How Monster created the Perfect Monster

Naoki Urasawa's Monster is pure art and one of the greatest anime ever made but you've probably never heard of it. It's okay, I don't hate you for it but my respect for you has dwindled.

But in any case, Spoilers as usual.

The whole story is dark... grim to say the least. Like a messed up fairy tale. It's also very subtle like a chilling thriller able to make you think and theorise while watching the story unfold.

Providing compelling characters that can make you hate them or love them and one of the greatest protagonist - antagonist relationships. No... not an antagonist. Johan Liebert, the titular Monster, is nothing less than his title.

You can even mistake him for a fanatic. Well, you wouldn't be wrong as the methods used is not dissimilar to the ones used by many cult leaders.

And that's what makes him scary. His charisma... His lies... His pain... It was all so relatable. He almost influenced me as if he called out to me, "Come join me and be the monster."

The Shadow of the Monster

Monster has been penned by the Japanese Master of Suspense, Naoki Urasawa created the most realistic terror that has haunted me in a way. With a realistic view of human nature in its basic forms, Good and Evil... Dr Tenma and Johan.

Set in the aftermath of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, we mainly follow Doctor Kenzou Tenma who is a gifted surgeon who saves a young boy's life and in turn put his whole career that was skyrocketing to a dead halt. Years later, the boy and doctor meet again but only to meet as opposites as the boy had grown up to be a psychopathic serial killer.

Johan had become a monster.

This plays well into the major theme of the whole story as it asks "What is the value of a life?" and to that question, we are given two answers in the form of the protagonist, Tenma and the antagonist, Johan. 

Tenma believes that you can't put a price on life as everyone's lives are equal.

Meanwhile the monster, Johan Liebert would say a life ultimately has no worth.

This is what makes the characters so realistic as these ideas can be followed by any one of us. It is in our human nature to judge so such a story can awake ideas in us and asks us to think. What if Tenma is right? What if Johan is right?

The Definition of Evil

It's no doubt that Johan is pure evil, spawn of hell itself. He is like the devil able to charm you at a glance while destroying your life. He has this otherworldly-ness to him and this is accentuated by his detached world-view.

Unlike other manga killers, Johan doesn't have super-powers. Not even a notebook to write names upon and a gimp demon goes around kills the victim. He is powerful although plays with dice as in unpredictable pieces called humans. 

The methods he uses to kill are remarkably mundane, using guns rarely and mostly forced suicides are his forte. The realism of his own story makes him unique in a way.

He is a man capable of extreme violence and uncompassionate brutal acts, but that's not what makes him unstoppable to a degree. His mind and charisma are the tools that would bring about the worst in people. He often makes others do his dirty work and manipulates them with that power. He could convince a large number of people that he never even existed. 

Throughout the story, Johan is sparsely in it. Only appearing after long gaps of time. But when he does appear, a wave of dread, death and all-around misery follows his wake. But him not being around doesn't mean he is not important. In a way, the events go according to plans Johan had made who knows when. Up until the end of course.

Johan is messed up like really really messed up. The story gives us tidbits about his past alluding to why he is the way he is. Maybe it was the intense brainwashing or the sad childhood or mommy issues or- well it doesn't matter in the end as to how much ever you try to rationalize Johan, you will always end up at the question you were asking in the first
place.

The Nameless Monster

The most likely reason that most people have considered Johan's reason for killing is the Nameless Monster. A storybook tale which Johan is fixated on, a thing that drives him.

Johan wants to be a monster so he took up the name "Johan", the last ever name mentioned in the book. The tale ends with one person, this monster who searched for a name, in a destroyed world. That is what Johan wanted... To be the one person left.

But he went further... to what he calls the perfect suicide and he achieves this by exploiting the hate born when people are together. He has no regard for life, not even his. That's why he tries to turn Tenma into a killer. Tenma is important as Johan believes only him, Tenma and his twin Nina/Anna will the only ones standing at the end of the world, a place of total nothing. A land where Johan dies, no-one ever knowing who he was, killed by the man who once saved him.

But you would think he would fail in the end. Just die or get imprisoned. No, and that's what makes this story great. With all the great evil and sorrow Johan has brought, he wins in his original goal. To become the nameless monster. At least that's what I believe happened in the end.

In the end, well... Johan is evil incarnate. He is the source of all themes, philosophical ideas shown to us through 74 episodes and 162 chapters. It is in that we see, Johan was always a monster so was Tenma and so were you. But Johan became the Nameless Monster.

A monster who never existed.