Wow, a horror anime review. It only took a while, with the last one being Parasyte. I know it’s been awhile since my review on a horror anime, which I will try to do a lot more of if I have the time. Because having to watch episode after episode is a bit of a challenge. So, today, we’ll be watching a special horror anime. One that I love oh so much. And it doesn’t even have creative disturbing monsters, which you know will instantly interesat me. Instead, we got an anime about human. But I assure you, people can be just as much of monsters as any creature. And this anime just so happens to be known as Monster.



Monster is a manga written by one of my favorite manga artists, Naoki Urasawa. I love all his works. 21st Century Boys, Pluto, Billy Bat. But Monster seems to be the only one that has gotten an anime. As far as I know, anyway. Monster takes place in Germany and follows a Japanese doctor by the name of Kenzo Tenma, who seems to have it pretty good. He’s going to become head doctor and is going to marry his fiancee. However, things suddenly take a turn for the worse. When he is told to operate on the mayor, instead, he goes to operate on a young child by the name of Johan Liebert who was shot and is in critical condition. He manages to save Johan, but the mayor dies. This causes Tenma to get demoted and for his fiancee to leave him, but he still believes that it was worth saving the young Johan. After a while, the doctors that wronged Tenma are found murdered and Johan, as well as his sister who was in shock after her’s and Johan’s parents were murdered, are gone. Years go by, and Tenma is able to get his life back on track, but one of his patients is soon murdered by a man, and this man turns out to be Johan, now an adult, who is murdering people mercilessly without thought. Tenman, blaming himself, now has to find Johan and stop him… Well damn, what a plot to start with, huh?



Along with righteous Tenma and psycho Johan, there’s other characters as well. There’s Anna Liebert, renamed Nina, who lives a peaceful life without remembering the events as a child, until Johan murders her foster parents, and she now wants revenge on Johan. There’s Eva, Tenma’s alcoholic ex-fiancee who is angry later Tenma left her and wants him to pay for it by telling the police he is responsible for Johan’s crimes. There’s Inspector Lunge, a detective with a pretty bad life with his family who devotes all of his time to his work and wants to find Tenma, believing him to be responsible for these crimes. And there’s this one child named Dieter. Oh, when you hear of children in a horror anything, all you can do is probably groan. Thankfully, Dieter never gets too annoying. He does do some things that makes me think “Oh god”, but he does behave like a normal kid, so I can’t be too upset. And then there’s a billion side characters. Trust me, if I listed them all, we’d be here for a while. But they are all portrayed in such creative ways, and are all flawed. No one, and I mean nobody's perfect. Everyone is flawed. Everyone. Even Tenma, as he tried to keep his purity throughout, and blames himself. These personalities with the characters, and with Urasawa’s very human like art style, manages to make all these characters look alive. Flawed characters that aren’t black or white is something I love in horror. It’s one of my favorite things about Silent Hill 2, as well as Monster.



After a few episodes, this anime becomes less of a hunt for a serial killer, like something from Silence of the Lambs or Se7en and becomes a much bigger things. By that, I mean Tenma soon finds that Johan was an experiment involved with scientists trying to turn children into super soldiers through a children’s book. This experiment took place in an orphanage by the name of 511 Kinderheim. It turns out that these experiments are still going on to this day in a very morbid way that just… looks terrifying to people, and I agree. It portrays that Johan isn’t the only monster in this anime, and that is a terrifying thought. This is portrayed throughout the seventy four episodes… Yes, this anime has seventy four episodes. It may be a bit long. Bit trust me, every episode is very important. If you don’t find one episode interesting, you’ll find it so much more interesting after another part.



I’ve been holding off on it for a while, but I really have to talk about how much of an amazing villain Johan Liebert is. Sure, some may think that he’s just the stereotypical killer at first glance, but I assure you, he is much more. Hannibal Lecter had his quiet personality and his manipulation that made him stand out, and John Doe stood out because of his goals and how he achieved them. Johan stands out for how he can do all these. His goal is to be the last person at the end of the world, and kills everyone he meets. However, before he does that, he gets as close to them as he can. He wants to be friends with these people and he makes them believe he is the most trustworthy person alive. However, before they know it, Johan has them trapped and they can’t escape. Here, they will either be killed by Johan himself, or he will manipulate them to kill others and then kill themselves. Johan is a master manipulator and is able to avoid capture at any second, and I love it so much. But Tenma is also one of the best anime protagonists out there. He’s a man down on his luck, and blames himself for Johan being alive. But, no matter what he does, he is still a good man, who wants to do good. But he believes that, as long as Johan is alive, more and more people will die, and he contemplates on if he should kill one person to save someone, even though his job means he has to save lives. Seeing him try to stay pure throughout the anime is some of the best emotional conflicts I’ve seen for a main character, and I love it.



I don’t think I can gush about how much I love this anime. If I had one thing I didn’t like, it’s that they do the whole “who shot who” thing a bit too much. You know, the thing where the camera pans away when two characters have guns pointed at each other. They do it way too often and it kinda loses its point after a while. But, that’s just a nitpick, and it’s the only one I have. This anime is near perfect. The characters, the story, and the psychological horror it uses manages to be disturbing. But, surprisingly, it isn't’t scary. Now, what I mean, is that it’s disturbing. It’s very disturbing. But it doesn’t make me have nightmares or freak out at noises. That’s what I like best about this anime. It’s a horror anime, but it isn’t scary. Horror doesn’t have to be scary. It just needs to be unsettling, show some of what makes a person feel uncomfortable, and make people question what is happening. That is what Monster does perfectly. I've heard that HBO wants to make a live action series. Sure, everyone groans at the news of anime being made into live action. But, I've heard that Guillermo Del Toro might be working on it. And I hope this is true. Del Toro is one of my favorite directors, and I hope that he may work on this. That oughta do it for me. Take care