Monster Perfect Edition Vol. 6 - Featured Reviews 

“Monster” Perfect Edition Vol. 6

By | July 25th, 2019
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

I wonder why. . .those kids think about me?!

I suppose it’s because they like you. . .

They like me. . .even though I didn’t know how to love my own child.

When my child died, I tried to decide how I should react. Whether it was correct to cry in that situation, and how much I should cry. Whether I should scream. . .or gnash my teeth. . .I still don’t know the answer. . .

I don’t know.
–Grimmer & Tenma

Where does Johan’s past lie? Does it begin with the Lieberts and their trek to West Germany? Or does it begin in 511 Kinderheim and the horrors of that place? Perhaps it begins somewhere in between. Or, perhaps, it begins long ago, in the neighboring Czech Republic, above a pub with three frogs on the sign.

The Past is Prologue: Spoilers ahead

Throughout the first four volumes, the question of who Johan was is unimportant. We know all we need to understand him, to grasp the scope of his cruelty, and to fully comprehend what he would do to remain a phantom. With Volume 5 however, that begins to change. There are hints that Johan’s past, the past beyond 511 Kinderheim, is important to his present. That his actions since then have been motivated by something earlier. Now that we have learned all there is to know about his time after leaving 511 Kinderheim, the only place left to go is further back.

Urasawa also makes a clear distinction between the first and second half of the series. The first half was building towards the confrontation between Tenma, Nina, and Johan at Schwald’s place. The question of what would happen, would they go through with killing Johan, looming over the series. However, in the course of setting that event up, Johan encountered something that changed his plans, that kicks off his search for a past he cared little for before. We get the answer to our first question, prompting a second: can Tenma and Nina figure out the mystery of Johan’s, and by proxy, Nina’s, past first?

Volume 6 is the first real step towards answering that question, while developing the other themes of the work. We are teased throughout the volume with revelations that are then snatched away from us, cryptic flashbacks, and other miscellaneous details that seem important but in nebulous ways at the moment. It’s the main concern, in fact. Rather than wonder what Johan is doing next, what his big plan is, and how to stop him, each chapter concerns itself with revealing something about Johan’s past, something connected to it, or about his actions in the present to acquire that information. And in that, we see how small the world of “Monster” really is.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

By this point in the narrative, it is clear that no character, especially not any of the major characters, are randomly in the narrative. At first, most of the characters we met were associated with Tenma, or Johan’s quest to erase his past, in some way. Karl was the first to not have any connection, just unlucky enough to be the son of the man Johan was trying to get in good with. However, as we learned in the last volume, that was not quite true.

Karl was the son on Margo Langer, the lover of Hans Georg Schwald. Langer, as revealed in this volume, was actually named Helenka Novakova. In exile from the Cezch republic, her best friend was back there, living with twins. Twins that bear an eerie resemblance to Johan and Anna. In addition to this, we have Grimmer, who again, seems to have no real connection to Johan other than his poking into the affairs of Kinderheim 511. It turns out, though, that he is a product of that institution and is thus routed into the narrative.

As it stands, the only focal character to not have any connection is Detective Suk but that is also part of his character. He stumbles onto the details of his former partner’s investigation of, and then working with, the Czech secret police. He becomes a tool of Johan posing as Anna, framed in the same way as Tenma, which is also a great way of illustrating the ways in which Johan has changed and grown since Dusseldorf as well as how he treats Suk as a pawn rather than Tenma, who he seems to still respect in some twisted manner, and then Suk, thanks to his partner’s attacking of Grimmer, is dragged into the crosshairs, forced to hide the tapes of Johan.

Continued below

And then there’s Franz Bonaparta aka Klaus Poppe, the children’s book author. How is he, and his book connected to Johan and Anna? The book has been a part of the narrative since way back in volume 2, at first as quotes from Johan on the wall to Dr. Tenma, and then in Volume 4 as the book itself. Is it just a piece of Johan’s past? Or something more?

At this point, we don’t know other than it was clearly a favorite of Johan’s, one with strong memories associated with them. Oh, and that Bonaparta was acquainted with them and their mother, and took one of them away, perhaps to the mansion that Inspector Lunge discovers once had a large volume of bodies behind a sealed off door.

But why? Why would Urasawa do this? There are two possibilities that I see. The first being it provides a nice closed circle to the narrative and all its subplots, making certain that no one’s presence is unimportant or purposeless. The other is that the narrative concerns itself with modern commentaries on the interconnections of powerful figures, of how the cruelties of fallen regimes are never forgotten, only transmuted, and how seeking out the past invariably leads you to seemingly disparate but oddly connected people and events.

Or Urasawa just wanted an easy way of delivering new information to move the plot forward. But where’s the fun in that reading?

In two weeks, Volume 7 (vol. 13 & 14 of the original release,) wherein Tenma faces life from the other side of a jail cell, the question of freedom on his mind.


//TAGS | 2019 Summer Comics Binge

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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