I was really excited to scroll through top rated anime on MAL and find Monster. Older fans of anime seem to really like it and I am not that young but I never really had a chance to watch it as my exposure to anime was limited because I hail from a third world country. However, my experiences of a life lived in such a country imparts a certain flavour to my perspective of anime that I feel is lacking in other reviews which are written by people coming from (relatively) safe and secure societies with limited exposure to crime and violence. As such, my perspective might resonate with you better if you also have that specific background.
A basic principle of writing creative fiction is that you should write what you are familiar with, I am not a criminal or a burden on society by any means, but I am more aware of the mechanics and certain realities of crime and the people who are involved in it, given my background. In this anime, there were several instances in the story where I believe the writing did not do justice to what it was trying to achieve. The Japanese experience of a tame life bereft of crime and violence was rubbing off on the characters to the point that it abruptly took me out of the anime. There is a certain culture of glorification of the act of murder in anime. Glorification in the sense that it is considered to be the ultimate evil, one which fully and completely robs people of their souls and they became conduits of Lucifer himself unless they partake in a journey to seek redemption again. Granted, murder is evil, but the fashion in which it is treated in Monster comes off as silly at best and confoundingly stupid at worst. The forays into the nature of evil and the effects of a troubled childhood on the human mind seem to be quite superfluous because of the limited range of the writer’s experience with life outside of a highly ordered, lawful society. The dialogue and screenplay often follow “the rule of cool” instead of “sensible and pragmatic”. But that’s not a dealbreaker since we are here to have fun, however, I take issue with how the question of “true evil” is treated in Monster.
In real life, most people would agree that generally, “evil” does not exist in a vacuum. Apart from certain statistical outliers, most people indulge in crime and violence only if that is what they are used to. Here, the specific brand of evil that the antagonist embodies is not only limited to him, but also to several other characters, which does not feel right. The story often focusses on nature of true evil and “real monsters”, but also mixes it with its own insight into mental illnesses and the consequences of subjecting people to trauma. This would seem to be a good fit at first but in this anime, this isn’t really addressed to the satisfaction of either topic. Do real monsters exist? Who knows? Does trauma lead to people becoming unhinged psychotics? Maybe. The series is too afraid to answer the questions it poses and asks that the viewer make their own deductions, but given that the topics are dealt with is such a shounen-esque manner, the viewer is simply not given enough incentive to dive into the questions in the first place.
At many points in the anime, (which constantly argues that it is a "serious" look into such topics) the characters make such basic errors, that they destroy the credibility of the writing. More often than not, as anime watchers we tend to forgive such slants onto common sense as eccentricities of the medium, we simply apply another tier of suspension of disbelief to enjoy the series, however in the present case the strange portrayal of the characters in this story comes from not the specific proclivities of the medium itself, but the background of the writers, who have lacked experience in dealing with, well, regular human beings on planet Earth.
I'll grant you an example, at a certain point in the story, the writer, to establish that a certain character is morally dubious, makes the character comment that "all lives are not equal" with a smile drawn to look like the caricature of evil incarnate than a mere mild observation that almost all humans have made by the time they turn 12. No real human being would make this statement, at least not in that way, even if they truly believed it, because making such statements would make anyone sound downright demonic, and nobody wants that. Certain dialogues are inserted simply to drive home a point or a question that the writer wants asked, in the most conspicuous ways that makes you feel like the anime is questioning your intelligence by making it so obvious.
Even the central conflict of the story itself, which propels the protagonist on his journey, feels hollow, since his views on his circumstances come from the last 10 sentences he has heard from the people around him, and not out of the (so-called) brilliant mind of a top neurosurgeon. Several questions, such as the question of whether doctors should offer treatment to “bad people” is deal with by the protagonist, completely ignoring the fact that this “moral dilemma” has been addressed by Medical schools for the past few hundred years. In effect, the writer has managed to create the first quixotic neurosurgeon in media that I am aware of. His explorations into the ethics of murder seem quite impotent as he is limited by the specific flavour of the week that he is dealing with. He is denied the wisdom of a middle-aged professional and is always stuck at the mental capacity of an 8-year-old. As a character the protagonist comes off as a complete whiteboard that only displays what arguments the writer has so far inserted into the episodes up to that point. As he questions his own ethics and morality, he feels sequestered in a role that is not for him to have. Ideally, the character should definitely be affected by the circumstances and opinions of those around him, but in the end, he should have his own specific twist on things. Without that certain twist, the character feels incredibly bland.
He lacks in personality of any kind, and is shockingly bereft of actual character flaws beyond the level of an average quiet middle schooler. That in itself wouldn’t be a problem, as actual real human middle schoolers are quite complex creatures, but therein lies the problem with the writing, the characters are not real in any sense, and only exist to drive the story in a certain direction. This flaw is commonly seen when writers self-insert themselves into the story. Whether this was intentional or not is not important to me, what’s important is whether this lends itself to the story, and it really doesn’t in Monster.
Anime in general is obsessed with “genius” characters. But the problem with genius characters is that the people writing these characters often have little idea of what constitutes genius. This is exemplified in the Sherlock Holmes series on TV, where in the book Sherlock Holmes was simply someone who paid more attention to detail than the average individual, the TV series takes it up several notches to the point that the character can determine the number of hairs on a person’s head by the kind of sandwich he had eaten that morning.
Since actual “super-intelligence” is hard to write, the trick writers use instead is to grant their genius character copious amounts of plot armour and also to make the surrounding characters extremely stupid. This is indeed the case in this anime. Now I would respect the author for making an honest attempt at it, but things have their limits when you have to extend the series to 70+ episodes. I think this anime would have benefitted greatly from being limited to 24 or even 12 episodes.
This is why this anime has a lower level of writing that I expected, because the writer trapped themselves in a situation where they had to write a story involving a character while employing every available trick to make the series last till the end. I have seen this particular brand of writing in several anime and even manhwas. I cannot stress enough that quality is always better than quantity. What could have been a scary thriller anime now feels very dated and almost childish at times.
I would still say this anime is worth a 6/10 because of the sheer amount of effort put into this project, in terms of art and animation. Also consider that your degree of enjoyment would rise the younger you are in general. If you are the kind who tends to dissects plotlines, I would ask you to give this a pass. But if not, then by all means, go ahead.
