Alternative Titles
Monster
Information
Type: Manga
Volumes: 18
Chapters: 162
Status: Finished
Published: Dec 1994 to Dec 2001
StatisticsScore: 9.031 (scored by 1354 users)
Ranked: #22
Popularity: #56
Members: 2,431 1 indicates a weighted score
My Info
Popular Tags
drama mystery seinen suspense |
SynopsisDr. Kenzo Tenma is a renowned young brain surgeon of Japanese descent working in Europe. Highly lauded by his peers as one of the great young minds that will revolutionize the field, he is blessed with a beautiful fiancé and is on the cusp of a high promotion in the hospital he works at. However, all of that is about to change with one critical decision that Dr. Tenma faces one night – whether to save the life of a young child or that of the town's mayor. Despite being pressured by his superiors to perform surgery on the mayor, his morals force him to perform the surgery on the young child, saving his life and forfeiting the mayor’s. All of a sudden, Dr. Tenma’s world is turned upside down by his decision leading to the loss of everything he previously had. A doctor is taught to believe that all life is equal; however, when a series of murders occur in the vicinity of Dr. Tenma, all of the evidence pointing to the young child who he saved, Tenma’s beliefs are shaken.
Naoki Urasawa’s Monster is a tale full of mystery, suspense and intrigue as Dr. Tenma journeys to find out the true identity of the young child. In turn, the fate of the world may depend on it.
[Written by MAL Rewrite] |
Related MangaAdaptation: Monster
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Monster and 20th Century Boys are both written by the same author (Urasawa Naoki) and are both heavily psychological works that primarily explore the nature of evil.
If you've read 20th Century Boys you can see some type of similarities between the two in a certain type of way.
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Although the subject matter are vastly different, both stories deal with a kind of horror that is most keenly felt by those in isolation. Like Monster, 俺と悪魔ブルーズ is a disconcerting tale for grown-ups. In it, the author makes a real attempt to treat subjects like racism and life in the American South realistically and with respect. Perhaps he does not always succeed, but between the quality of the art and the originality of the storyline, it's worth picking it up.
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| Overall |
9 |
| Story |
10 |
| Art |
9 |
| Character |
8 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
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Dec 25, 2007112 of ? chapters read 16 of 20 people found this review helpful The Viz Signature collections features some of my most favorite mangas of all time, The Drifting Classroom, Uzumaki, and Black & White. However, there was always one story that just caught my attention right away after the Signature series started and that was Monster.
Story:
The story is completely different then any other series I have ever read and leaves me wondering what will happen next to our hero. After every volume, I feel I learned something new, but... I'm still no closer to the mystery behind the villian.
Art:
This artist has some great skills. Every character and every location is amazingly detailed and drawn so well that any other manga after you seen this one doesn't compare at all. My only complaint is that almost all the female characters are ugly looking in my view.
Character:
Yes, this story provides a lot of good characters that you'll come to either love or hate. I like a lot of them and some of them I just plain wish they die. This story is also loaded with side characters that only appear in a very few chapters and then pop up farther in the future making you look through past volumes to remember who they were again. This isn't a problem for me, but I think a few people might find this annoying.
Enjoyment:
I often read through my manga volumes over and over again, but often very quickly. This series I take my time on. I read over it carefully and try to take in as much as I can because it is so good. Trust me, you'll still want to be reading this series over and over even after it is finished. Though a few chapters were kind of filler and boring that kind of takes the enjoyment away.
Overall, this is a great series with a few minor flaws in my view, but not enough to stop me from buying the next volume. This is a must grab have for any manga fan. Also, this series contains realistic and graphic violence along with brief nudity and some adult situations, so if this kind of stuff bugs you, you might want to skip this series. read more
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| Overall |
10 |
| Story |
10 |
| Art |
10 |
| Character |
10 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
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Apr 30, 200846 of ? chapters read 15 of 20 people found this review helpful Monster is one deep thriller of a manga series that showcases the pinnacle of what graphic novels are capable of...pure perfection.
Monster is the best manga series I have ever read. The plot is mature and deep, enthralling and shocking, and downright masterful in its ways of storytelling. The themes of murder, suspense, death, and darkness are played with so well that the reader becomes drawn more into the story with each passing panel. The cast is quite large but showcased bril...liantly as all the characters have their own story arch and deep lives which are explained very well as they all tend to intertwine with each other. On the part of the main antagonist and protagonist (Johan & Tenma) the series is top notch in portraying their struggles and triumphs in the series. The art in Monster is very detailed and realistic, and the artists renditions of Germany are done very accurately. While I really enjoyed this series, it may be a bit too complicated and dark for some to swallow, but it is still very captivating nonetheless. As the many events and conflicts within the series all come together, Monster proves to be one the best manga of all time, a manga that rivals many anime series and American graphic novels.
Any manga fan (unless your under 16-17 b/c of the series content) needs to check out this title. With drama and drama done to perfection, Monster will suck you in on its ride through the many aspects of the human condition and not let go until its stunning climax. read more
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| Overall |
9 |
| Story |
7 |
| Art |
7 |
| Character |
7 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
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Oct 22, 2008162 of ? chapters read 3 of 7 people found this review helpful Oh, MONSTER does many, many things right. An American creator would surely be jealous of things that Urasawa succeeds at seemingly effortlessly. The cast is large but each character’s motivation is clearly defined. Many of the secondary characters steal their scenes (none moreso than the icy “computer-brained” police investigator chasing the lead character). Urasawa seamlessly integrates effective single-episode stories into his larger arcs, adding extra depth to the proceeding...s. While my initial impression was that the characterization was still far too thin, by the end Urasawa had convinced me (at least with the main character) that he’d pulled off a satisfying character arc over the book’s plot. There seem to be themes of self-destruction throughout the work (the story is a sort of journey through hell in order to reaffirm the value of life kind of thing, I think), but it rarely wallows in any self-glorifying “darkness” (or at least rarely gratingly so).
Action scenes are superb and perfectly paced, and the cliffhangers are as ever relentless and exciting – I am just plain enthralled by Urasawa’s skills as an entertainer. In these days of hearing fans complain about “decompression,” a reading of MONSTER makes it clear how few of them really are aware of what a considerable pleasure it can be in the right hands: in MONSTER, Urasawa can spend chapters allowing an atmosphere of evil to slowly accumulate. Nail-biting cliffhangers can arise from the suggestion of evil instead of evil leaping out frothing onto the page screaming naked. Tension can accumulate. A page can be spent with a character outside of a murder scene, a page spent on nothing more than slowly regarding the doorknob that leads to some horrifying scene or another. I appreciate the “decompression” backlash – MONSTER came out over seven years, probably twice a month (if my math is right), while American comics come out more rarely – once a month if you’re LUCKY—and are far more expensive. American comics do not have either the business model or, perhaps, dedicated enough creators to allow for the pleasures that I feel “decompression” has to offer. And American style pacing of the kind fans long for has its own pleasure which can be considerable. But let’s at least acknowledge the loss.
After those thousands of well-timed pages, I’d like to say MONSTER was a success. But, I’m sorry, no: a mess. The book chases after a bad guy so miraculously evil, so much in the shadows that we hardly ever get to know him on-page. Urasawa’s early attempts at writing for an ensemble are occasionally exciting, as the book zig-zags into unexpected character introductions and disappearances, but the end result is that the lead characters all go missing for significant chunks of time without adequate cause. And ultimately by the end, I wasn’t sure if it all added up to anything worth the pages – the ending is exciting but after the thousands of pages building to it, hopelessly anti-climactic (Urasawa seems to realize this and intercuts a ridiculously sentimental lottery subplot that I can’t imagine any reader could possibly caring about with his grande’ finale).
Page-turners are fun, but after a few thousand pages of comics, its simply too hard not to expect more. And I must admit, after those thousands of pages, I felt lost as to what I had read, in seeing the big picture of what had happened. MONSTER is crazy pleasurable in the moment, action-packed, constantly engaging and bringing all the energy comics can bring into a slick piece of entertainment… but for me, I found it ultimately empty – not an experience I regret, in that I imagine I’d feel that way about any suspense thriller. Suspense thrillers are not really my genre. read more
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External LinksOfficial Site, Wikipedia
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