Monster
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I just finished a two day chomp fest through the manga Monster by Urasawa Naoki. I’m by no means going to go overboard with this post, but I would like to leave some general impressions and thoughts for posterity’s sake (and to help me remember in future endeavors).
Towards the end of the series I really felt like it was being dragged out. I did rather enjoy the feel and the narrative elements Naoki used though. It was fairly unique to me in that it started out by showing us a picture of normality. In the first couple of chapters a few key characters are set up and also the sole motivating force for Dr. Tenma for the rest of the manga. Although the normality inherent is not one of a perfect world I was familiar with the sentiment of the doctor who cares more about his patients than the politics, and the seemingly meaningless daughter of the Director of the hospital (who is used as a political too). Then it all stops. The killing begins and the world of the doctor and all those who become involved with the one boy, whose life is saved by Dr. Tenma, are shattered forever.
It gets better from there. We as the reader are led along a path as we slowly try to unravel the mysteries of the twins from East Germany and the monster that lurks within. I’m not going to spoil since some of you might pick it up out of boredom one day, but the message is unusually dark for our genre. I loved how rich the world was and how all the characters were compromised in one way or another. It’s the perfect story of our flaws. On the other hand this almost went to an extreme. By the end of it all there was almost no one left to identify with and I view this as a pretty major flaw in writing. We want to be able to connect with the people in the story otherwise it’s no longer personal it’s just a bunch of black and white people on a page. Monster is probably one of the best pieces of writing that’s come onto my screen, but it didn’t have the character strength that other series had. The darkness and intrigue that it created were captivating, but I hardly cared what happened to anyone towards the end. I guess it would be like the Da Vinci Code without Robert Langdon or Sophie Neveu. You just replaced them with some bland characters that didn’t have any stock in the crimes.
I adored the use of the children’s books in the stories. I don’t want to say much, but they used these horrifying children’s stories with overriding moral implications that left me in awe. I want to post them, but since the content is somewhat vital to the mystery I would hate to ruin it for you.
This was also probably the best researched manga I’ve ever read. The author’s knowledge of history was superb and the setting (political factions, cold war Germany[Before and after the Berlin Wall's Fall] tension, etc…) really brought the most out of the dark world. I’ve got to give Naoki props for probably being the smartest mangaka I’ve ever read. That’s probably another reason why this manga turned me off a bit. Most of the time I’m left feeling like I would really want to live in that world. With this novel I really didn’t want to be anywhere near the stuff going on (though once again I did find it morbidly fascinating).
Monster was good in the way some novels are good. When you’re asked/forced to read them you can see the incredible depth of story, but they don’t make you desperately claw at each new page like Harry Potter. In some ways that’s ok and it was a nice change of pace from what I’m used to with manga. It was good that I could go to sleep on time. Would I randomly start reading whole chapters again if I flipped to a page (Like I’ve been known to do with Negima!), probably not, but that’s ok.
This is a very dark series. If you’re like me and have a strong tolerance (/fascination) for such things you should give it a read. This isn’t something you pick up if you’re a typical Shonen manga/anime fan (or slice of life, or harem comedy, or… you get the drill).
I’m going to give this Manga a special rating outside of the facepalm through epic range. I’m going to rate it “I wanted to give Yin a hug”.
You can imagine various reasons for this: One would be to assure me that the world is still a good place; a second reason would be to offset the creepiness factor; and quite frankly I would want to give Yin a hug anyways (She always looks like she needs one).
This series had the feel of Bioshock… I really liked Bioshock, but I’m not sure how to really sum that up.
Info: I haven’t seen the Anime and I don’t intend to.
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6 Comments
Hmmm, coincidentally I ‘accidentally’ saw an (anime) episode of this just the other day and it caught my attention because the art style looked like it was pretty old but the animation quality was pretty darn great. And I could feel something of the deep story and the thread of darkness underneath. Your post just made it sound more interesting, so I might pick this up at some point, though it’d probably be the anime if I do.
Oh, and on a semi-related note, the anime had a really eerie, somewhat disturbing ED o_o
I can imagine. The author apparently has done a couple of things. It was a pretty good story. I don’t know how good the anime will be. Perhaps it will be great since the pacing will be quite a bit faster. 160 manga chapters in 24 episodes sounds a bit more bearable.
Speaking of coincidences, today I overheard one of my friends who was praising Monster and had a little discussion with her about it. She watched only the TV adaptation but haven’t read the manga. She really liked the Anime and told me several of the same details you highlighted in your post, which she used to sum the series as having a deep, intricate and very intelligent story. I’m interested in picking this up too but I may start with the Anime then move on to reading the manga. I guess that’s one way of forcing myself to avoid placing any expectations on it.
I don’t think your friend should mistake dark with deep (it’s a common phenomenon). Although I’m sure the anime and manga are different I doubt they changed up enough to actually make the show deep… Let me try to put it another way.
The characters in this stay pretty two-dimensional. They don’t really grow or develop into something different. I was vastly disappointed that Nina’s (Anna) only role in this anime seemed to be fainting after remembering a small piece of her past at convenient times. The deepest part of this show actually came from the children’s stories written by the mysterious guy who had lots of pen names. They took a theme and expressed it in an interesting, almost artistic way. Almost all of the other elements of this series I could tell you where they ripped it from. It’s definitely a show that anime doesn’t normally represent, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call that depth. I don’t know why I feel the need to disagree so adamantly with your friend; I just don’t want to give undeserved credit where it isn’t due. It’s good, but not that good :P.
Thanks for offering your perspective on it! I guess sometimes when we find something really good, we tend to sugar-coat it to our liking, let alone try to assess it objectively. To be honest, I’ve had my doubts upon hearing my friend raving about it, so I’m relieved to hear another person’s opinion before anticipating too much. Giving undeserved credit where it isn’t due will almost always lead to disappointment after all. Perhaps it’s not meant to be deep but rather different in how it represents itself?
If anything I think the author wrote a story he would want to read. It was actually a pretty cool idea. Like I said in the actual article he started out with minor conflicts. He had all of these characters stressed out by their normal lives and then threw a real problem at them and everything changed. If anything he wanted to weave together a bunch of characters who were ultimately changed by the monster (and thus forced to chase the monster). In doing that he was slowly able to unravel how society created someone so terrible (and reiterate the message that we create our own monsters) and how that terrible force can become the somewhat negative focus of our lives. Unfortunately none of the characters were really able to break that chain so I can’t say it’s wonderful.
It might be deep to some people now that I think about it. I guess it all depends on whether or not you’re ready for that message at that time in your life. When I was in high school I was obsessed with the idea of society creating its own monster (and even drafted a book on it) only to get tired of the idea later (since it is somewhat overused). I think with the setup of the novel they could have accomplished a lot more. It seems like only the monster was an interesting character while the rest of them were somewhat similar and eventually boring. The fact that you could almost point to characters and say “good guy” “bad guy” based on the fact they all seemed to share some kind of overreaching moral principal made it almost annoying as a reader. I guess I would say there’s really no depth because the author seemed to think he had everything figured out and was absolutely right… I don’t know if that makes sense.
In which case I would say that the author was trying to be deep, but his failure kind of made it hard for me as a reader. There were some cool ideas and some of the elements were brilliant (including the representation), but in the end a lot of the story will be pretty forgettable.
I think you’ll enjoy it though… Maybe (though I don’t know whether it will have the elements that normally draw you).