Review of Monster

When I first announced to some of my friends that I was watching Monster, I usually said something like, “Monster is a 74 episode animated television series. It is a series about a monster, and the monster is man.” I mostly said this as a joke because it sounded very clichéd, like one of the things you’d read on the back of the DVD case. But now that I have watched the entire series and have had ample time to really think about it, I realize that while that statement might be dumb, it is a accurate statement about the series so if that linedidn’t make you completely disinterested, I’d personally recommend you to keep reading and hear what I have to say about Monster.

Now before I go on I should warn you all that this review spoils the first five or so episodes of the series. Considering that these episodes don’t even make up 10% of the series, I really wouldn’t consider any of these major plot spoilers. Preferably I would not spoil these episodes but the central plot of the series isn’t really revealed to the viewer until he or she has made it five episodes or so into the series and if I plan to really discuss this series, I need to summarize some of the events of those episodes so that those of you who are not familiar with the show will able to understand at least some of my statements.

Monster is based on the manga of the same name, which was written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa. It is a Japanese animated television series that began airing on April 6th, 2004 and ended on September 27th, 2005. The anime series is directed by Masayuki Kojima and animated by the animation studio Madhouse. The series primarily follows Kenzo Tenma, a benevolent and talented Japanese brain surgeon who works at a hospital in Düsseldorf and seems to have a very bright future ahead of him at the start of the series. He is on the doorstep of a very successful medical career and is happily engaged to the hospital director’s daughter. But things turn sour as Tenma soon realizes that the hospital’s bias of treating politicians over others has led to the deaths of some unlucky common folk. One night Tenma is ordered by the hospital director to stop operating on a young boy, who got shot in the head, so that he can operate on a politician. But instead of following orders and leaving the boy’s life in the hands of a less competent doctor, Tenma decides to continue the operation and saves the boy’s life. This decision ultimately leads to the death of the politician. Soon after this the director tells Tenma that he will do all in his power to make sure that Tenma will never advance in his medical career. This however soon ceases to be a problem as the director is mysteriously murdered one night and the boy who Tenma saved goes missing. There is an investigation done on the murder and while some suspect that Tenma might have been the murderer, as he was the only one who would have a believable motive, no decisive evidence is found, causing the case to be left unsolved.

Nine years later Tenma has reached the occupation of chief of surgery. One night, when he is checking up on a patient who is connected to a series of serial murders, he discovers that the patient is mysteriously missing from the hospital. Tenma goes out and eventually finds him with a beautiful young man who is the one behind all the murders. But that’s not all, as Tenma also discovers that this young man, who goes by the name of Johan, is actually the boy who he had saved nine years ago. Once Tenma knows this he is troubled by feelings of guilt and decides that he will leave the hospital in order to find and kill the monster he resurrected all those years ago.

One thing that I really appreciated about this show was the way it handled Johan. Considering that the show is called Monster one would expect the primary antagonist to be one who is not only able to commit atrocious crimes but one who is also terrifying. Luckily Monster is a show that manages to create such an antagonist, primarily through two means. The first of which is the actual look of Johan.

While Monster is far from an eyesore, the overall character design for the series is a bit more realistic and therefore more ugly than the majority of mainstream animation. Most of morally good characters aren’t particularly attractive and almost all of the morally bad characters are pretty ugly. But Johan is special as he is arguably the most evil character in the show and yet is also the most attractive male of the whole cast. Johan is a young, beautiful, blue eyed, and blonde haired boy and the dissonance between his appearance and the atrocities that he commits was something that was always unsettling.

The other, and arguably more important, way that the show is able to make Johan intimidating is the fact that he is a character shrouded in mystery. While a fair amount of the series is spent slowly revealing little bits and pieces of Johan’s past, the truth of the matter is that by the end of the series you have probably seen him for less than 10% of the entire series’ runtime. This was very surprising to me as he is the primary villain of the show and is introduced very early on in the series. At first I viewed this as a bad things since it meant that he doesn’t have much in the way of character development. But after thinking about it a lot I realized I actually really appreciated the lack of exposure to Johan. Unlike a lot of villains, he doesn’t get any opportunities to make any long, dramatic, and drawn out speeches where he explains his plans and motivations, which keeps him from becoming a over the top James Bond villain. Not only that but the lack of time you spend with Johan helps him keep this mysterious vibe that makes him feel more like a spooky legend rather than just some attractive guy who likes to kill people. By the end of the series Johan is responsible for countless deaths but you almost never see him take the steps to actually murder someone and while that might seem lazy, it makes it so that he never becomes predictable, which makes him seem all the more intimidating. While almost all the characters constantly talk about Johan, people are very rarely aware of his location or actions even though he is never that far away from any of the characters at any given point and is often subtly guiding them. Because of this Johan always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else and is a sort of a puppet master who can subtly change the plot with invisible strings. While Johan isn’t in much of the show, he undoubtedly leaves a creepy and ominous impression that lasts from his introduction to the very last frame and because of that he is one of the best villains that I have ever seen in a television show.

In fact one area that this series definitely excels in its the characters. With 74 episodes, the cast of Monster becomes extremely big and it is truly impressive how high of a many of them are fleshed out. Most characters, even those who are only appear for one episode, are memorable and given some sort of back-story or clear motivation for their actions. Even now, I can still remember some characters that were only present for 10 minutes or less at the very beginning of the series. I can mostly attribute this to the fact that many of them were so well realized that they felt like real people and thus I could easily imagine them in their lives outside of the events of the show. And this praise can be extended to the central characters of the show. By the end of the series you get such a clear understanding of what kind makes characters like Tenma tick that they become almost like family. This all not only makes the show interesting but also serves to make all the suspense and drama that unfolds extremely engrossing since these two dimensional drawings in some ways feel like actual three-dimensional people.

One thing that should be noted about Monster is that the pacing is fairly slow. Now this is not to say that there are long periods where not much is happening, in fact I felt the show does a good job of doing something interesting frequently enough that my interest was always peaked. It’s just that the show meanders a lot, at least during the first half. There are a lot of episodes in the beginning where Tenma takes time out of his epic quest in order to help out random people. While these episodes are well made as they can be quite emotional and also serve to develop Tenma’s character, I can’t deny that it was annoying how frequently the show seemed to get side tracked just so Tenma could help an old lady cross the street. There are even a few stretches of 3 to 5 episodes where Tenma isn’t even present. While what transpires does end up being very important to the plot of the series, it can sometimes feel like you’re watching a completely different show when these stretches occur. On the one hand I sometimes enjoyed these breaks from the central plot. The characters focused on during these sequences are genuinely entertaining to watch and some of these elongated breaks gave me time to breathe in between the very suspenseful and sometimes extremely dark events of the plot. I however also do have to admit that the inclusion of these scenes is part of the reason why the series is so long and can sometimes feel drawn out. While I do feel that the show’s length makes the whole story seem grander, I can’t help but wonder how much tighter the series could’ve been if some of the fat was trimmed.

But while the show might seem to take breaks, you definitely shouldn’t. As I have stated before this show’s cast is incredibly large and sometimes important characters will be introduced in an episode and then disappear for twenty or so episodes. Even though the characters are well written enough that they are easy to remember and keep track of, I do not think it is outside the realm of possibility for some viewers to get confused if they take a particularly long time to make their way through the series. Plus the story does get fairly complicated in the latter half of the series.

Speaking of confusion that is a feeling that I felt all too often as I was approaching the conclusion of this series. Now for the majority of the series the plot is fairly easy to follow. But around half way through the series, characters begin to uncover a conspiracy that is related to Johan’s past and around the time the last ten episodes rolled around I got completely lost within this subplot. This probably occurred because a lot of information needed to be crammed into a limited amount of time, meaning that in order for the writers to keep a solid pace, a lot of info needed to be included in a lot of short conversations. While this was executed fairly well in terms of keeping the show entertaining, it did mean that it was easy to miss some details when ten fairly complex things are being covered in one 3-minute conversation. Fortunately most of the series, including the conclusion, can be enjoyed and understood even if this part of the story isn’t fully understood. Its just unfortunate that a section of the series that the writers obviously put a lot of time into was not able to leave that much of an impact.

Another thing that I felt didn’t really live up to its full potential is the exploration of morals in the series. Very early on, many characters express a fear that Tenma may end up going down the wrong path if he decides to kill Johan. Also, there are a lot of scenes throughout the series where Tenma will see someone injured and either take them to a hospital, or treat them in some way right then and there. While it sometimes got repetitive to hear Tenma constantly yelling, “We need to get him/her to a hospital!” these scenes do showcase the irony that a man who has a deep conviction to save lives, is now spending an elongated period of his life tracking down someone to potentially kill them. Both of these elements seem to hint at the fact that the writers wanted to put in some deep moral conflict into the series but unfortunately the discussion of morals only really goes skin deep. Characters express their fear to Tenma that he will become that which he hates if he goes through with his mission but they never go any farther than just saying things like, “you shouldn’t kill Johan because killing is bad.” I realize that one of the reasons this ended up happening was because Tenma often goes out on his mission alone, leaving his friends behind. While this serves to make some scenes more intense, as Tenma is not often able to rely on the kindness of others, this also extremely limits his interactions with other characters and thus gives the writers fewer opportunities for characters to discuss morality. I got especially annoyed during one part where Tenma befriends a man who has a goal that very closely parallels his own to stop Johan. At first I got excited because I thought that the show could include some interesting conversations between the two where might start to see their own moral flaws or shortcomings in the other. Unfortunately this character left before anything thematically interesting could really transpire. Also, without spoiling anything, the episodes leading up to the end felt somewhat cheap since events transpired in a way that allowed a conclusion for Tenma’s story to be met without him having to make any of the tough moral decisions which had been hinted at since very early on in the series. While, I do realize that the discussion of morals could’ve slowed down the series even more, I can’t help but feel that the show just ended up dropping the ball when it came to this aspect of the show.

And while I’m addressing pet peeves I should talk about the soundtrack. Now let me start of by saying that I love this soundtrack in terms of the actual music. While it is not exactly music that I would listen to by itself, it is truly amazing how effective a lot of the music can be in accentuating feelings during certain scenes. But while I did love the music I can’t ignore the fact that the way in which some of the soundtrack was used did knock my experience down a notch. On the soundtrack there is a particular track entitled “The Seeds of Time”. Now I actually really like this track. It starts of with strings giving off a very soft and sinister vibe. Then after a while it proceeds to become increasingly more loud and bombastic. It is a great piece of background music for any scene where tension slowly builds up to a thrilling climax. Unfortunately, the people working on Monster also realized this so every time anything vaguely intense happens, this track plays. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem for a two-hour film or a 13 episode miniseries. Monster however is 74 episodes long and the characters are about as good at staying out danger as I am at walking on water. This means that you better get used to hearing that track if you watch Monster as by the end of the series it is probably played for at least 30 minutes of the total runtime. While this is probably just a personal a nitpick, I can’t deny that around the time I got to episode 50 or so I started to notice just how often it was being played and that unfortunately made some scenes loose their punch, at least for me.

But don’t let these complaints fool you into thinking that Monster is a deeply flawed series. In truth when I first finished watching the series I got a warm and tingly feeling that only occurs when I have finished watching something I thought was very good. Although I will admit that the moments leading up to that were making me worried that the conclusion would prove to be a disappointment.

Now I’ll be completely honest here and say that I was not pleased with how the last two episodes were playing out while I was first watching them. As I have stated before I felt that certain aspects of the conclusion of events felt cheap and while I found it adorable how the show tried to give some sort of resolution to all the little threads that were created throughout the series, I wouldn’t exactly call the execution graceful. Plus one half of the very last episode seemed to be devoted to tying up a loose thread that I’m pretty sure didn’t exist up until that point. I was however able to forgive all this once I began to experience the final five minutes of the show. Within that short time one final conversation took place, which not only managed to provide some final closure to the story, but also manages to raise some final haunting questions about some of the more mysterious characters of the series as well as human nature in general. In this sense it is almost like a twist ending as it allows the viewer to think about many of the events that took place over the course of the series in a completely new context. Monster’s ending might have been more like a whimper than a bang, but it is a whimper that managed to be more impactful than most of the bangs that I have experienced.

When I look back at my viewing of the series, I feel that one of the best things I can say about Monster is that I sometimes completely forgot that it was an animated show. In America animation is treated more like a genre than a medium. Usually if a show or film is animated, it means that it is either very juvenile or very crude. While there are exceptions, Americans don’t seem to believe that animation is medium that can be used to tell mature, serious stories. But Monster, to me at least, is the perfect proof that this belief is wrong. Even though the series is animated it is a long-winded and dark crime thriller that wouldn’t feel too out of place next to a show like Breaking Bad. There is really no reason why the show needed to be in animated form and while it may not gain much from being animated, it is a prime example of how animation can tell a mature story without resorting to some brutal violence or sexual activity.

Even though Monster doesn’t reach its full potential in terms of exploring its themes, I do believe it does a good job of commenting on human nature. A lot of stories that try to touch upon the darker side of humanity and society usually resort to depicting worlds that are dark and edgy where the strong prey on the weak in gruesome ways. While these stories don’t always miss their mark, they often go so over the top in their brutality that their worlds end up becoming unbelievable. But Monster’s world is one of balance. For every atrocity that takes place there is a heart-warming miracle. For every brutal serial killer there is a loving mother and child. For every dark and disgusting alleyway there is a breathtakingly beautiful countryside. While this balance does ensure that Monster is not a show that ever becomes too dark nor too nice, it is also one that manages to make all the bad in its world seem worse by juxtaposition. It’s one thing to see savages blow each other’s heads off with magnums, but when the same thing is being done between a savage and a well to do doctor who just wants to make the world a better place, it really drives home how horrible humans can be. Every display of human kindness in the show makes every bit of human depravity in the show seem all the more unexplainable and detestable. Wild animals may kill each other in the wild but that is usually done in self-defense or because of a need for food. Humans however are the only animals, at least to my knowledge, that will kill and torture members of its own species for seemingly no reason and that is a fact that Monster reminds the viewer countless times throughout its 74 episodes. And it is through this that the Monster is able to show that the man is truly the world’s most monstrous animal.