Monster, Anime Recommendation of the Week!

Article at a glance:
Monster’s story is slow, deliberate, and filled with impactful moments, making it a masterclass in suspense.
Johan Liebert is one of the best-written and most terrifying villains in anime history, commanding every scene he’s in.
Alongside Johan, characters like Tenma and Anna have deeply engaging arcs, supported by a memorable cast.

I am literally writing this while watching a Wagner Opera on the side. Pretty crazy, I know but then the whole reason I am watching the opera is to better understand a game’s lore, which is even more absurd. Regardless, today I wanted to talk about Monster, one of the best suspense thriller anime of all time and it has one of the most iconic villains of all time as well. Johan Liebert has been the subject of many character analyses over the years and that is for a good reason.

So welcome back to another edition of our anime recommendation series, and today we will be talking about Monster. Again, this is one of the best-written suspense thrillers in my opinion and I have a lot of praise for it. So let’s get started.

Introduction

Monster the anime is based on the manga of the same name by Urasawa Naoki. The manga ran in the Big Comic Original magazine from December 1995 to December 2001. As for the anime, it was made by Madhouse and it started airing in the Spring 2004 season and ended its run in September 2005. It is decently long at 74 episodes but I promise, it is worth every single episode.

Plot

The base plot of Monster is pretty simple. Kenzou Tenma is a famous and skilled surgeon. He has been doing well in his life, he is engaged to the daughter of the hospital’s director and his career has been going well. All this changes though when Tenma chooses to perform surgery to save a young boy, Johan Liebert instead of the town’s mayor, all because he was previously faced with a similar situation and chose to save a famous performer rather than a poor worker. This one decision, causes Tenma to lose all of his social standing and years of hard work.

To further salt his wounds, Johan turns out to be a dangerous killer. So years later, Tenma is wracked with guilt about the life he saved and leaves everything behind to go after Johan and “fix” his mistake from all those years ago, The pacing of the plot is slow and purposeful, yet it never feels boring. It spends a lot of episodes building up slowly to big moments but when those big moments do come, they deliver. And the plot itself also does an incredible job of making every appearance of Johan feel like a big deal.

Characters

Everyone knows how iconic Johan is. Everything from his backstory to the way he speaks is amazing. Sasaki Nozomu did an incredible job as his voice. Every time he is on screen, it is his scene and he is terrifying. But I’d also like to highlight Tenma and Anna. Both of them get amazing character arcs, the character dynamic is also very well done. Combine these three amazing leads with memorable side characters like Lunge, Grimmer, and Eva and you have an awesome cast on your hands.

Animations and Soundtracks

The anime might be very old but it still looks surprisingly good. Madhouse did an amazing job back in the day and thanks to that, the anime still looks pretty good. The soundtracks are decent as well. So I don’t think there will be any issues on the production side.