Do you know what it means, to destroy a human being’s basic sense of right and wrong? What happens when you wake up the monster within a human heart?!
A human being. . .a human being needs to enjoy the taste of food, to look forward to picnics on the weekend, to relish a beer after a day’s work.
A human being. . . a human being. . .needs to grieve from the bottom of his heart when his child dies.
–Grimmer
It all ends here. The questions and themes and plots that have been bubbling and stewing for eight volumes come to a head, crashing into each other in a violent and tragic conclusion to a story filled with both. Our principal cast have all found their way to the same place, the same revelations, and now all that is left is to watch the sparks fly and the end arrive. . . but what fun would it be to only talk about the final confrontation, when there is so much more going on underneath the surface.
Munch Munch, Gobble Gobble:Spoilers ahead
As the title suggests, “Monster” is concerned with probing this word in all its many facets. What makes a monster? Can one be created, or are they born as such? How do you stop one? And, most importantly, is there even such a thing? In the eyes of this story, the answer to the latter is unequivocally yes. Johan is a monster, Roberto, too, is a monster. Both care little for those around them, using them and throwing them away, cruelty their modus operandi and death their favorite pastime. Franz Bonaparta was once a monster, ripping children away from their families to further an experiment. So too were the leaders of Kinderheim 511, who repeated his experiments. Even smaller players, such as the Devil’s Apprentice and The Baby can fall under the umbrella of monster.
What, then, sets Johan apart as the titular monster? What makes him, as the monster who has no name, so uniquely terrifying and evil? For the first half of the series’ run, that question had a simple answer: the Kinderheim 511 experiments. From there, it blossomed into the mystery of the Red Rose Manor, which itself served as proof of Johan’s innate evilness. However, volume nine upends all of that. Johan did not experience any of the experiments at the manor nor did he see, or cause, all that death. If it truly was that harrowing experience that formed who he became, then Nina should be in the same boat. Grimmer should be in the same boat. . .Franz Bonaparta’s son should be in that same boat.
All three, instead, believe in happy endings. They retain, or have internalized, a sense of righteousness, fighting for life and justice. Nina wants to be a lawyer. Grimmer was an investigative journalist who fought to bring to light the secrets of the underworld. Bonaparta’s son tells stories to bring cheer and life to those who hear it, even if he does not seem to feel it.
Because of this, it is hard to pin down where Johan’s monstrousness comes from and therefore, the blame that Nina and Tenma, and to a lesser extent Franz Bonaparta, attempt to ascribe to themselves for his “creation,” is nulled. Tenma operating on Johan did not cause a monster to be unleashed, only a human to be saved. Nina not forgiving him is not what drove him to cruelty and neither was Bonaparta’s experiments. It is, however, the unknowable combination of it all that created the conditions that allowed Johan the monster to live, and the cruelty of the world that gave him room to thrive.
Hamlet; or, How to End a Tragedy
Throughout these nine volumes, I keep saying that “Monster” is a tragedy. Its arc bends inexorably towards death and destruction and fills itself with sadness and the ways in which our flaws become our undoing. In a traditional tragedy, our flawed main character would, by the end, find himself — and 9 times out of ten it was a himself — surrounded by a death of his own making, and ends the story in blood.
That is not what happens here.
Continued belowTenma, Nina, and even Johan, all three of our primary pro/antagonists, survive through the end of the story. Neither Tenma nor Nina kill anyone, with Roberto being slain by Lunge, Bonaparta being slain by Roberto, and Johan being shot by Wim’s drunk father. The final confrontation between our central trio instead showing how far each has come and yet how cyclical everything is. Johan still points to his head for someone to kill him, Tenma hesitates, and Nina tries to save someone from themselves, thought this time through words rather than actions.
It is, however, still a tragedy.
Volume 9 takes place, almost entirely, in the village of Ruhenheim. A quiet town where few visit, problems are minimal, and the closest reinforcements are an hour away, on the other side of a river. By the end of chapter 139, the town is in ruins, almost everyone is dead, and all it took was a few guns, a few whispered words of distrust, and a death to stoke the spark of fear into a raging inferno. It also gives Urasawa the chance to twist the knife even more, killing Grimmer and then revealing that Roberto was once his friend, the one he remembered back in volume 6, before being twisted by Johan into the monster he has been throughout the series.
The build-up of tension throughout this volume is masterful and as a climax to the story works as a perfect microcosm of its ideas. Johan being behind it all is irrelevant because the focus is on the individual townsfolk as they allow their fears to consume them, as distrust becomes the norm. It is at once a tale of the horrors that Johan wreaks upon the town, and an indictment of how the tricks of the mind escalate to thoughts of violence and, with the right weapons of destruction, to acts of wanton death, until all that is left is the sound of rain pelting the bodies on the ground, the air heavy with the stench of gunpowder.
Innocents are taken out by the fearful, the fearful taken out by the cruel, and the righteous fight to protect the innocent, but are only able to achieve a pyrrhic victory: Franz Bonaparta can never testify as to the cruelties he unleashed because he confronts Johan, thereby losing his only chance at true atonement. The girl from the sausage shop (who is never given a name and is more plot device than character) is gunned down right before reaching her destination, all because she wandered out from safety too soon. And Grimmer dies because the only emotion he has ever felt, truly felt, is rage, only able to regain his emotions right before he had no more use for them.
Tragic, is it not?
Empty Beds and a Mother’s Love
Epilogues are often used to tie stories up into neat bows, providing that extra bit of catharsis,, knowing that the character’s lives have gone on after the harrowing events of the main narrative. “Monster’s” epilogue is split into two chapters. The first, Chapter 161, focuses on most of the surviving secondary characters. We learn what everyone has been up to since the massacre in Ruhenheim. It is a bittersweet catch-up — restrained, slow, and deliberate in its delivery. Eva is healthy and happy, although she has not lost her melancholy, and is still seeing Dr. Reichwein. Dieter and Heckel are arguing, carefree. Lunge is now a teacher at the police academy and in contact with his daughter, repairing the life he destroyed in his obsession with his job, while Herr Verdemann and Detective Suk have cleared Grimmer’s name, although they were unable to find out what his true name was.
The second, Chapter 162, focuses on our main three, Nina, Tenma, and Johan, with Tenma’s conversation with the twins’ mother acting as a bridge between chapters. Johan is still in a coma, Nina is about to become a lawyer, and Tenma, well, he’s part of Doctors without Borders, rededicating himself to his ethos that no one’s life is more important than others.
Not everything, however, has such a neat bow tied on it. Perhaps in another twist of the above genre, “Monster” ends with a staple of the thriller: a open-ended conclusion and at least one idea left unanswered and unexplored. It’s a provocative way to end the series and leaves the door open, not for more story, but for discussion. What does this final revelation mean for our understanding of who Johan is? What are we to make of this knowledge in light of the themes of the work? Knowing that Nina was not simply taken but given away changes our perception of that night. Add in the uncertainty of which child their mother was willing to give up, and it is easy to understand why he changed his plans so suddenly and was filled with such despair.
Continued belowFor us, it is another instance, or perhaps the ultimate instance, of the removal of love, or the certainty of it, being at the root of cruelty and despair. It is embedded into the central narrative right from the start, with the experiments at Kinderheim 511 and then the revelation of their opposite in volume 5. Then, in volume 6, it is explored again with Milosh, who has his belief in his mother’s love ripped away from him by Johan sending him to the red light district. Before that, in volumes 4 & 5, there is Hans Georg Schuwald and his newfound son and it was only after Schuwald found him, that he was able to recognize the cruelties of Johan, and to save his son from the flames.
That is not all but it is enough. For “Monster,” love is what allows redemption to be possible, for lives to be saved, and for the world to battle back the cruelty baked into it. It seems trite to say it this way, especially in a narrative as blood and tear soaked as this one, but at the end of the day, this is where “Monster” chooses to conclude. Not on a happy note. Not on the reunion we know will happen. But instead on a secret revealed and empty bed, thoughts rattling around our heads like wind through an open hospital window.
Epilogue
Time for me to go.
– Dr. Tenma
And with that, Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster” is complete. 162 chapters, 9 volumes in 11 weeks. For those who made it to the bottom here, and through all eight other weeks, thank you for sticking with me while I explored this series from a bunch of weird and different angles, while mostly avoiding a discussion of the craft, shortcomings, and quality of the work itself as I went along. “Monster” is a series I love, this being the third time I’ve read it through, and each time I discover something new. It’s been a honor to share that will you all and, if you find you enjoyed “Monster,” check out two of his other series: “Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka” and “20th Century Boys.”
Thank you for reading.
(And yes, I do know that Volume 9 had more two-page spreads than all eight other volumes combined, all three of which mirror each other too. One can’t always cover everything or be right all the time, can they?)
