Apr 12, 2019
I went into this show expecting great things. I did not get them. Monster is nothing more than a bloated uninteresting pile of drivel. The story was touted as a deep psychological thriller, but the individual episodes were incredibly repetitive and uninteresting and the overarching story felt cliched, even with how unorthodox it becomes. Around half of the show's episodes can be summarized as "Tenma goes somewhere, he broods over how awful his life is, he encounters someone with a troubled life, he helps them and leaves". The conflict between Johann and Tenma starts out somewhat interesting, but after 74 episodes of pure schlock it
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gets hard to be invested. The pacing is awful as well. Being drip fed pieces of a story can be interesting, but when it's done over 70 episodes only to put together a very unsatisfying conclusion it's terrible. The characters are all one-note caricatures. In every episode until the final one Tenma and Johann show no signs of character development and the meager development they get at the end is mediocre at best. No other character matters, as they either get killed off to show how evil Johann is or are completely unchanging and annoying. The one character who is even vaguely interesting is Grimmer. Johann's shtick of brainwashing people is also so incredibly stupid. It made me cringe whenever it happened and felt like something that would've been written by some edgy 14 year old in a Shadow the Hedgehog fanfiction. Despite being praised as some philosophical masterpiece, the themes given by the show are either incredibly boring, overused, or childish. The music/sound design are the only really good things about this show. I forced myself to watch through this whole series, only to get disappointed. The only way I can think of improving this show without a complete rewrite would be to cut it down to thirteen episodes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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