News

Siren Visual Acquires Monster

Siren Visual made the announcement this evening on their website and facebook page. They will release the 74 episode series in five volumes beginning from November 2013 on DVD. While there will not be a bilingual Blu-ray release as there are no HD masters available, the DVD will come complete with English dub, English subtitles and original Japanese soundtrack. There will be no .

Monster

Kenzou Tenma is a successful Japanese neurosurgeon in Düsseldorf, Germany and he has it all, incredible skill, promising career and a rich and beautiful fiancee. However when Tenma decides to save the life of a young boy over the life of the city mayor he quickly loses his career, his fiance and becomes implicated in a set of suspicious murders. The boy Tenma saved might been more than he had appeared to be and it is up to Tenma to clear his name and correct his past mistakes.

Monster is an adaptation of the manga of the same name by Naoki Urasawa. The series was originally published in Shogakukan's Big Comic Original manga magazine between December 1994 and December 2001 it has since been collected into 18 volumes and translated / published by Viz Media in the west. The manga has since inspired two more novels titled Another Monster written and illustrated by Urasawa showing Monster from the perspective of an investigative journalist. The manga has also been optioned for a live-action film adaptation and more recently been announced to be in development as a new TV series on HBO with director Guillermo del Toro at the helm.

This 2004 anime adaptation was directed at Madhouse Studios by Masayuki Kojima (Master Keaton, Tibetan Dog) alongside Tatsuhiko Urahata (Cardfight!! Vanguard, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere) handling the series composition. The series also has art direction by Yūji Ikeda (Fushigi Yugi, Master Keaton) and the original character designs were supplied by Kitaro Kousaka (Master Keaton, Whisper of the Heart) with music by Kuniaki Haishima (Macross Zero, Neo Ranga).

Kenzou Tenma is voiced by Hidenobu Kiuchi (Mr. Yamada in Chi's Sweet Home) in Japanese and Liam O'Brian (Gaara of the Desert in Naruto) in English with Nozomu Sasaki (Mello in Death Note) / Keith Silverstein (Manji in Blade of the Immortal) as Johan Liebert and Tsutomu Isobe (Dutch in Black Lagoon) / Richard Epcar (Batou in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) as Inspector Runge.

© 2004 Naoki Urasawa, Studio Nuts/Shogakukan, VAP, NTV