Monster:
The Perfect Edition, Vol 1
Author: Naoki Urasawa
Publisher: Viz Media
American
release date: July 15, 2014
Format/Genre/Length: Paperback/Manga/Horror/426 pages
Overall Personal Rating: ★★★★★
Tenma is a doctor whose life
seems perfect. The Japanese doctor came to Germany to learn from a brilliant
German hospital director, and he has become engaged to the man’s daughter, Eva.
But this life is a façade, as he begins to learn. His fiancé is selfish and
narcissistic, and her father only cares about the hospital making money rather
than saving lives. In fact, the director has no compunction about taking credit
for Dr. Tenma’s work, and his daughter tells Tenma that it is her father’s
right to do so.
Dr. Tenma performs a
grueling operation on a famous opera singer, although a Turkish laborer arrived
before him and also needed Dr. Tenma’s attention. But the doctor was told to
operate on the singer and the doctor who performed the operation on the laborer
failed to save him. The grieving widow spots Tenma and wails that if he had
operated, she would still have her husband and her child would have a father.
Tenma’s fiancé’s Eva’s response to Tenma’s self-doubts is “Some lives are worth
more than others.”
It’s1986, and Germany is
still divided. An East German trade adviser defects to the west, and he, his
wife, and two children settle in Dusseldorf. One night the police are called to
their house to find a horrific scene. Both parents are dead, the son has been shot,
and the daughter in shock. The boy is rushed to the hospital and Dr. Tenma is
called in. As he is about to go into surgery, he receives word that the mayor
is ill and needs Tenma to perform his surgery. He’s ordered to do so by the
director. But, remembering how he abandoned the Turkish laborer who then died,
Tenma decides to save the boy and tells them another doctor can save the mayor
as it’s a simple procedure. He saves the boy but the mayor dies.
Tenma, who was once on a
fast track to success, is now ostracized by all and told he will never amount
to anything. The police are impatient to question the young girl who was the
only witness to the tragedy, as her brother is still in a coma. They persuade
the hospital to allow the girl to be brought to the brother’s room in the hope
she can help bring him around, against Dr. Tenma’s medical advice, but this
doesn’t seem to matter anymore. And that does not end well when the director
and two of his flunkies are found murdered, and the children disappear from the
hospital. Dr. Tenma has no choice but to step up and take charge in the midst
of chaos.
Fast forward nine years.
Someone is targeting and killing middle-aged childless couples, but why?
Inspector Lunge of the BKA is assigned to the case. He ends up following a clue
to Dusseldorf, where Tenma is now head of surgery and his former fiancé has
become a whining, demanding drunk with three failed marriages behind her. One of
Tenma’s colleagues urges him to get back in the game and at least date, but
Tenma isn’t really interested in anything but saving people. He saves the man
who Lunge is interested in, and the man tells Tenma about a monster who makes
him do things. When the man goes missing from the hospital, Tenma has an idea
where he is and finds him, along with the so-called monster, who he is
horrified to learn is someone whose life he saved nine years before.
Tenma realizes that he is
responsible in some measure for what the monster has done. Plus he needs to
save the sister from her brother, and begins to search for her. In the
meantime, a young woman named Nina, unaware that she is adopted, and knowing
nothing of her past, has been receiving strange messages from someone, as well
as flowers. His latest email says he wants to meet her on her 20th
birthday at a particular location. Meanwhile, Lunge has become convinced that
Tenma is the murderer and will stop at nothing to prove it.
I’ve been meaning to read this
series for some time. It’s by the same author who brought us Twentieth Century
Boys, which I am still reading, and love. Monster is amazing. It has an
extremely interesting story line you don’t often see in manga involving a
serial killer. The hero, Dr. Tenma, is not only personable and cute, but he has
standards and principles, which all doctors should have. Believing he is responsible for unleashing the monster
on the world by saving his life, he wants to do something to correct that
mistake. At this point, I’m not sure if he plans to talk him out of killing or
if he is capable of taking the next step and ending the monster’s life. We
shall see.
I didn’t like Eva, his fiancé,
from the beginning, and my dislike of her is only growing, as well as for the
persistent, obstinate, and single-minded Lunge, who wants to solve his case one
way or another. You have to feel for the
sister who has everything dumped on her when she has been so happily clueless
and she is forced to relive the horrible memory of what actually happened the
night her parents were murdered.
This is a great first
volume, looking forward to more of the same.
