This Week in Anime

Monster Returns to Streaming

Nicky
Look, sometimes you need to take a good look at the past before you can see where you're going, and gosh darn it, I'd be lying if I said this almost two-decades-old series wasn't one of my most anticipated licenses of the year. For years, the long-running 74-episode adaption of Naoki Urasawa's manga has been one of my personal anime white whales. While once available for streaming, this dark psychological epic disappeared without a trace before I could ever watch it. With the case on its license gone cold, the mystery of whether we'd ever see Monster in a readily available format ever again had yet to be answered, until now.

At least for the first 30 episodes.

To give some backstory, Monster was once licensed by Viz and even aired on the American television network SyFy in 2009. While the whole series was aired and dubbed as per contract, the first DVD did so badly that Viz halted the home video release. While TV and DVD rights are one thing, licensing for streaming rights leaves some older shows in a bit of a mess. Netflix doesn't seem to play nice with dubs they don't commission themselves, but it's disappointing that a perfectly serviceable bit of history remains lost with nothing to fill its place.

I'll note that the sub is perfectly fine, too, as someone who regularly reads the text at the bottom of my screen. Still, with the story inspired by Urasawa's fascination with the '60s American crime drama The Fugitive, Monster's strong western media influence makes not having an option for native English speakers feel criminal.

As a tense, slow-burning atmospheric noir highly faithful to Urasawa's storytelling and art, Monster is both a classic and ahead of its time. Very few series approach its ambition, and we couldn't possibly contain it all in one column. The best we can do is to give a picture of why this series has stood as an artistic achievement and lament its failure to catch on.

First, we're introduced to Doctor Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant young brain surgeon working in West Germany. Having just made another successful surgery on a famous opera singer, he gets no shortage of praise, and his work does wonders for the hospital's reputation. He's the head of his department with plans to marry the hospital director's daughter. Things are looking well for him.

And already, I relate to him being TIRED!

For a good reason, Urasawa's name has always been considered one of the greats in manga circles. He knows how to do drama. However, I wouldn't blame anyone who hasn't read his work because trying to track down copies of manga can be exhaustive, even for a highly regarded series. I've searched so many libraries trying to get my hands on his work before most of it was available digitally, and then I still need to make time to read it, including Monster. And yet, I can't deny his power! His art style is really something, somehow feeling softer and yet more semi-realistic than most anime styles. Having watched many episodes of Urasawa's interview series "Manben" on his YouTube channel, I'm still amazed at how well Monster recreates how he draws faces. It takes a lot to capture the expression of the Turkish widow's sorrow or Tenma's sudden realization of guilt for following the hospital's orders to prioritize one patient's life over another.

He has aspirations to further his research to make advancement in his field. Still, it's clear to him that his superior and future father-in-law is just using his talents to make himself look better, crediting his achievements as his own and even putting aside Tenma's studies to have him write his speeches. While he puts up with it, Tenma becomes horrified at the air of corruption that enshrouds his everyday life. This show may look a little crusty to newer viewers with its old master and 4:3 ratio, but it's still got excellent shading, lighting, and sound to carry the mood.

It's the block shading/cell shading I miss as tech advances away from traditional art, but it's also perfect for the noir vibes. Even a bright-as-day clean hospital feels dingy. Kenma is constantly framed by this shadow of darkness cast by his mental anguish. Eventually, he gets fed up and chooses to perform surgery on a young boy shot in the head over the goddamn mayor, yet he's still plagued. After doing the morally right thing, he faces many consequences for stepping out of line, causing him to lose his position, his fiancé to dump him, and the respect from his colleagues to diminish.

I'm impressed that Tenma never mentally wavers on his decision to save a life even as it wrecks his. The director tells him never to think about getting anywhere in the industry. He's too good of a surgeon for them to let go but getting stuck in a career limbo for the rest of his life means he can bury any remaining dreams he had. The hospital administration continues to depower him so they can use the children's sob story to boost their reputation. It's so evil that they even take a poor, sick boy's candy.

Meanwhile, there's been no progress on the murderer who killed the children's parents, as both twins cannot speak.

Tenma gets questioned by an odd detective at the funeral. This man constantly moves his fingers like he's typing notes into his brain, saying that all three victims had nitric acid in their system and candy wrappers around their bodies. Tenma is unaware of how any of this relates to him. Still, it sure is convenient that all the people harassing him are suddenly dead, leaving him open to being promoted to chief of surgery for his skills and undoing the sentence made on his career by the now dead Director.

I liked how even when his fiancé begged him to take her back, he still decided she was toxic and left, unwilling to be used again. It was never about love, success, or being "right" to him. He just wanted to do the good thing. This is the last thing we see before the time skip.

Dr. Tenma's life seems to have turned around, but Monster has all the framing of a tragedy; he's currently oblivious, but disasters loom close to him. Just look how sullen and grizzled he is in the opening. Running around, searching for something, or someone, running, hiding.

I'm more partial to the weird children's book pictures and gently unsettling and transcendental vibes of the ED. Netflix even managed to keep the original lyrics sung by David Sylvian that Viz couldn't.

It adds this other huge layer to Kenzo Tenma's moral dilemma. While investigating a case, Dr. Tenma gets called in by the same detective from the funeral to keep an important accomplice alive so they can question him while reminding him that he's still very much a suspect. Kenzo's life seems filled with good fortune, but in a way, it looks too neat to be just good karma working in his favor. Still, Tenma only cares about being a good doctor and looking after his patients, regardless of if they are criminals.

With the proper introduction of our main antagonist, we get a stark painting contrasting Tenma, who ultimately treasures and seeks to value all human life as equal, versus a monster who doesn't. Johan treats killing like it's nothing, deeming people as worthless. He killed four middle-aged couples for unknown reasons. He killed the other people he hired to help kill them. He guiltlessly admits to killing the hospital staff, on Tenma's behalf, just before killing Tenma's current patient right in front of his eyes.

Written by a stupid person, the basic premise could come off as a "would you kill baby Hitler?" kind of edgelord "gotcha" often used by people who want to diminish others for having standards. Still, the slow burn works in its favor to endear us to the poor doctor's side. We feel bad for him but not so we pity his decision. It feels more like a statement about how those molded by the cruel and unfair world pressure the good-hearted. After telling the truth, Tenma is now even more involved in a series of bloodshed than he ever wanted to be.

Tenma wasn't the only one with a turn of luck. Now living as Nina, Anna seemed to be living a happy and normal life going to school to become a prosecutor while living with her (adopted) mother and father. Even her mysterious horrific reoccurring dreams seemed to have all but subsided!

I'm amazed at Urasawa's ability to capture characters as individuals so well. Like Tenma before, Nina's sunny mundane life is overcast by the darkness wrought by a twin brother she cannot remember. Where there's sun, there's shade, correct? I even love how the people Tenma interviews all feel unique as he slowly transforms into looking a little more Columbo.

Like the opposite of getting more beautiful over time, the guy is slowly getting a little more rugged on the outside to match his tiredness levels. I call it the schlubification of Kenzo Tenma. Not necessarily a bad look. As he looks for Nina, he feels more active than just a guy working in a hospital. He even manages to get a lead after interviewing a blind ex-WWII German soldier who was one of Johan's neighbors.

Again, Urasawa's not afraid to make things slightly political. Even when the flashforward happened, there was some chatter about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Anna and Johan's parents had defected from East Germany, as seen in the first scene. Everything about the setting isn't an accident. We don't always see the dark side of the moon, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So much of life seems normal, but what makes Monster feel psychological is what's underneath, whether it's a country's history of war and strife or Nina's past kept hidden from her. The two feel connected. It doesn't show most of it directly, but it's enough that the mention can get under your skin.

Yeah, I don't know how deep it gets with Monster to spoil it, but his other work, 20th Century Boys, heavily deals with cults and conspiracies as part of its central opening premise. I don't feel like Monster is messing around, even if I don't entirely know its aim. Even the brief conversation Tenma has with a journalist about overwork feels relevant while simultaneously being one of the show's oddly warm glimpses of humanity and mirroring how he often neglects his human relationships in favor of his career and his ideals.

His way of treating everyone like patients can be read as paternalistic or empathetic. But it's interesting how Tenma, the journalist, and the detective are all workaholics with no sense of separation. Everything they do becomes work. Though, artists are the worst perpetrators of this mentality.

We'll leave that as another mystery to be solved another day. But so far, six episodes of Monster have given us a lot to unfold. I want to make finishing this show one of my New Year's Resolutions, but that's assuming those other 34 episodes are released this year. That might be an issue with Netflix's puzzle box of a release schedule, but I hope this column serves as a good argument for everyone who hasn't seen the show to investigate it for themselves. It's worth sniffing out.

Look, they say out with the old and in with the new, but what if the "old" starts grabbing you and tossing you around the minute you try throwing it out? Then what? That's how this sudden re-release of Monster feels to me. Watch out, the past can get ya!