The final episode has come, here we finally see the aftermath after the massacre of Ruhenheim. Our beloved characters are all living their life now, hell even someone as difficult as Eva managed to get their life sorted out. Best of all is without a doubt that with Lunge's explanation of Johan's intricate strings of killing, he shone a light upon what is known as Europe's largest serial killings and eventually Tenma's innocence. Yeah, all the authorities better apologized to Tenma after all the bullshit they put him through.
Tenma's meeting with the twins' mother is the penultimate thing Tenma needed to do regarding the twins' case. There he finally learned of the Twins' real names that were never properly given to them. Something that would have saved them and countless lives from being lost, potentially.
And at last, 1 final meeting with Johan, just Tenma and him. I have no doubt that Johan was awake the entire time and I'm sure when Johan was talking to Tenma, that was not a dream.
The plot of Monster really started on the basis of conflicting philosophies:
One of which is Johan's belief that not all lives are equal, an ideal based on his experiences, most notably how at one time when their mother was planning to give out one of the twins to be taken to be experimented on in the Rose Mansion, their mother hesitated as to which twin was to be given to them. Which one of them is truly more valuable to herself?
On the other hand, we have Tenma's ideals that all lives are equal, based on his experiences, most notable that if he were to prioritize certain people's lives, the lives that he did not tend to will cease to be and the consequences will haunt him for his unfair triage.
Johan meeting Tenma in the parking lot at the beginning of the series is the start of their 'competition' to see which one's philosophies are 'right'. There Johan stated his ideology and Tenma did the same. All lives are equal vs not all lives are equal. Now skip forward to the previous episode at the final standoff... Johan is aware of the journey Tenma has gone through, seeing the darkness of society and all the despair certain foul individuals have caused to so many others, so he's sure that Tenma would pull the trigger because by then, Tenma's perspective would have changed compared to how naive he was at the beginning when their competition started. Johan's expectation is subverted the moment he assumes everything is going according to his calculation. An element of extreme unpredictability came out of nowhere that transcend Johan's god-like planning. That singular key factor is the catalyst for Johan's failure.
Instead of Tenma killing Johan as Johan would hope did happen, he saved him a second time, which cements Johan's defeat. From now on, I'd imagine Johan has accepted that and is living his life no longer than he was before. If the standoff were just a bit longer, Tenma would eventually have shot Johan, but thanks to that random factor, that never came to be and so, by that, Tenma's philosophy that all lives are equal is the winning ideology. Something which will stay with Johan for the rest of his life.
With this, Johan's character has changed. Johan is the kind of person who has their character based on their goals, and once those goals are shattered, Johan changed. Not the cold-blooded mastermind as he once was. Not because he can't do it anymore, but because he has no reason/desire to do it anymore. I wonder what he'll do from here on out. He'll probably be part of the parliament, a president can't act like a king. With Johan's charisma, he can sway the majority of the parliament to take action for the country according to Johan's wishes and since he's "friends" with Christof the young politician, Johan could control the country through Christof w/o difficulties. Who knows what he'd do, but as I stated, 1 thing is for sure. He lost against Tenma's philosophy.
The last shot where we see an empty bed might be symbolic of a Monster that is no longer there OR a monster that was never there in the first place. The ending is as good a closure as I'd wanted it to be, very concerte in showing what happened to the rest of the main cast but vague enough to leave some key aspects to the audience's own interpretation. Well done Monster. |