Take A Pick Tuesday: Monster
Whether A Fluke or Keaton’s winning smile, the Master Keaton
Take A Pick Tuesday a couple of weeks had enough readers to make me give in to
the urge to write about another anime by the same creator, Monster. Some shows
are good, some shows are great, some shows are great and important; Monster
falls under the category of the latter. With all the insight you get inside the
human soul, what we as people are capable of, you would think it would be more
than you could bear to see in another episode but also you see the compassion,
redemption, love and hope that are also there within the show, not to mention
the quiet moments and the wonderful scenery that breathes in between the
dialogue of the show. In that sense there is similarities to Master Keaton and
of course some of those moments are the show’s all on its own. Monster is that good and while it may be a 70+
episode journey, it’s easy to find the episode count fly by.
The story of
Monster focuses on Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant neuroseurgon destined to rise
to the top in Eisler Memorial Hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany. Tenma is not
only the director’s favorite due in part to the amazing surgeries he performs
but also that director’s daughter’s finace. An incident with a grieving Turkish
woman blaming Tenma for not operating on her husband, sure that if he did he
would have saved him, begins to shake him deeply. Suddenly the world he
realizes he’s a part of looks to be a horrible empty void, where people find
more value in reputation and money than they do in human lives. He remembers
that at the moment of preparation for an operation on the Turkish man, he was
asked to go into another room and operate on a famous Opera singer, which would
help to boost the hospital’s reputation even more. When the director and his fiancé
write off the suffering woman’s complaint as if it meant nothing, even saying that
lives aren’t created equal, something begins to change within him. It just so
happens that the next time he’s called in for an emergency operation it’s a boy
found shot in the head, his sister cationic from witnessing the trauma and the parents,
two high profile escapees from the other side of the Berlin Wall murdered. Once
again as he preps for this dangerous surgery that he feels only he can perform
to save the boy’s life, he’s asked to operate on the Mayor just brought in.
However Tenma sticks to his guns and the true reason that doctors should help
save lives because all lives are created equal. Tenma saves the boy but seems
to lose everything else, his engagement with the director’s daughter, as well
as his position getting demoted.
When Monster
shows people being not so nice, they don’t pull any punches and of course you
think wow can people really be that messed up and the answer is of course. That’s
one of the reasons Monster is such a heavy hitter you can always find truth to
the when people seem to act horribly, it happens all the time. The director and
two other doctors even try to turn the recovering boy and his sister into a
media circus, before they can though they’re all found dead, poisoned by a candy
they all ate, gifts for the boy from the public. The hospital turns a 360 and
Tenma is promoted, ironically it seems believing in the reason he’s a doctor
had proved to be the right path after all. Then ten years later, at this point
the Berlin Wall is taken down, a lock picker is brought to the hospital, after
Tenma saves him and finds out he was attached with others that were involved
with a series of murders of middle age German couples, he helps to convince the
man to choose the right path and redeem himself until one night, the guard by
the man’s room is found dead by the same candy that killed the two doctors and
the director. The lock picker is running from something and by the time Dr. Tenma
reaches him he sees him begging for Tenma to run, the reason is the young man
standing in front of him, the monster, the one that was responsible for the
murders and who hired him. The young man, Johan had been his name when he was
brought to the hospital as a child, yes he turns out to be the boy Tenma had
saved. Johan executes the man and leaves Tenma in a world that turns upside
down once again.
His reason had been the child but the child he
saved turned out to become a serial killer. The police would have their doubts including
one Inspector of the BKA, Inspector Lunge. Positive that Johan is a part of
Tenma’s mind and that he’s responsible for the murders as well as the director
and the doctors all those years ago, it leaves Tenma on the run. Yet he had
already chosen to leave anyways, feeling responsible for bringing back Johan
to life, he might choose to kill him but what he finds out about Johann and his
missing twist sister Ana is far more, far worse than he could imagine. This
leaves to question who are the real monster, Johan are those that had turned
him into this, more of a cause of concern than his well-being Tenma is consumed
by this traveling as far as he can to try and right this wrong. It follows you
into the darkest corners of what people are capable of and Tenma is one of the
many moral scales when we visit these dilemmas of the human soul. Having described
all that is really I kid you not the synopsis. Monster is a layered, suspenseful,
moving drama that if you haven’t seen it yet than I highly recommend it to be
the choice for you this week.
Whether on the
country side, with the fields and the sun high in the air on a hot day or
sinking on a waiting couple out of gas in the middle of nowhere, in the city
with large buildings or the small villages “like from a fairy tale” to the neon
lit red light districts, the show is quite beautiful, the animation embraces
the moments in the story that leave the mind no choice but to linger. Monster
explores the different parts of Germany and Prague as well, just like with
Master Keaton, the characters have very human faces, each different from the
other. I’ve heard some say the manga is more detailed but I have to say if the
manga could move, the anime would be it to the tee. Even characters that don’t
return over and over again leave a lasting impression because they do explore
many perspective and many paths of the characters moving down different paths
that basically lead to the same place, at times intersecting before the final destination,
still have memorable qualities to them and no they aren’t fillers, not just hey
this character met them moments, they build on the dilemmas of the characters
and reinforce who they are and what it is they want. Even in the calmer moments
of the show, shadows play a big part in the animation techniques, the sinister
things around every turn, shrouding characters until it is time to find out who
they are. A technique that Urasawa
actually uses quite often in his manga, always leaving the impact desired. Like
Master Keaton if you were ever curious about the countries involved than you might
be more so afterwards and if you live in them whether it’s everything you can
recall or not, you will see a pattern in Urasawa’s works, there’s a clear
interest in the countries he often uses in his works.
Not to shake a stick at the music either, well-orchestrated
it lifts your spirits in the quiet moments, even some closer to being festive
and keeps you on the edge of your seat in the suspenseful moments and chills
your blood during the many revelations in the show. As for the release of
Monster it’s actually an interesting thing, VIZ licensed it and have released
the first box set, the first 13 episodes and that was it. Some red tape along
with a few other reasons prevented them from ever releasing the rest, despite
this it had aired in its entirety on both Chiller, a horror channel as well as
SyFy. Not only that there was a time it was on Netflix, Hulu, the whole nine
yards. These days it’s a little harder to find Monster yet it is there. One
place to check is on VIZ’s website, they stream episodes on there though lately
even that has changed and then there is the Australian brand Madman Entertainment
had planned a release a while back. There’s always a chance that it’ll be
rereleased and this time in its entirety.
Another strong reason for this is that Guillermo Del Toro, big time
director of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Devil’s Backbone, Chronos and Pacific Rim,
had submitted the script for a first season of a live action adaption of
Monster for HBO. The script was approved by Naoki Urasawa who these days always
wants to see the scripts to his works being adapted and it’s been a little
quiet on that front but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Wait there’s
more, VIZ has started doing some releasing on one front, manga. The manga was
released from beginning to end a while back but VIZ decided to release Monster
in these larger collections, Perfect Editions that are quite beautiful, two
volumes are out already with a third coming out in January. Speaking of his
other works, Master Keaton is getting released in manga form for really and
truly the first time state side, the first volume coming out in January. If you
find a way to watch the show then do so, don’t be afraid of the English Dub it’s
done quite well, the voice actors nailed those characters Caitlin Glass as Nine/ Ana and of course Liam O’Brien
as Dr. Tenma. Monster explores what we are as human beings in full, there are a
lot of things lying in those shadows but through them and those wicked truths
we find a lot of beauty in the light too.
A Podcast Companion
*Need more otaku time, well for more
ideas why not hop on to the newly minted podcast Rats On A Plague Ship. A
podcast that speaks on all matters of geekdom with yours truly and my fellow
co-host Sal Almaraz. The true cure to when the hours feel like they drag!
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