Welcome Home.
–[REDACTED]
The past is a labyrinthine prison for the present. Its walls surround you at all points of the day, illuminated only by flickering candlelight, its doors locked shut, its warped windows covered by curtains that you can only brush aside. Your journey shaped by the sloping paths of walls and the ghosts that float in and out of your vision, the unforgiving, oppressive atmosphere refusing to let you forget exactly what you’ve done. You long for what you think is on the other side, seeing now what you think needs to be done and how you think it can be fixed. . .
. . .if only you could get back there.
God Loves, Man Kills: Spoilers ahead
In spite of the sluggishness of the previous volume, volume 8 turns things around not by amping up the action, not by driving up the tension, not even by giving us a lot of substantial reveals, but by instead refocusing the narrative on the characters’ rich inner lives and deeply checkered past. Tenma, Eva, Nina, all of them have their pasts excavated in this volume so that it can be reexamined in light of the events of the previous seven volumes, although it can be argued that Tenma still has yet to confront his own. Martin and the other new characters, like Milan the Dentist and Peter Čapek, who is an antagonist, get the same treatment.
Why?
Well, simply put, it’s because the central argument of volume 8 is that only in confronting and releasing the past can one finally be free of it.
Martin has spent his whole life and career trapped by the memory of his alcoholic mother freezing to death because, one night, as a child, he left her, fed up with having to drag her home. It has informed his worldview, “women are only trouble,” a statement reinforced by the suicide of his girlfriend after he caught her, relapsed, and with her ex. Eva is much the same — self-destructive, with little regard for her life anymore. He sees this and keeps his nonchalant demeanor, resolving not to get involved.
It’s only when Tenma appears to Martin that the autopilot he was on is turned off, and he begins to reconsider, and the final straw occurs only after he is forced to see his past once again via the Devil’s Apprentice. He is given the opportunity to break his cycle, to grow, and he takes it. But, perhaps, he took it too late.
Eva, on the other hand, is the way she is because of who she was, the petty, spoiled rich girl, but also because she was unable to release Tenma from her heart, allowing the good memories to spoil and curdle into a miasma of rage and venom. She could not see the future thanks to the wall of her past. Even when she thought she was freeing herself of the whole situation, by running away with Martin, she was simply trading in a bottle for a man.
And so, when Tenma and Eva reconvene in ‘Sad Reunion,’ it begins, as all confrontations with the past go, with pain and difficulty and tears. But because of their conversation, because she is able to vocalize the amends she wishes to make, and releases the ball of hate she has kept warm and festering in her chest, she is able to grow and begin to move forward.
The keyword there being “begin.”
The Questing Beast
Such is the case with Nina, who is on a much more literal quest shaped by the search for her past, one that Johan shared. She cannot move on until she understands it all, even when Dieter insists that knowing her past won’t change her present. The greater narrative argues against this, that ignorance does not equal bliss, only the ability to ignore the problems that hide in the shadows. But I digress. Nina’s quest to confront her past comes to a head when she comes face to face with Johan again, promising the final reveals and a shocking twist.
But first, one final piece of the past puzzle: Milan and Peter.
Peter is Milan’s past, they were once friends, and thus, he is subsumed beneath his guilt over allowing Peter to escape to the west. Peter’s entire present is defined by his past profession, by Franz Bonaparta’s experiments, and Johan, so much so that the fear it inspires in him causes him to kill his driver, chained as he is to the “golden days” of yore.
Continued belowMilan cannot confront Peter, cannot reckon with what he’s done, so he resolves to destroy his past — to kill Peter. However, he is unsuccessful and is killed himself. When the children in his house learn of his death, they are filled with the same rage, the same guilt, and were Tenma not to have been there, to remind them of why letting this crystalize would only lead to more death and pain, they too would have their futures defined by this moment in the past. What is revenge, if not the pain of the past turned into the pain of the present?
Old Boy and Dante
Two final quick thoughts:
1: “Monster” is a revenge tale. It is a complex and multi-faceted story but Tenma’s quest is archetypical of a revenge story, making it all the more conspicuous each time he tries to stop others from taking revenge. What makes his position so different? In the context of the story, it is materially different, as he is not out for revenge in the traditional sense but instead attempting to right a wrong he believes he has committed, but does that argument hold water?
2: What makes Johan scary is that he takes a character’s pasts — their guilt and their inadequacies — and presents them in as blunt and blinding a way as possible, framing them only in terms of failure and selfishness, hitching a person’s mind to the worst possible train and sending it off so fast, they have no chance to think otherwise. Why do so many of his victims fall to despair so quickly? Because he knows just where to push them.
This is where the Devil’s Apprentice failed, and why Martin was able to have a revelation rather than a breakdown. The Devil’s Apprentice took too much glee in simply presenting the past, allowing Martin to draw his own conclusions and reject the reality the Devil’s Apprentice tried to inscribe upon him. A small moment but one which highlights just how brutally soul-crushing Johan is, and why he makes such a compelling antagonist.
Next week, the final volume, Volume 9 (vol. 17 & 18 of the original release) and, finally, an answer to the question: what makes a monster. . .and can it be destroyed?
