be, but I didn't find it to be as much of a snooze fest as it's haters claimed. So what do I think about Naoki Urasawa's Monster? Ehh, it's fine, I don't find it particularly offensive but I doubt I would be recommending it to anyone. If you're thinking of watching the show, watch the first4 episodes, and then continue watching but thinking of the episodes after episode 4 as its own separate series.

- Story -

I remembered when I had first seen the first few episodes of the show, it was perhaps the most compelling first episodes I had ever seen in all my years of watching anime. I began recommending this series left and right. I thought to myself "could this be the one? Had I found the one true masterpiece? Is there where my anime watching career will end?" No. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

As I continued forwards through the 72 episodes, never again did the series ever grab me as much as it did in the first few episodes. The story began to drag on, the mysteries became obvious, disposable side characters were introduced and all the tension that had been built up through the first few episodes has vanished by the half way point.

While the story still remained complex, it was not for the reasons one might hope as the plot began to tangle around bland uninteresting side characters forming arcs which barely connected to the main storyline. The beginnings and ends of each arc were very obvious and disjointed which isn't necessarily a negative, but the conclusion of every "filler arc" did serve to remind me of just how much of my time that this show has wasted. There was no reason (apart from the manga source material) that this show could not have been half its length.

As for the end, I will not spoil it. I will, however, say it was obvious that Urasawa had planned this ending from the very beginning as the ending reflected an ongoing theme within the show. But by the time we got to the there, I felt that the theme in question had already been reinforced soo many times throughout, that by the time we arrived at the ending, it had no real impact.

- Art & Sound -

I found both the art and sound to be serviceable, it didn't add anything to the show but it also did not detract from it. It fitted nicely with the mood and atmosphere the show was trying to achieve.

- Characters -

The characters were by far the weakest point of the series, while not your traditional archetypes, the characters lacked complexity and dimensions. The main characters were defined very early and received very little development despite the long runtime.

Take Dr Tenma for example, our protagonist, you'd think with 74 episodes mostly following one man's journey of redemption, that we'd at least see multi-facets of that characters but nope, Dr Gary Stu can do no wrong, not only does he never doubt his actions, he is infallible, omnibenevolent and to top it off, his hands had healing abilities which would have made Jesus jealous. (I totally forgot to mention Nina, AKA female Tenma)

As previously mentioned, as the story dragged on, many shallow side-characters were introduced, all with their own problems for Dr Tenma to solve. In fact, most of the main characters in the show could be summarised in one short sentence. I will refrain from making examples as I do believe the first few episodes are very much worth your time.

The characters in Monster lacked humanity, making them appear robotic and soulless. Which would explain why the most compelling character by far is the main antagonist of the story, but as the story dragged on. even he became more and more like a force of nature character, rather than a true character. It's as if Urasawa had written the plot points rather than characters.