Review of Monster

Minor Spoilers. Monster is quite a daunting anime with a compelling story that reaches into some very tough questions regarding humanity's dark nature and what does it mean to be truly evil. I will warn you though that this be quite a time investment with 74 episodes but I guarantee you that by the end, it will be well worth it but its not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The anime focuses on the life of a world class neurosurgeon by the name of Dr. Tenma voiced superbly by Liam O'brien. Everything in his life is going incredibly well but he questions his moralitywhen he is forced to make decisions that go against his morality that all patients are equal regardless of how privileged they are. He goes against his superiors orders and decides to save the life of a young boy. Little does he know that this choice that he made is going to cause him and the people around him a ton of emotional strife and his perfect life slowly spirals out of control and yet he feels responsible for everything that has happened and he must do everything in his power to stop it.

This anime's strongest point is its story because it really grips you after the first episode. The episodes just give you enough information in each episode to get you excited to see the next episode. Unfortunately the story can often be seen as its biggest fault because while each episode gives you a little more information towards the over-arching plot it gets incredibly aggravating because the series could be moving a lot faster than what it does and with 74 episodes it can be a bit of a time sink. There are quite a few episodes that I would consider useless to the overall plot of the story and you keep asking yourself is there a specific reason why this episode exists or does it really contribute to the overall plot of the anime. This anime is incredibly guilty of doing something that I like to call false momentum. What false momentum entails is when you reach a certain plot point of the anime and it gets you excited to see a resolution to that plot point and there is all this build up within a short number of episodes but it ultimately leads to nothing and therefore as a result the plot point doesn't get addressed until much further in the anime series. Even worse is that there are certain plot points in the anime that have a lot of build up to them only to be completely halted by an episode or two to focus on another character in the series. It's one of the worse feelings to be hanging on the edge of your seat to see a resolution to a plot point only to be left hanging for at least a couple of episodes to address another character in the series.

This may been seen as a much bigger fault if you were watching the anime one episode at a time every week as it was being released, but overall its far more forgivable especially if your binge watching the show. The times that it does off the rails with regards to its main plot point in order to address the show's many side characters don't exist for very long maybe 1 to 3 episodes at the most before it gets put back on the rails with regards to its major plot point.

I think one of the more appealing aspects of its show is its visual aesthetic with regards to its setting and how it designs its characters. All the characters look very realistic for the most part. There are characters with a wide array of differing and realistic body types and it has characters of all ages and ethnic backgrounds and its something you don't see in a lot of anime these days. I do love the setting of the anime because it takes place between the late 1980's to the late 1990's and the majority of the series takes place in Germany and the Czech Republic. This is an interesting setting to build your story on because the Cold War is an integral subject that gets brought up consistently throughout this series and it really lends itself to why so many horrible things have happened to a lot of characters in this series.

Another strong aspect of the series is its characters and the amount of development each character has in the series. This series has a large cast of characters. Its understandable that some characters would be more developed than others but on the plus side a lot of the side characters never overstay their welcome where it becomes exhausting or overbearing to deal with them. They're in this series the right amount of time and they always contribute to the overall story arc. One strange thing that I did notice about the series as a whole is that as the series kept dragging on I found myself caring less and less about the main protagonist and the main antagonist of the series and side characters that showed up fairly late in the series or side characters that started off very unappealing at the very beginning of series started to become more appealing and respected as the series carried on. As happy as I was to see this, its not a good aspect of storytelling if your side characters are stealing the thunder away from the main characters of the series.

Unfortunately my biggest complaint regarding the characters is the antagonist Johan. The hype surrounding this character was completely overblown with no sense of fulfillment afterwards. They started building up this character the right way at the very beginning of the series but as the series continued it disappointed me that for as big and scary that Johan was and his troubled history that made him the way he was we never got to see him do as many evil things as what I would of liked to see. He is kind of an evil force that works behind the scenes, a puppet master per se. There is a lot of great backstory of why Johan is as evil as he is and the atrocities that had in but without any visual stimuli. He is literally a tiger without teeth, or a missile without a warhead. It may look big and scary, but if you peel back the layers than you realize its nowhere near as scary as what he could be. He had plenty of opportunities to live up to his reputation that was exemplified throughout the entire series. There was a character in the series called Roberto and in my eyes he was a much more of a compelling villain than Johan.

This message that this anime exemplifies is what really strengthens it. This is not an easy anime to watch or sit through because it deals with a lot of difficult subject matter such as murder, child abuse, prostitution, the death of innocence, betrayal, psychological reprogramming, and torture. It really exemplifies on how monstrous people can become and what horrors humanity are actually capable of. It really analyzes why people can commit such atrocities and I think of the biggest things it exemplifies is that every human being is capable of being a monster regardless if its something that is forced upon us or its just a part of us naturally. I firmly believe that we're all capable of being a monster. We can go through life trying to be the best person we can be but I also believe that we are all but one bad experience or one bad day away from doing an evil act. This anime shows what motivation people can have when it comes to doing certain atrocities and if there is ultimately a justification for it all or do people simply want to watch the world burn. As Johan is constantly referred to as monster in this series and since Dr. Tenma was devoted to stopping this mad-man once and for all, I really thought that this anime was going to cater to the trope that is often seen in revenge stories of does a person need to become a monster in order to stop a monster. Thankfully it doesn't cater to that trope in full effect but it does straddle that line from time within many of the side conflicts in this anime. I'm grateful that in scenes of intense pressure cooler heads do prevail which adds a great amount of depth to the overall series.

One thing I will appeal and criticize at the same time is the end credits of this anime. I love the end credits of this anime because it shows scenes of a picture book that is a huge plot point in this anime called The Nameless Monster. During the end credits you'll see 3 or 4 pictures of this picture book without any context whatsoever and every 5 or 6 episodes you'll see 3 or 4 more different pictures of this picture book and I love this because its completely open to interpretation and your trying to make sense out of what your seeing and the story its trying to tell. Unfortunately the end credits get ruined half way through the series when an episode of the anime goes into great detail about what the book is about and how it ends and it shows the remaining pictures of the picture book which really makes the rest of the pictures for the end credits in the final half of the anime pretty useless. A minor gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.

Overall, this anime is a perfect example of a psychological thriller that deals with some very difficult subject matter. If you want an anime that explores that darker side of humanity than this anime is definitely for you. I just hope the pacing, and the constant use of false momentum does not take you out of it. If your willing to put in the time than I'm sure you can get some good out of it.

Favorite Character: Wolfgang Grimmer
Least Favorite Character: Johan Liebert

8/10