Monster (manga)

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Monster ( Japanese モ ン ス タ ー , Monsutā ) is a completed manga series by the Japanese artist Naoki Urasawa (including 20th Century Boys ), which was also implemented as an anime .

The setting is Central Europe, mainly Germany and the Czech Republic.

action

The story begins in 1986 in Düsseldorf . The Japanese neurosurgeon Kenzō Tenma ( 天馬 賢 三 , Tenma Kenzō ) works in a clinic and is popular with both his colleagues and patients. His girlfriend Eva Heinemann is the daughter of the clinic director.

He is preparing the operation of the boy Johann, who was critically injured by a shot in the head during a crime in his parents' house . His parents, the former GDR trade minister Liebert and his wife, were shot and his twin sister Anna was in severe shock . Shortly before the operation, Tenma was instructed to operate on the sick mayor. Tenma ignores the instruction in favor of the injured boy, the mayor dies. Tenma's life changes suddenly, Eva dissolves the engagement , and his professional career seems to be hopeless. Since Tenma is convinced that he has made the morally correct decision, he believes he can continue to live with a clear conscience despite the loss of his social status. Then the clinic director Dr. Heinemann and two other doctors poisoned by whiskey candy ; Johann and Anna have disappeared from the clinic.

The story continues in 1995. Tenma is now chief physician. One day he gets a patient named Junkels. When he runs out of the hospital in the middle of the night and Tenma chases him, he meets Johann again and learns that the boy is a violent criminal and psychopath with a split personality as a product of experiments . Tenma watches as Johann commits a murder and is driven in his further actions by the idea of ​​being able to correct his mistake of saving the boy. He follows the monster Johann across Central Europe and reveals backgrounds that make him doubt who the real monster is.

main characters

Kenzō Tenma is a brain surgeon and a good-natured person. He puts the lives of others above his own good and there is nothing more important to him than helping others. However, he also exudes a certain naivety, which makes it quite difficult for him in his profession at the beginning and is exploited. He is torn inside and has to struggle with the fact that he saved the life of the "monster" Johann and is ready to pursue Johann in order to kill him and undo his mistake.

Johann Liebert is the "monster" of the series. He neither knows his real name, nor does he know about his origin. He commits his murders according to a pattern he has devised, but none of the crime scenes show any emotion. He is a native Czech and you only learn something about his past gradually. Johann looks pretty inconspicuous, has great charisma and influence. The right-wing scene sees him as the new "Hitler" and wants to win him over, but Johann is pursuing his own goals.

Anna Liebert / Nina Fortner is Johann's twin sister. When she learns of her brother's deeds as a child, she tries to shoot him. But Johann survives through the life-saving operation by Dr. Tenma. After escaping from the hospital, Johann places his sister with foster parents, where she loses her memories and believes it was her birth parents, growing up under the name Nina Fortner until Johann comes to fetch her. But when Tenma saves her and she remembers her past, Nina sets out to avenge her parents, who were killed by one of Johann's henchmen, and to finish what she started years ago.

Inspector Lunge from the BKA believes that Tenma has a split personality and accuses him of having committed Johann's murders himself. He is so obsessed with his job that his neglected family abandons him. From then on he made the hunt for Tenma his life's work.

Eva Heinemann is the former fiancée of Dr. Tenma. She is also the daughter of the head of the clinic where Tenma works. It soon becomes apparent that she only wanted to marry Tenma because of his career as a surgeon. She leaves him when his career seems to be over, succumbs to alcohol after the death of her father and blames Tenma for it.

Dieter is a boy whom Tenma met on his way, who was supervised by Mr. Hartmann. During the meeting, Tenma notices that Dieter's body is sore. It turns out that Hartmann wanted to raise Dieter to be a new Johann, which did not happen in the children's home 511. Dieter later seems more and more optimistic after Tenma saved Dieter. He follows Tenma on his hunt for Johann, partly to prevent Tenma from becoming a murderer. Dieter later crosses his path with Nina and stays with her to give her moral support as her traumatic memories return.

Dr. Reichwein is a psychologist who gives advice and helps with alcohol withdrawal. He is also involved in the incident with Johann when one of his patients, Richard Braun, suddenly commits suicide, while he was on Johann's track. Later he becomes the protector of Nina and Dieter and he helps Tenma as best he can.

Wolfgang Grimmer is a freelance journalist who takes a close look at the children's home 511. He also takes part in the search for Johann early on when he decides to help Tenma. He usually wears a smile on his face. Just like the other children in the children's home 511, he has also developed a second personality: a bat called "the incredible Steiner", who always protects him when he is under too much stress or in danger. He was inspired by his childhood hero the incredible Hulk who is referred to in the series as "Magnificent Steiner". He also had espionage training after his time in the children's home 511. However, due to all these circumstances, he cannot develop emotions. These only show up after the blood bath in Ruhenheim, in which he was fatally injured.

Rudy Gillen is a detective and one of Tenma's former classmates; he helps Tenma by helping him before he is arrested and gets any information about Johann that he can get from criminals who have met Johann. He also helped Nina remember her past. Dr. Gillen is also a former student of Dr. Rich wine.

Roberto is Johann's most loyal and closest subordinate, who also came from the children's home 511. There he was Wolfgang Grimmer's best friend. He was seconded by Johann for the important jobs and died in Ruhenheim as a result of an argument with Inspector Lunge.

Publications

Monster appeared in Japan from 1995 to 2001 in individual chapters in the manga magazine Big Comic Original of the Shogakukan publishing house. These individual chapters were also summarized in 18 anthologies. These book publications have been extremely successful commercially, selling over twenty million copies.

All 18 volumes of Egmont Manga & Anime were published in German from December 2002 to May 2006 . Despite stagnating sales, the series was published in full. The low level of success is explained by the comparatively low average age of Manga readers in Germany, who are rarely addressed by the story and the narrative technique. Since August 2019, Carlsen Manga has published a new edition of the series in large-format double volumes under the title Monster Perfect Edition .

The manga series also appears in France , Spain , Thailand , Indonesia and the USA, among others .

In August 2013, Viz Media announced a new English-language publication entitled Monster: The Perfect Edition , in which two anthologies will be combined into one. The first volume was published in July 2014, the others follow every three months.

Awards

Naoki Urasawa received an award at the first Japan Media Arts Festival and the 46th Shogakukan Manga Prize for Monster . In 1998 the manga was nominated for the Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize, but had to admit defeat to Jirō Taniguchis and Natsuo Sekikawa's Botchan no Jidai . A year later, Monster won the prize in the two million yen Grand Manga Prize category .

Film adaptations

Anime

Television series
German title monster
Original title モ ン ス タ ー
monsters
Country of production JapanJapan Japan
original language Japanese
Year (s) 2004-2005
length 24 minutes
Episodes 74 in 1 season
genre drama
music Kuniaki Haishima
First broadcast April 6, 2004 - September 27, 2005 on Nippon TV
synchronization

Studio Madhouse produced an anime series with 74 episodes for the manga, which was broadcast from April 6, 2004 to September 27, 2005 on the Japanese television station Nippon TV .

synchronization

role Japanese voice actors ( seiyū )
Kenzō Tenma Hidenobu Kiuchi
Nina Fortner / Anna Liebert Mamiko Noto
Johann Liebert Nozomu Sasaki

music

The opening title used was Grain by Kuniaki Haishima , who also composed the music for the series. The credits for the first 32 episodes are For The Love of Life by David Sylvian , and for the remaining 42 episodes, Make It Home by Fujiko Heming .

motion pictures

The US company New Line Cinema , production company of the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings , had secured the rights to a conversion as a real film in 2005 and was planning a release under the direction of Josh Olson for 2009, which, however, never appeared.

Television series

In 2013, Guillermo del Toro and Steven Thompson planned to convert the manga into a live action television series for the American pay-TV broadcaster HBO .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.narinari.com/Nd/2005044270.html
  2. ↑ http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Vol-The-Perfect-Edition/dp/142156906X
  3. ↑ http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-08-10/viz-media-to-release-ranma-anime-on-bd/dvd
  4. ↑ Josh Olson to Adapt Manga Comic Book Monster. (No longer available online.) In: MovieWeb. July 8, 2005, archived from the original on May 11, 2008 ; accessed on February 4, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Monster (2009). (No longer available online.) In: IMDb. Archived from the original on November 12, 2007 ; accessed on February 4, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Mike Fleming Jr: Guillermo Del Toro Is Hatching A 'Monster' Of A Series At HBO. Deadline.com, April 24, 2013, accessed May 11, 2013 .