Monster: The Face of Evil

[punishermax]

Monster is the story of the brillant brain surgeon Dr. Tenma. Heis the rising star of a hospital in Germany after he saves the life of an opera singer. The director of the hospital dotes on him, the director's daughter is engaged to him and his peers adore him. Yet he feels regret, a poor man died while he wroked on the singer, despite the poor man coming to him first.

The director asks him to forget a young boy who had just been shot, in order to save the mayor of the town who had promised big donations to the hospital. Despite that, Tenma goes with his heart and saves the boy who came first.

The boy is saved, but the mayor dies....






Tenma loses his position as head of his department and is forced to a lower position. His fiance throws his ring back at him and he suffers a drunken breakdown. But...




Despite this tragic murder spree, a silver lining appears. Tenma is taken by the board and made the Chief of Surgery for his good works. Everything is wonderful, he is adored by his patients and all is well.

Nine years later....

A killing spree ends with a suspect in the hospital. Tenma saves him.


The man is terrified. He admits to Tenma that all his partners were murdered by the man who hired them. One night, a guard is murdered and the suspect escapes. Tenma chases him all the way to an abamdoned parking garage.

Where he meets, the monster.

The boy he lost everything for.



Johan reminds Tenma of a promise he made by the sleeping Johan's bedside. A wish that all those people who valued profit over lives, the people who had stopped Tenma's career were dead.



Johan murders the man in cold blood and begins to leave, as Tenma stares in shock.

Johan tells Tenma that he had died, that he was going to leave the world and be gone forever but...






So, how do you deal with the fact that you sacrificed everything, you fiance, your job, everything to save someone, and that person is the pure evil?

Monster is one of the best manga ever. Its totally finished so you can get through it all.

And best of all? Monster is one of those rare manga where the anime is just as good, if not better than the source material. Oh and get this, if you have Netflix?

The entire anime is on Instant right now.

Go and watch it for the love of god.

Medium: manga Title: Monster Creator: Naoki Urasawa



 

Comments

[sharky_chan]

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! MONSTEEEEEEEERRRRRR!!! I LOVE THIS ANIME/MANGA SO MUCH THAT I HAVE TO USE CAPSLOCK!!!!

...and excessive exclamation marks. *cough*.

But seriously, holy crap. I freaking love this series. So brilliant with such great pacing and direction. And the cast...and the post-Cold War elements...and the themes...and the hope amid tragedy...so much love. *fangirl fangirl fangirl*. Going to have to rewatch it now, damn you :P.

[salinea]

you don't need to write the tags in the post anymore, you can tag them yourself.


Monster is quite the intense, well written manga :)

[schmevil]

And the anime is also quite good imho.

[moetushie]

Oooh, I'm intrigued.

[filthysize]

Yeah, Monster is one of the best manga I've ever read. Hell, some days I'll even go ahead and say it is the best.

Naoki Urasawa should really be lauded to be as important to modern comics as Alan Moore is. Monster, Pluto, Master Keaton and 20th Century Boys are all seminal achievements in manga history.

[skjam]

Yawara was good too.

[grazzt]

Hee, great minds think alike. I picked most of those same scans for my own retrospective on the first volume (you can check the Naoki Urasawa tag to find them and a bunch of other Monster posts I made).

[cypherfdp]

Oh fuck, the anime is on Netflix now? Goodbye, next few days

[rainspirit]

Not in Canada, it isn't. :( Blagh, I really should get that IP-changer thing...

[cyberghostface]

I like Monster a lot but I think that 20th Century Boys (also by Urasawa) is better. Anyone else feel the same?

[grazzt]

I think 20th Century Boys is better on a technical level. However, it is essentially one big nostalgia fest for Urasawa's childhood, and thus far more dependent on a knowledge of Japanese popular culture. Like the old guy who is obsessed with bowling, which is supposed to date him to a specific period when bowling was a fad.

Monster just works better for me personally since it borrows more from European fairy tale motifs, which I'm actually familiar with. Like Johan and Anna as Hansel and Gretel. It just instantly clicks in a way that 20th Century Boys doesn't.

[schmevil]

Need to get back into this manga. It is the actual greatest.

[kagome654]

Ah, Monster. Still one of my favourite manga, and the source of many hypothetical questions (mostly concerning Batman, and how long it would take him to track Johan down).

[grazzt]

My favourite scenario is Light Yagami vs. Johan. I mean, does a Death Note work on someone without a name?

[punishermax]

While they're both utterly awful people, I hate Light so much more. At least Johan knows he's a total monster, Light's the biggest, whiniest, most pretentious jagoff ever and Johan would absolutely break him in seconds.

[biod]

Now THAT I would pay to see. I loved Death Note, but seeing that smug SOB getting turned inside out (maybe not literal) would have been the source of much viewing pleasure.

[espanolbot]

Heh, my one is Light vs. the Gandors from Baccano!.

If only because Claire Stansfield being sent after the twerp amuses me so.

[biod]

Claire Stansfield Vs. Anyone is amusing-amazing
Claire Stansfield Vs. Cassandra Cain
Claire Stansfield Vs. Unicron
Claire Stansfield Vs. Spider-Man

[silvercatmon]

I am so trying to get the Graphic Novel Book Club I'm in to read some of this. They said no manga, but we have read things like Scott Pilgrim and Wonton Soup. I'm now really pushing to read Monster and I think it is going to happen.
Monster is just really good.

[darkblade]

No manga but they push Scott Pilgrim through? It is everything I have seen detractors of manga rally against through a western lens.

[silvercatmon]

Scott Pilgrim was pretty recent. And I suggested it. They liked it, so I figured it was time to push for actual manga.
I think the "no manga" rule came from when they first started and kids where showing up and wanted to read the popular manga at the time and not the "V for Vendetta", "It's a bird" or "The Best of the Spirit" that the adults and the people who run it wanted to read.
So it was "no manga" and they started to meet at bars, that way you didn't start talking about what happened in "Preacher" and a child walked in because the parent dumped them and ran.

[flash_fan]

Can't find it on Netflix. Just a bunch of live action stuff. Help anyone?

[silvercatmon]

Search for "Naoki Urasawa's Monster."

[punishermax]

Though you should watch the live action stuff. 'Monster' with Charlize Theron is one of the best performances from an actress you'll ever see and is an amazing film, while the other Instant film Monster is an amazingly awful Cloverfield knockoff.

[flash_fan]

Wow, I despise manga and anime with a couple exceptions but this is AMAZING. Maybe I'm only exposed to mainstream anime and shoujo manga.

[glimmung]

Just like western comics there is a lot a variation. Most is garbage though.

[punishermax]

The list I usually give for good manga and anime is as follows:

One Piece
Monster
Panty and Stocking (this is probably the most controversial but fuck it, It owns)
Anything by Jungi Ito
Evangelion
Studio Ghibli stuff
Yotsuba
Azumaga Daio
Full Metal Alchemist

[theredhood]

How's rebuild turning out? I kicked the anime bug years ago and I'm hesitant to rebuy EVA yet again. Is Shinji less of an emo non-protagonist this time around?

RE: your list; They're all fine and well, but not really stuff I'd recommend to people who aren't fans of the medium. Monster, Junji Ito and the Ghibli stuff kinda transcend tastes...

Yotsuba took me by surprise since I'd written it off as "Country with weird ten year old girl fetish writes yet another book about a ten year old girl! Shock!" and instead it's totally brilliant slice of life stuff akin to Calvin and Hobbes.

One Piece, Panty and Stocking and FMA though are pretty much the kind of things non fans have in mind when they rally against the medium.

[biod]

"Is Shinji less of an emo non-protagonist this time around".
Oh, you have no idea. Rebuild is what Eva would have been like if it had stayed on its meds; still nightmare inducing at times but a lot more stable.

[silvercatmon]

Manga I would recommend:
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (A humanoid robot in post-apocalyptic Japan. A whole lot of interesting nothing happens. I don't think it's been officially translated.)
Yotsuba&! (As someone else said it has got a Calvin and Hobbes feel.)
Pluto (Retelling of a Astro Boy story "The Greatest Robot on Earth", I'm still reading and love it)
Monster (Of course)
Death Note (This is really good, but is longer than it should have been. It was so popular the creator extended the story. Now there is some really good stuff in the extended part, but you will know when it should have ended. Try the live action version, a good retelling of the story)
Fruits Basket (Shoujo, comedy romance at it's best. You will see all the tropes, but it's still good.)
Fullmetal Alchemist (Read a couple of volumes and what I seen is good. FMA is over hyped and could be considered overrated, but that doesn't mean it's not good)
Barefoot Gen (Set right after bombing of Hiroshima. Very serious with shocking comedy. I couldn't keep reading.)
Kodocha - Sana's Stage (Comedy with some romance. I love this series. You watch Sana grow up and part of her never does.)
20th Century Boys (Haven't read it yet, but heard it is really good)
Akira (Heard great things about it. What you see in the anime is just a very small story)

[nezchan]

Ohgod, I am SUCH a fan of YKK! It's one of the most beautiful, lyrical comics I've ever read. If I could come up with something a fraction that good, I'd be overjoyed.

[shanejayell]

GREAT series. *nods* It was just... SO good. :D

[shanejayell]

Oooh, I loved YKK too. I even have a Cafe Alpha jacket a friend made for me. :D

[captain_ziggy]

The genres and options tend to get a great deal broader when you move out of shojo and shonen and take a look at seinen. (It's possible that I could say that for josei too, but that would require someone to actually bother to translate more than, like, three josei titles.) With shonen, most of the stuff is dominated with "headstrong, book-dumb hero teams up with his pals and fights an array of increasingly powerful foes" thing because everyone remembers how DBZ made a shitton of money.

Seinen, on the other hand, doesn't appear to have one dominating narrative (unless you count the whole moe slice of life trend, but it's best not to get into that can of worms. The point is they haven't been doing that for 10+ years like with shonen action series.) and turns out things like:

Pulp Fiction homages about immortal 1930s gangsters

Tokugawa-era meditations on the nature and consequences of revenge

Tokugawa-era meditations on holding on to or letting go of the past

Dark comedies about psychopomps-for-hire

Badass viking sagas

Gory tales about a boy and his sociopath alien parasite of a left hand

Diametrically opposed buddy-cop superheroes developing Seriously Intense Feelings towards each other

And then some.

Not to say that seinen is inherently better -- just that you might not find some of them quite as off-puttingly samey as what you've read before

[espanolbot]

Eeee! Baccano! :D Baccano! is love!

[captain_ziggy]

Yes it is, though I'm a bit sad that we didn't get to see Drugs & the Dominoes fully adapted because of time and cultural hangups about drugs. Luck Gandor basically gets to be Awesomeness Incarnate in that book ("Oh, don't mind me. I'll just be over here, tearing out the throat of a guy three times my size with the jagged bones of my own severed hand. Also, I just single-handedly -quite literally- saved you from falling into the same sort of life that kinda fucked me up. You doin' okay?"), and it is the GREATEST THING EVER.

AND IT DIDN'T GET ANIMATED. Boo.

[biod]

All we can do is pray for a second season.

[espanolbot]

Apparently it wasn't that popular back in its home country, so it wasn't renewed for another season (not that it mattered, the point of the show is that a story doesn't really have a start or beginning, so things happening after the action stops, like the cameo of Maria the Mexican Samurai early in the series, imply that the characters kept having adventures beyond what was shown on screen).

Another season'd be nice though. Like 92 year old Claire and his extensive clan of kids, grandkids and great grandkids would have been interesting to see.

[grazzt]

Oh man, I love Kurosagi. It's such a great concept, especially with the overuse of "psychic detectives" on TV nowadays.

[mullon]

*sigh*

Johan Liebert started out with so much potential. And then they totally wasted it in the end.

EspanolBot's Recommended Anime shows and series'

[espanolbot]

As everyone else seems to be doing it.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (the movies are good, but the tv show expands on the characters and setting in more detail) - a post-cyberpunk series based around an anti-cyberterrorism group, the cases they're investigating and the people who get in their way (offend different parts of the same government).

Baccano! - a Depression-era based show with a jigsaw puzzle plot that fills in the blanks as you move through it. It involves immortal gangsters, a character who is essentially an antiheroic version of Dick Grayson as a horrifying violent assassin with a literal god complex, eccentric performance artists/master criminals and alchemists. It's semi-sequel Durarara! is also worth watching, albeit more of a consistantly light tone.

Black Lagoon - both a manga series and an anime show, it involves a group of modern day pirates operating out of a Thai city that is essentially a subtropical Gotham City lacking in any superheroes. Imagine something akin to Sin City, except without the sexism and general suckiness.

Darker than Black - only seen the first series of this so far, so I can't speak for the second's quality, but this generally a very good quasi-superhero show with a lot of memorable characters. Essentially, after an odd cosmic event that blanked out the stars, groups of seemingly psychotic superhumans started showing up. The show details both their antics as well as the conspiracies that pool and swirl around them. Like X-Men, only without the whining.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - chances are that most people would have heard of this one. Originally starting as a light novel series, this went on to being not just a very sucessful tv show, but also an animated movie, radio drama, a line of music based on the characters etc. The plot involves the titular girl, who may be God, trying to find aliens, time travellers and psychics to hang out with with her friends (who are aliens, time travellers and psychics) who are desperately trying to keep their own secrets, while at the same time keeping Haruhi amused so she doesn't destroy and recreate the universe (again).

Princess Mononoke - beautiful movie, the dubbed version is written by Neil Gaiman of all people, and involves the end of the Age of Magic and Gods in Japan and the rise of the modern age. Really, really good. Also, it has an awesome female protagonist, and does a good job at making most of the bad guys at least somewhat sympathetic.

Akira - Incredibly well made cyberpunk movie, involves motorcycle gangs and a group of psychics. Amusing to watch after seeing Batman Beyond, as a lot of the motiffs were translated later over to BB. Not really suprising as they shared some of the same creative staff (or at least Return of the Joker did).

Cowboy Bebop - bounty hunters in the future try to escape from the pasts they left behind while trying to scrounge a living in an overpopulated Solar System. So much as been said about this show, that all I can really do is just ask you to go and watch it, it's that good.

Well, those are my favourites. There are more which I like, such as Ghost Hunt, Guardian of the Spirit and Bleach (sorry XP), but they are kind of hit and miss in places.

[biod]

Might as well add a few of my own:

-Summer Wars. Does it take some stuff from War Games and more directly Digimon's take on that scenario? Sure, but it's still a moving film about family with some nifty concepts and amazing visuals.

-If you want something romantic I recommend either Clannad or Toradora. Clannad pulls more strings but Toradora had the better characters IMO.

-Steins;Gate is the adaptation of a Visual Novel, but based on how meticulously it's plotted you can't tell at all. Basically the very eccentric Okabe Rintaro (self-proclaimed MAD SCIENTIST) and some friends accidentally invent time travel and CERN wants to use it to rule the world. It is very, very good.

-Princess Tutu (bear with me here). It's an epic ballet in anime form. It's nickname is Guitar Ninjas for reason. Plus, it's all set to classical music, being a ballet and all. Some of the first episodes are a bit formulaic, but it gets better quickly and keeps going.

_Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the manliest thing you will ever watch. This is Super-Robot action with no limit. It has more balls than brains, knows that, and loves every minute of it. You will too.

-Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica. Watch the first three episodes. Any more would give the game away. It's in my top five for a very good reason.

-Finally something light and funny. Lucky Star, Nichijou, and Ouran High School Host Club are all absolutely brilliant shows that will never let you stop laughing (unless they're pulling heartstrings). Mitsudomoe is one that had me laughing throughout, but it's not for everyone.

[espanolbot]

Ah man, I forgot about Summer Wars! XP And the Girl Who Leapt Through Time! Those were outstanding!

[nezchan]

One rec I didn't see that's always been a favourite of mine is Hoshin Engi, which in a lot of ways is just a straight action series that goes totally nuts as the genre tends to do. What makes it really stand out is the lead's "wheels within wheels" style of doing things, reading several steps ahead of his opponents. It's great fun, all told.

I'm also fond of Hikaru No Go, although it really should have ended before the North Star Cup business, that was a bit of a letdown.

[punishermax]

Panty and Stocking owns because it's one big satire of the worst kinds of anime stuff . The transformation sequences of sailor Moon are literally on stripper poles, the engrish is so bad that I'm pretty sure the term 'father-fucker' is crammed in thgere, the male lead suddenly turns into a handsome prince when you like move his hair a bit (though he immediately gets ripper on the next episode).

Besides that, the animation is fucking amazing and it has an incredible soundtrack.

If nothing else, do a youtube search of the OST, it's god damn outstanding, with the new remix album being even better.

[biod]

The OST is the only anime ost I own besides Baccano. Really should think of Dragon Crisis & Cowboy Bebop next time I shop for albums.

Been meaning to find a way to use this...

[silverzeo]

http://youtu.be/KvS_G9F3dEk?t=7m10s

Remember seeing the anime OnDemand. Didn't realy watch it though, thought it would be too gritty for my taste.