Have you ever heard of the Magnificent Steiner?
Back in the sixties, there was a cartoon show in West Germany, and there were ways to watch it secretly in East Germany too. The hero was usually pretty wimpy but whenever he got stuck in a real tight corner, a secret friend always came to his rescue.
What the hero never noticed though, was that his secret friend. . . was really him.
–Grimmer
Killing, in the world of “Monster,” is not an act that is taken lightly. Sure, there is a lot of death but there is a clear distinction between the types of people who kill, who kill easily, and those who struggle with the act. It is violence, one of the most violent things you can do to another living being, a violation of their whole spirit, severing them from the world of the living. Death may be a fact of life but murder, murder is a different thing entirely.
Reaching out. Killing me. Killing You.:Spoilers ahead
Tenma is no stranger to death. Even before his cross-country hunt for Johan, he encountered it nearly daily at the hospital in Dusseldorf. It can be argued that he personally encountered it infrequently, seeing as he was the country’s leading neurosurgeon, but death was not foreign to him. By now, it is an old friend. And yet, to court death, to desire it upon another human, to actively bring death into this world, that is something that Tenma struggles with.
The same could be said for Nina, or is it Anna, who discovers her foster parents murdered by two cops, one of which she almost kills but, in the end, watches him die after saving her life. She shook, she could not kill him, she could not take a life. Yet, she is closer to being a killer than Tenma, for she has already shot with intent to kill, almost snuffing out the light of Johan, the inciting incident for the series.
Then there is Johan and Roberto, two people who kill with no hesitation, who enjoy the sight and sound and do everything in their power to do it again and again.
Urasawa puts these four in conflict in the first half of this volume, showing us four different modes of what killing, or the thought, can do to a person. Roberto takes pleasure in it, with a steady hand and joy in seeing the carnage unfold. Johan is indifferent, taking lives for him is no more moving than escorting Schwald to the podium. Both clearly have killed copiously before and will do so again. They do not shake. They do not fear.
For Tenma, the act of taking a life is so powerful, so against who he is, that it is only through recalling the copious amounts of death caused by Johan, that he can even come close to shooting him. The same is true for Nina. Urasawa uses the memory of the death of the Fortners and Herr Maurer as a touchstone for these two, so that we can compare their actions as motivated by the same event. For Nina, once she remembers, there is no hesitation but there is consideration. She recognizes that to take a life is to change oneself irrevocably. She has already done so, already resigned herself to the task, so she cannot allow Tenma to take on her sins.
Tenma, too, acts in this way. He feels it is his duty to make sure that only the hand that brought the monster to life takes it out again.
But he cannot do it. He can shoot Roberto, although even that is a struggle, but he can’t kill Johan, despite, or maybe because of, Johan pointing to his own forehead, the very spot Nina shot him in all those years ago, walking right up to Tenma’s loaded gun. Despite Tenma’s hands no longer shaking, despite knowing he has the resolve, Tenma is no killer, even if he has killed.
The Magnificent Steiner: Champion of the People
And then there’s Grimmer, the third, the newest, the one who kills not with weapons but with his bare hands. Two people, he killed, and while he may not remember it, when he discovered he is safe, and responsible, he smiles. It’s a sad smile, though, not the smile of Roberto or Johan. It clearly isn’t the first time he has taken a life, as he states “you’ve done it again” while staring at the blood on his hands, but it’s our first time seeing him do it. Over the course of 6 chapters we get to know Grimmer and in those chapters, he acts in much the same way Tenma, Nina, or any of our previous protagonists act, kind, driven and in search of the truth behind the horror.
Continued belowSide Note: For those who have, like me, read the whole thing, I’m doing this as a textual reading of each volume as presented, with only prior knowledge acting to inform my readings.
What do we make of him? Is he like Johan and Roberto, killers through and through, each act begetting a desire to do more? Is he like Tenma, who has killed in distress but, perhaps, regrets it more than he wishes to admit, struggling with the actions he has taken, wishing to never do it again, even though now it may come a little easier? Or is he like Nina at the midpoint of the volume, where killing is not a desire but a duty, made all the easier by her actions in the past?
Or is this all an effort in vain, to create categories where there are none?
Let me answer that question with a non-sequitur: look at what Grimmer does when he discovers he has killed two people. He does the same thing Tenma does — he looks at his hands. It’s a powerful symbol, one that many people do without realizing it in their day to day life, and is used in movies to illustrate a choice that shocks the system. Roberto and Johan never do this. Tenma does. And Nina. . .well, Nina’s an interesting case.
If you were to stop at where the old vol. 9 ended, Nina would fit the narrative I’ve laid out. We never see her kill anyone, so there is no opportunity to see if she would look at her hands to fit the pattern. However, in the back half of this volume, she is shown to be a changed woman, although it is always in silhouette, and we never follow her. She kills with impunity, impassionately, all those who seem to have ties to the experiments that dealt with Johan all those years ago. It seems that, after gathering the courage to shoot at Johan, to do what Tenma could not, a damn broke, and a killer was made.
A Quick Craft Aside
Though I’ve refrained from talking about the composition of the series thus far, Volume 5 has the first, and I believe only, two page spread of the entire series and, for those who are burnt out by the typical Shonen/Superhero overuse of spreads and splashes to show fight scenes or reveals that do not leave the intended impact, or oftentimes any impact, this is one that earns and deserves it. It is an unexpected and intimate moment, chilling to experience, and even now, having read the series three times, it still gets me and sends a shiver down my spine.
It’s a simple page too, a close-up of two characters, but the lack of any telegraphing from the previous page achieves the intended effect of surprise and shock. We are put in the place of Schwald and acutely feel his fear as Johan stares into his eyes and asks one simple question — “Can you see me?” It’s a sentence with many meanings: a call-back, albeit twisted, to the storybook and the message Johan left for Tenma back in Volume 2, the surface, literal meaning, as well as the deeper meaning of can you see my soul, can you see who I am.
Junji Ito may be the master of the page turn in horror but Urasawa, with this one moment, gives him a run for his money. For those studying page reveals and how to effectively utilize a spread to do more than make a scene look large, you can’t get any more perfect than this.
Next week, Volume 6 (vol. 11 & 12 of the original release) and, perhaps, the first discussion of the interconnected web being woven around Johan’s past.
