Samiul Bashar Samin
Naoki Urasawa is a genius. As much as I want to stray from the crazy-elitist-otaku mindset as possible, I can’t do so given that Monster isn’t a TV show as it is an investment in time, effort and after-series contemplation: I’ve spent literally weeks trying to interpret the series sufficiently (as evidenced by my 70+ paged analysis of the series that can be found on various message boards including the one here at themanime.org), but, surprisingly enough, at the end of my [long] journey was, not only my reaffirmation of the complexity of the raw plot, but the realization of how vastly uniform the themes and ideas of the series are. And the sheer intricacy of the various twists and turns that drive the motivation are really quite amazing, yet this is all structured in a manner that’s not only incredibly cohesive, but also well planned-out and with logical exposition that becomes more apparent as the series progresses; this is to the extent that 2-3 minutes in the last episode can somehow make sense of an entire 74-episode TV series and tie everything together into a neat package of awesome (although, it did take some seriously comprehensive investigating for me to figure out the depth of this show’s linchpin ending). Monster is that well thought-out and there probably won’t be anything quite like this in anime until Urasawa’s other monster, 20th Century Boys, is somehow adapted into a TV show (by Madhouse, no less). While I haven’t actually read it yet, it’s quite obvious what the end result will be given that 20th Century Boys has already surpassed Monster in terms of number of volumes released. And if anyone was wondering: yes, I was conceited enough to write a long comprehensive analysis of the series (which, again, is more than 70-pages of consistently new content) just so that I could be able to make claims of the show’s greatness just like what I’m doing now.
Talking about animation production: Madhouse was the best way to go; not only is Monster a complex series, but it’s a beautiful one as well. I’d even go as far as to say that the adapted character designs are actually better than Urasawa’s original drawings; majority of the time, the line-detail for the adapted designs in Monster are as exquisite as can be, yet efficient in terms of number of line strokes (the characters are detailed, but don’t look cluttered). So, what’s not to like about the series? It’s probably the fact that you have to surrender a fraction of your social life to fully appreciate it and that its sheer length will just scare many potential viewers away. But, that’s not a sufficient enough excuse (I’m talking about the length thing) given that, in the end, the length of the show was pretty much justified because of the fact that just about every can of whoop-ass, worms or what-have-you that the series opened, the series was able to properly close, albeit not as obviously as one might initially think (which is nice, since subtlety does have this certain edge over obviousness)..
While there probably has been many a great anime TV series before it, Madhouse and Masayuki Kojima’s adaptation of Monster is probably one of the very best. Ironically, much like the anime adaptation of another Urasawa work, Master Keaton, it’s the best show that no one watched. With its sophisticated storytelling and complex plot weaving, memorable characters, godly production values and excellent pacing, it’s not hard to guess what my final rating for Monster will be.