Manga for People Who Don't Like Manga: Monster

I wanted to have this up earlier, but then I started to re-read Monster. It’s amazing how just grabbing a random volume off the shelf can be enough to draw you in and not let you go.

But while I keep hyping up Monster, I haven’t told you very much about it. So, let’s get started.

Kenzo Tenma is a Japanese doctor working in Germany during the eighties. He has a pretty charmed life: he’s an up-and-coming surgeon and also engaged to the boss’ daughter. The only thing he doesn’t have is a spine. His boss (and potential father-in-law) not only takes credit for Tenma’s research, but also makes him operate on rich or influential patients rather than those who need help the most.

One day a horrible murder takes place at a politician’s house. The man, Michael Liebert had just defected from East Germany along with his wife and young children, a twin boy and girl named Johan and Anna. When police arrive at the house, the husband and wife are lying in the living room, shot dead. The son also has a gunshot wound to the head, but is still alive. The daughter doesn’t have a scratch on her but is in a deep state of shock.

The kids are rushed to Tenma’s hospital, and Tenma starts preparing himself for the boy’s operation. Just as he’s about to go into the operating room, he gets a phone call from the boss. The mayor also needs to be operated on, so Tenma needs to go operate on him instead.

With all the crazy sound effects used in manga, I’m really surprised they don’t have one for the sound of someone suddenly growing a spine. If they did, it would fit here. Tenma chooses to continue to operate on Johan, leaving the mayor to another doctor.

As you can probably guess, the mayor dies and so does Tenma’s career. His boss basically tells him never to expect another promotion, and don’t bother applying to other hospitals. No surprise, but Eva, his gold-digging, social hyena fiancée, leaves him.

But even as his life goes down the toilet, Tenma can at least hold onto the fact that for the first time in his life, he did the right thing.

Or did he?

Skip ahead nine years. The boy Tenma saved is now a young man with a beautiful smile and shadowy agenda. By saving Johan, Tenma saved not only a serial killer, but also a sociopath who seems perfectly capable of bringing about the end of the world.

Well, we all make mistakes. Though Tenma, with his now fully formed spine, isn’t going to take this one lying down. And since Johan’s now framed him for murder, it’s kind of hard to go on living his normal life anyway. So Tenma packs a gun and goes chasing after Johan.

Johan is my new standard for fictional villains. Playing with people’s minds is like mini-golf for him; little more than a fun way to spend the afternoon. One of my favorite chapters in the series is one that has the least impact on the overall plot, but it also just illustrates the utter lack of caring in Johan’s personality. An abandoned kid knows his mom is out there, and that if they just saw each other, they would recognize each other right away. When Johan hears this theory, he tells the kid where to go to find his mom. It ends up being the red light district. The kid doesn’t find her, but he does get to see a dark side of humanity that a child can’t really conceive of. By the end of the night the kid is standing on the ledge of a bridge.

As you can guess from the above summary of just one chapter, it’s not a happy manga. But it’s not all doom and gloom either. Naoki Urasawa pays great homage in his works to Osamu Tezuka, the god of manga (someone I will look at in this series later). Like Tezuka, he takes the time to show us the characters suffering, but he also shows us their joy as well. Like, ‘The Baby’ might be an awful human being who was going to kill lots of innocent people, but when you see him fumble as he tries to impress a date it’s hard not to relate to the right-wing, racist dwarf. Nearly everyone who shows-up becomes a fully rounded character (and hey, some of them even survive in the end).

I remember when ‘Perfect Blue’ came out, a critic called it “Hitchcock meets Disney!” Which is a lame quote, but also applicable here: ‘Monster’ is what a manga written by Hitchcock would be like. The suspense is almost tangible. It always feels as if Johan is only a few panels behind you, closing in. I would actually get pissed off when finishing a volume, since it was usually on some kind of game-changing cliff-hanger.

So, if you’re someone who doesn’t like manga, give this one a try. The art style is expressive, but more realistic than cartoony and far from the stereotypical big-eyes anime look. But if you do decide to give it a go, be careful; you might find yourself trying to read all 18 volumes in one sitting.