Monster (manga)

Monster (stylized as MONSTER; sometimes referred to as "Naoki Urasawa's Monster") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa. It was published by Shogakukan in their Big Comic Original magazine between 1994 and 2001, with the chapters collected and reprinted into 18 tankōbon volumes. The story revolves around Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese surgeon living in Germany whose life enters turmoil after getting himself involved with Johan Liebert, one of his former patients, who is revealed to be a dangerous serial killer.

Monster
Cover of the first manga volume
Genre
Manga
Written byNaoki Urasawa
Published byShogakukan
English publisher
MagazineBig Comic Original
DemographicSeinen
Original runDecember 1994 – December 2001
Volumes18
Novel
Another Monster
Written byNaoki Urasawa
Published byShogakukan
Published21 June 2002
Anime television series
Directed byMasayuki Kojima
Produced by
  • Hiroshi Yamashita (#1–10)
  • Toshio Nakatani (#11–74)
  • Manabu Tamura
  • Takuya Yui
  • Masao Maruyama
Written byTatsuhiko Urahata
Music byKuniaki Haishima
StudioMadhouse
Licensed by
Original networkNippon TV
English network
Original run 7 April 2004 – 28 September 2005
Episodes74

Urasawa later wrote and illustrated the novel Another Monster, a story detailing the events of the manga from an investigative reporter's point of view, which was published in 2002. The manga was adapted by Madhouse into a 74-episode anime TV series, which aired on Nippon TV from April 2004 to September 2005. It was directed by Masayuki Kojima, written by Tatsuhiko Urahata and featured character design by Kitarō Kōsaka. The manga and anime were both been licensed by Viz Media for English releases in North America, and the anime was broadcast on several television channels. In 2013, Siren Visual licensed the anime for Australia. Monster has been critically acclaimed, with the manga winning several awards, and its anime adaptation called one of the best of the decade.

Plot
Main article: List of Monster characters

Dr. Kenzo Tenma is a young Japanese brain surgeon, working at Eisler Memorial Hospital in Düsseldorf, West Germany. Tenma is dissatisfied with the political bias of the hospital in treating patients, and seizes the chance to change things after a massacre brings fraternal twins Johan and Anna Liebert into the hospital. Johan has a gunshot wound to his head, and Anna mutters about killing; Tenma operates on Johan instead of the mayor, who arrived later. Johan is saved, but Mayor Roedecker dies; Tenma loses his social standing. Director Heinemann and the other doctors in Tenma's way are mysteriously murdered, and both children disappear from the hospital. The police suspect Tenma, but they have no evidence and can only question him.

Nine years later, Tenma is Chief of Surgery at Eisler Memorial. After saving a criminal named Adolf Junkers, Junkers mutters about a "monster." Tenma returns with a clock for Junkers, he finds the guard in front of Junkers' room dead and Junkers gone. Following the trail to the construction site of a half-finished building near the hospital, Tenma finds Junkers held at gunpoint. Junkers warns him against coming closer and pleads with him to run away. Tenma refuses, and the man holding the gun is revealed to be Johan Liebert. Despite Tenma's attempts to reason with him, Johan shoots Junkers. Telling Tenma he could never kill the man who saved his life, he walks off into the night, with Tenma too shocked to stop him.

Tenma is suspected by the police, particularly BKA Inspector Lunge, and he tries to find more information about Johan. He soon discovers that the boy's sister is living a happy life as an adopted daughter; the only traces of her terrible past are a few nightmares. Tenma finds Anna, who was subsequently named Nina by her foster parents, on her birthday; he keeps her from Johan, but is too late to stop him from murdering her foster parents. Tenma eventually learns the origins of this "monster": from the former East Germany's attempt to use a secret orphanage known as "511 Kinderheim" to create perfect soldiers through psychological reprogramming, to the author of children's books used in a eugenics experiment in the former Czechoslovakia. Tenma learns the scope of the atrocities committed by this "monster", and vows to fix the mistake he made by saving Johan's life.

Production

Urasawa revealed that he pitched the idea of writing a manga about the medical field around 1986, but could tell his editor was not enjoying the idea. So he jokingly proposed a story about women's judo, and that lead to his first solo work Yawara! (1986–1993).[3]

The original idea for Monster came from the 1960s American television series The Fugitive, which had a strong impact on Urasawa when he saw it at the age of eight. In the story, a doctor is wrongfully convicted of murder, but escapes and searches for the real killer while on the run from the police.[3] He said that his editor was adamant that the series would not do well, and tried to stop him from creating it.[3]

The Japanese medical industry was strongly influenced by the professional practices in Germany, thus it seemed natural to the author to set Monster in Germany. Post-war Germany was chosen so that the neo-Nazi movement could be included in the story.[4] When he started Monster at the end of 1994, Urasawa was already writing Happy! and continued to serialize both at the same time. When Happy! ended in 1999, he began 20th Century Boys. Writing both Monster and 20th Century Boys at the same time caused him to be briefly hospitalized for exhaustion.[5]

Media

Manga
Main article: List of Monster chapters

Written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, Monster was published in Big Comic Original from December 1994 to December 2001. The 162 chapters were periodically collected into 18 tankōbon volumes published by Shogakukan, the first on 30 June 1995 and the last on 28 February 2002. Monster received a nine-volume kanzenban re-release between 30 January and 29 August 2008.[6][7]

Monster was licensed in North America by Viz Media, who published all 18 volumes between 21 February 2006 and 16 December 2008.[8] They released the kanzenban version of the series, titled Monster: The Perfect Edition, between 15 July 2014 and 19 July 2016.[8][9][10] The series has also received domestic releases in other countries, such as in Germany by Egmont Manga & Anime, in France and the Netherlands by Kana, in Spain by Planeta DeAgostini, in Brazil by Conrad Editora and later by Panini Brasil, in Argentina by Larp Editores, in Taiwan by Tong Li Publishing, and in Mexico by Grupo Editorial Vid.

Anime
Main article: List of Monster episodes

The manga series was adapted into an anime by Madhouse, which aired between 7 April 2004 and 28 September 2005 on Nippon TV. Directed by Masayuki Kojima and written by Tatsuhiko Urahata, it features original character designs by long-time Studio Ghibli animator Kitarō Kōsaka which were adapted for the anime by Shigeru Fujita.

The anime includes an instrumental theme by the Chilean folk music group Quilapayún, "Transiente", which originally appeared on their 1984 album Tralalí Tralalá. David Sylvian was commissioned to write the ending theme, "For the Love of Life", on which he collaborated with Haishima Kuniaki. In the cover notes to the official soundtrack he said, "I was attracted to the Monster material by the moral dilemma faced by its central character. The calm surface of the music giving way to darker undercurrents, signifying the conscience of the lead protagonist and the themes of morality, fate, resignation, and free will."[11]

An English dub of Monster was produced by Salami Studios for Viz Media, which had the North American license to the anime. The show aired on Syfy's Ani-Mondays with two episodes back-to-back each Monday night at 11:00 pm EST, beginning 12 October 2009, as well as on its sister network Chiller.[12] A DVD box set of the series, containing the first 15 episodes was released 8 December 2009. However, due to low sales of the first box set, Viz decided not to continue releasing the remaining episodes on DVD and later dropped the license.[13] Monster began airing on Canada's Super Channel on 15 March 2010,[14] and on the Funimation Channel on 3 April 2010 on weekends at 12:30 am.[15] The series is also available digitally from several internet retailers. Siren Visual licensed the series for Australia in 2013, and released it in five DVD volumes beginning in November 2013.[16]

The credit sequence features illustrations from the book Obluda, Která Nemá Své Jméno (The Monster Who Didn't Have A Name) by Emil Scherbe which was published by Shogakukan on 30 September 2008.[17]

Live-action adaptations

New Line Cinema acquired the rights for an American live-action film adaptation of Monster. Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Josh Olson (A History of Violence) was hired to write the screenplay. Although the studio initially announced a 2009 release,[18][19] the project apparently fell into production limbo.

In 2013, it was revealed that Guillermo del Toro and American premium television network HBO were collaborating on a pilot for a live-action TV series based on Monster.[20] Co-executive producer Stephen Thompson (Doctor Who and Sherlock) was writing the pilot, while del Toro was to direct it and be an executive producer alongside Don Murphy and Susan Montford.[21] In 2015, del Toro told Latino-Review that HBO had passed on the project and that they were in the process of pitching to other studios.[22]

Reception

Manga

Monster has been critically acclaimed. It won an Excellence Prize in the Manga division at the first Japan Media Arts Festival in 1997,[23] the 46th Shogakukan Manga Award in the General category in 2001,[24] and Grand Prize at the 3rd Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.[25] YALSA placed it on their 2007 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list.[26] Viz Media's English release was nominated several times for Eisner Awards, twice in the category Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Japan (2007 and 2009) and three times in Best Continuing Series (2007, 2008, 2009).[27][28][29] In 2009, when Oricon conducted a poll asking which manga series the Japanese people wanted to see adapted into live-action, Monster came in fifth.[30] Monster won the award for Best Drama Manga at the 2009 Anime Expo.[31]

Writing for Time, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner Junot Díaz praised the manga, proclaiming "Urasawa is a national treasure in Japan, and if you ain't afraid of picture books, you'll see why".[32] Reviewing the Monster manga for Anime News Network (ANN), Carl Kimlinger called Urasawa a master of suspense "effortlessly maintaining the delicate balance of deliberate misinformation and explicit delineation of the dangers facing protagonists that only the finest suspense thrillers ever achieve."[33] He commented that even the stories and characters that had felt unrelated to the greater picture are "eventually drawn together by Johan's grand plan."[34] Kimlinger deemed the art "invisible perfection," never "showy or superfluous," with panels laid out so well that it is easy to forget how much effort is put into each and every page.[33] Though he did not find the characters' physical designs attractive,[35] he praised their expressiveness, writing that the characters "wear their personalities on their faces, communicating changes in their outlooks, psychology, inner thoughts and emotions with shifts in expression that range from barely perceptible to masks of rage, hate and fear."[33]

Carlo Santos, also for ANN, called Monster "a one-of-a-kind thriller" and suggests that one of the most overlooked qualities of it is that "amidst all the mystery and horror, there are moments of love and hope and all the good things about humanity."[36] Though they praised the manga for its "cinematically precise" art, never confusing the reader, and making each person visually distinct despite the large cast of characters,[37] Casey Brienza was much more critical in their review of the last three volumes. Finishing up the ANN review, they felt that too much time was spent developing minor characters "who are likely to be dead or forgotten just a few dozen pages later," and that the series' ending "went out with a whimper."[37] Brienza expressed disappointment that "there is nothing satisfactory ever revealed to fully account for [Johan's] supremely scrambled psyche," but concluded that as long as the reader doesn't look for "deep meanings or think too hard about whether or not it all makes sense in the end" they will enjoy it.[38]

Anime

THEM Anime Reviews called the anime adaptation "complex" and "beautiful", stating that it features "sophisticated storytelling and complex plot weaving, memorable characters, godly production values and excellent pacing".[39] Darius Washington of Otaku USA named Monster one of the ten best anime of the past decade.[40] Carl Kimlinger enthused that "It cannot be overstated how brilliantly apart from the anime mainstream this unsettling, fiercely intelligent, and ultimately uncategorizable journey into darkness is."[41] He praised Madhouse's animation for not only keeping up the dark "cinematic quality of Urasawa's art" but also improving on it, as well as Kuniaki Haishima's score for adding "immeasurably to the series' hair-raising atmosphere."[42] Though he noted Viz Media's inability to acquire the original ending theme song due to licensing problems, Kimlinger also called their English dub of the series one of the best in recent memory.[42]

Kimlinger critiqued the series, however, for "its unhealthy fidelity to Naoki Urasawa's original manga", commenting that "there isn't a scene left out, only a handful added in, and as far as I can tell not a line of dialogue changed or omitted", as well as for its frequent habit of giving the spotlight to newly introduced characters instead of the main cast. He also expressed disappointment in its ending, writing that "We feel vaguely let down when what we should really be doing is glorying in the somewhat messy, yes, but exhilarating final throes of one of last decade's great series."[43] Nonetheless, he considered such disappointment to be expected, since "As ambitious and complicated and just plain huge as Monster is, no conclusion is going to be entirely satisfactory. Someone is bound to get short-changed, loose ends are bound to be left dangling, and even if they weren't, the simple truth is that no climax could ever live up to the series' build-up."

References
  1. "Naoki Urasawa's Monster Manga Series Returns to Print in New Perfect Edition Release from Viz Media". Viz Media via Anime News Network. 25 June 2014. Retrieved 10 June 2019. MONSTER: THE PERFECT EDITION is the ultimate version of the acclaimed psychological crime thriller.
  2. "The Official Website for Monster". Viz Media. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
  3. "Naoki Urasawa – Interview with creator of Monster, 20th Century Boys at JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles (2019)". All the Anime. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  4. "INTERVIEW: All You Need is a White Piece of Paper and Pen: A Conversation with Monster and 20th Century Boys Creator Naoki Urasawa". Crunchyroll. 6 February 2019. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  5. "Monster's Naoki Urasawa Celebrated In Career-Spanning Exhibition". Otaku USA. 11 February 2016. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  6. "MONSTER　完全版 1" (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  7. "MONSTER 完全版 9" (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  8. "Viz Media to Release Ranma 1/2 Anime on BD/DVD". Anime News Network. 10 August 2013. Retrieved 10 August 2013.
  9. "Monster: The Perfect Edition, Vol. 1". Viz Media. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  10. "Monster: The Perfect Edition, Vol. 9". Viz Media. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  11. "For the Love of Life". davidsylvian.net. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  12. "Monster Anime Premieres on Syfy's Ani-Monday Tonight". Anime News Network. 12 October 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  13. "ANNCast – Risky Viz-ness". Anime News Network. Retrieved 30 July 2013.
  14. "Monster to Run in Canada, Deltora Quest in Australia, NZ". Anime News Network. 27 February 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  15. "VIZ on FUN Channel – Yes, you heard right". Funimation. Archived from the original on 22 February 2012. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  16. "Siren Visual Acquires Monster". Anime News Network. 17 May 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  17. MONSTER完全版　別巻　なまえのないかいぶつ (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  18. "Josh Olson to Adapt Manga Comic Book Monster". MovieWeb. Archived from the original on 11 May 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  19. "Monster (2009)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 12 November 2007. Retrieved 1 December 2008.
  20. "Guillermo Del Toro Is Hatching A 'Monster' Of A Series at HBO". Deadline Hollywood. 24 April 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  21. "Guillermo del Toro Develops Monster Manga as Possible HBO Show". Anime News Network. 24 April 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  22. "Exclusive: Talking 'Crimson Peak' With Guillermo del Toro". Latino-Review. 16 October 2015. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
  23. "Manga Division 1997 (1st) Japan Media Arts Festival Archive" (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  24. 小学館漫画賞: 歴代受賞者 (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 19 August 2007.
  25. "Tezuka Award Winner Announced". Anime News Network. 10 May 2005. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  26. "2007 Great Graphic Novels for Teens". American Library Association. Archived from the original on 17 January 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  27. "Japanese, World Manga Nominated for 2007 Eisner Awards". Anime News Network. 19 April 2007. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  28. "Manga Listed Among Eisner Award Nominees for 2008". Anime News Network. 14 April 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  29. "Manga Nominated for 2009 Eisner Awards". Anime News Network. 7 April 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  30. "Survey: Slam Dunk Manga is #1 Choice for Live-Action". Anime News Network. 28 May 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  31. "SPJA Industry Award Winners Announced at Anime Expo". Anime News Network. 3 July 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  32. Junot Díaz (3 July 2008). "The Psychotic Japanese Mastermind". Anime News Network. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  33. "Monster GN 5 – Review". Anime News Network. 9 February 2007. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  34. "Monster GN 8–9 – Review". Anime News Network. 27 September 2007. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  35. "Monster GN 10 – Review". Anime News Network. 12 October 2007. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  36. "Monster GN 14–15 – Review". Anime News Network. 27 June 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  37. "Monster GN 16 – Review". Anime News Network. 14 September 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  38. "Monster GN 17–18 – Review". Anime News Network. 18 December 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  39. "Monster Review". THEM Anime Reviews 4.0. Retrieved 9 January 2009.
  40. "Monster: Box Set 1". Otaku USA. 28 June 2010. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  41. "Monster Episodes 31–45 Streaming – Review". Anime News Network. 10 July 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  42. "Monster DVD Box Set 1 – Review". Anime News Network. 4 January 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  43. "Monster Episodes 61–74 Streaming – Review". Anime News Network. 11 October 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
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