Naoki Urasawa's Monster 1: Herr Dr. Tenma

This manga may hands down be one of the best that I have ever read. And I do not make that statement lightly. I may not have the biggest manga shelf in the world, but what I have read of Monster makes me want to sing its praises from the rooftops. It's very rare in my history of reading manga for me to have given 4 or 5 star ratings with every single volume I've read. Usually with manga you get one bum volume every now and again, with a story arc that goes nowhere or just silly one-shot gag settings that may have seemed hilarious to the creator at the time, but are lost in translation. Not in Monster. Oh no. Urasawa has a gripping, clever crime thriller to tell, and you're going to want to be with it every step of the way. Monster tells the story of Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant Japanese neurosurgeon working in West Germany in the 1980s. He has a beautiful fiancée, he's the head of the neurosurgery department at his hospital, he has the blessing of the hospital director, and the respect and admiration of all his colleagues. However, Dr. Tenma is shaken one day by the hospital forcing him to operate on a rich patron rather than a poor Turkish man, who had more severe injuries. So when the hospital try to force him to operate on the town mayor, suffering from a stroke, rather than a little boy who's been shot in the head, he follows his heart and saves the life of little Johan Liebert. This act puts Tenma in incredibly hot water, though. His fiancée Eva breaks off their engagement, he loses his position as chief of neurosurgery, and the hospital director now refuses to back him at all, following this 'irresponsible' act. Dr. Tenma refuses to be shaken, however, and after ranting to an unconscious Johan, he assumes it's the end of his career and just continues working day to day. ...That is, until the hospital director and two other doctors mysteriously die. And oddly enough, around this time, Johan and his twin sister escape from the hospital. An investigation is launched, and even though from an objective standpoint, Tenma had the greatest motive to kill those men, no evidence is ever found, and the case grows cold. Nine years later, Tenma is now chief of surgery at the hospital, and taking care of a patient named Adolf Junkers, who was hit by a car after running away from a 'monster', and is being questioned by the police for his involvement in a spate of recent serial burglaries/killings. One night, terrified out of his wits, he escapes the hospital, with Tenma in hot pursuit. Tenma follows Junkers to a construction site, where he meets with the real serial killer who's been terrorising Germany: Johan Liebert. All grown-up. I just love the moral choices of this story. Tenma loses everything but then gains it back, and Johan claiming to be responsible for this (basically, he killed those hospital staff, having listened to Tenma's 'wishes' and giving them poisoned sweets) really struck a chord for me. Johan is also a genuinely terrifying presence. He's attractive, has a sweet, childish lilt to his voice, but on the other hand, he's utterly brutal and heartless. The way he taunts Dr. Tenma before killing Mr. Junkers... and then he just walks past Tenma with a calm, gentle smile on his face - I've never gotten chills reading a manga before, but I have now, thanks to Monster. Tenma is also an incredibly interesting character. He followed his heart to move to Germany after reading a medical paper written by the current director of the hospital, and while he's a very kind and wise doctor, he's polite enough to say he's still got a long way to go. The reader feels Tenma's heartache when his waxen wings mount above his reach, and he loses everything in the space of a few hours. It also makes the reader question what they would have done in that situation: would you have followed orders, or let more lives die on your watch because they couldn't afford their health insurance or weren't financially affiliated with the hospital? And what would you do if that one crucial misstep in your career ended up working out for the better... then took a horrifying turn for the worse? I may have started this series rather haphazardly (I found volumes 10-15 in a comic book shop and read them last weekend), but I'm going to finish the series come hell or high water. I just want to know why volumes #3-9 are out of print and so bloody expensive. Come on, Viz! Reprint some of them. If I could afford upwards of £50 every time I wanted to buy a manga volume, well... I'd be a lot richer than I am now. 5/5.

Although not different to the anime in content, the manga is the superior to the two. I feel that the previous reviewer did not do this manga justice. 'Monster' is not just an incredible thriller, but is a compelling moral tale. Tenma is an expert neuro-surgeon with a promising future ahead of him. However, after his director instructs him to abandon his treatment of a Turkish worker (thus leaving this man to die) in order to perform a relatively minor opperation on a well known opera singer, he begins to see that his hospital is corrupt to the core and the people in positions of power do not believe that all men are created equal. Therefore, when Tenma is later ordered to stop operating on a boy with a serious head-wound in order to treat a richer client, he refuses to do so. This choice will set a series of events in motion which finally end several years later with Tenma as a wanted man, accused of several murders, and fleeing the police while trying to prove his innocence by revealing the true identity of a mysterous young man called Johann. As I said before, Naoki Urasawa is a visionary. 'Monster' is so much more than just a thriller. It focuses on many moral implications such as whether or not one life is as valuable as another, the nature of choice and what it really is that makes a monster. On top of this is the historial aspects of the plot, as it is set mainly in Germany just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and does an incredible job of realistically presenting this time period. I have been following this series since the first volume was released and have just finished reading volume 13. As this series is 18 volumes long, and so far has never lost its knack for keeping me enticed and excited since the first volume, I can honestly say that it is one of the best series's that I have ever read and could not recommend it more to anyone.

I thought this deserved some kind of review even though i've only seen the first few episodes of the anime on YouTube. It's basically about a young, talented japanese brain surgeon who works in Germany trying to build up his career. When we first see him, it's all going very well as he up for promotion, friends with the director of the hospital, engaged to the directors beautiful daughter and very popular and successful within the hospital. However, when he is ordered to work on a famous singer rather than on the poor Turkish man who was brought in first, his conscience starts to act up when the Turkish man dies and his wife and young son accost him, shouting at him to give her her husband back. When he tell his fiancee, she replies that he did the right thing as life is not equal, and the director implies a similar thing later on, talking about the importance of money over saving patients. This disconcerts Dr Tenma, and when a similar thing happens some time later and he his ordered to help the mayor rather a dieing young boy who was brought in first, he decides to follow his beliefs and help the boy. Because of this, however, he loses everything. The director makes it clear that Dr Tenma has no chance of getting any further in life as he would never promote him and would refuse to write a reference if he quit the hospital. His daughter then cruelly gives him back the engagemant ring and goes to flirt with other men. Because of all this he gets very angry, and when he visits the young boy he saved (who is still unconscious), he starts shouting about how the director doesn't deserve to be alive if he cares more about money than patients. He then goes out and gets very drunk, but when he wakes up he finds out that the director and two other bad doctors had been murdered and the young boy and his twin sister had run away from the hospital. But what happened? I won't spoil the rest, but it gets better as it goes a long.

This is the first volume of a good manga series! I've seen most of the anime of monster (which is also worth checking out!) and this manga sticks pretty closely to the anime, This is ideal for you if you are a fan of psychological/mature manga - not for younger fans!

I'm only halfway through this amazing series, but I absolutely love it! This is, without a doubt, my favourite manga series. This series is strongly recommended to anyone who either: loves manga, is a fan of Death Note (was my number 1 favourite, but now comes in at a close second), detective fiction, murder mysteries, thrillers, psychological horror, or a well told story with deep, interesting and likeable characters... In my opinion, this is manga storytelling at its very best. The setting is fresh - a manga story set in Germany throughout the nineties; the story is well written and engrossing, there are loads of plot twists (the bulk of them you won't even see coming), there's plenty of tension and suspense that'll keep you on the edge of your seat, the main characters are nicely developed, even at times sympathetic, and interesting - especially the main character, Dr Kenzo Tenma - and some characters are downright evil; the artwork is also great and very nicely detailed too. The manga is far superior to the anime, though the anime is great too and is very faithful, but I'd recommend the original source material any day of the week. It's just such a shame a number of the volumes have gone out of print and have become ridiculously rare and expensive. As a result, I find this series to be underrated - both the manga and the anime - in favour of more mainstream series such as Bleach, Naruto, One Piece etc. Now, I don't mind some of the anime/manga cliches you usually get, but this series has none of it. It's very serious, down-to-earth, and mature. No dudes with funky, spiky hairdos wielding big swords battling monsters or cutesy girls/creatures... This is the 'thinking man's' manga. Oh, and it's not really recommended for kids either. Ages 15 or above I'd say. It deals with a lot of themes that would probably go over young people's heads anyway. Get into this series as soon as you can!

Dr Tenma, a talented young japanese surgeon, goes to a German hospital to further up his career. Back at home, it was blocked by his older brother, destined to take over his father's hospital. Tenma (also the name of Astro Boy's creator in Osamu Tezuka's revered series) soon discovers that western hospitals also have their own politics. Led by his conscience, Tenma makes the wrong move and his career is in shambles until... Of Urasawa, I have only read the Pluto series ( Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka volume 1 ), his brilliant mid-2000s masterpiece homage to Tezuka. This Monster series begins as masterly. The plot, the dialogs, the drawings, everything has to be praised.

This brief comment is not for volume 1 alone, but the entire series: the manga seems to be amazing and I loved the first couple of volumes, just to find out that many volumes are out of print, making it impossible for my budget to collect them and read the series. If you can pay more than 50 quid for a small manga paperback then well done, but for those like myself who cannot I give it 1 star to catch your attention