First of all, to the true fans of psychological and thriller type Anime, "Monster" is probably one of those Anime that you do not wanna miss out. The event of the Anime takes place during the period of Cold War in Germany, specifically during the period of Berlin Wall dividing Germany into the East and the West, and the period after the fall of Berlin Wall. With this in mind, it is for sure that you will be coming across some facts of the historical events, especially the struggle for power among elite groups within the country and the discriminations of German citizens on other ethnic groups.
The story is centred around a Japanese doctor named Tenma pursuing a cold-blooded serial killer Johan, who along the way murders many people that have ties with him in order to erase his traces for investigation. Doctor Tenma, who feels responsible for saving such a monster back to life 10 years ago, now sets off on the journey to stop the serial killer. Throughout his journey following the killer, doctor Tenma is then accused to be the killer instead, thus besides pursuing the real murderer, he has to evade from being caught by the police.
The development of the story takes a slow pace to include many events and introduce many characters along the way. Even though I thought that it might be boring with the slow progress, but I was proven wrong by the author and producer, they really know how to make each episode of this Anime enjoyable. I was also pretty curious why the author kept on introducing so many new characters along the way and thought that some were not necessary, but then again, I was surprised by the fact that some characters that were introduced along way, later had significant roles in story, which took me by surprise.
Even though the story is mainly focused on pursing the serial killer, there were many mysteries along the way. Each of the mysteries was uncovered one by one, sometimes those were mind-blowing, which made me pretty much enjoy the psychological aspects of this Anime. The author really never failed to impress me.
The art may not be very good, but if we take into consideration of the fact that the Anime was aired in 2004, I would say it's quite good. But most importantly, because the event in the Anime was happened in the 20th century during Cold War, I think they intentionally kept the art to be quite old as during that period of time. Overall, I still think it's good.
The sound, especially the OPT and EDT, at first I really thought it was quite creepy and dark, but this may be well suited for this type of dark psychological thriller Anime.
