dkliu1 :

I really liked Monster, as well as other series by Naoki Urasawa (especially 20th century boys). Just out of curiosity, how did you come to pick Monster?

Reply

I liked it too. I chose Monster from a given a list of suggestions by a reader in response to a comment I made that I don’t read or get manga. See comment #9 in this post for the others.

@heidenkind: Thanks. It’s hard for me to stick to talking about romance.

@Niveau: Thank you for the moral support, and the tip on how the series progresses. I would not have guessed Eva appears in later installments. I like reading paper or eink, so I think I will either look for the series on eBay or just buy one every few weeks.

@Sherry Thomas: Of course your comment is relevant. Thank you for the insight on Japanese evildoers. I think you on onto something. Certainly, Monster plays with pairings of beauty and evil in a way American comics do less of. Perhaps we can connect my point about moral luck with yours about Japanese history.

@Serena: LOL. I don’t know — where do you live?

@Maili: I am looking forward to it, and thank you for recommending this to me.

When I studied in France, I again watched a lot of it (Sailor Moon, and a bunch of others).

What I find interesting in the anime I have watched is that the villains are less outright cardboard villainous than their American counterparts. In American cartoons, villains are plot devices. In some Japanese anime, even those aimed at primarily young children, sometimes there is in-depth exploration of the villain’s life and psyche, an effort to portray that they too have their joys and pains.

(I will never forget in what seemed a fairly straightforward us-against-them space battle anime, suddenly one entire episode centered around the alien invasion leader, who up until that moment had been portrayed more or less as a standard villain. I learned how he lost his son in that episode, and as hamfisted the sympathy grab might have been, I was sobbing by the end of it.)

My theory is that the Japanese have experienced much defeat and ignominy as a result of WWII. And they are viewed with great animosity–even today–by the nations they had invaded. And yet they as a people, obviously do not view themselves as two-dimensional representation of evil. And for that reason, I think, they give a more nuanced portrayal of villains even in cartoons.

Sorry this comment had nothing to do with your review.

I have to agree with what Krill said about depictions of women. Eva’s character grows over the series, and other women who are very different are introduced. While the cast of Monster remains predominantly male, the female characters are (in later volumes, at least) interesting and get a lot of page time.

The sound effects in Monster aren’t translated on the page; instead, they’re listed at the end of the book. I find this annoying, since it means that unless you can read katakana, you can’t understand them. That being said, you’ll probably adapt to speed lines and other visual cues pretty quickly, and those are far more important than individual sfx.

And no, $10 a pop isn’t any fun, but it could be worse! You could be paying Canadian prices! *grumbles* (Monster, along with many popular manga series, is available free online, but whether you’re comfortable reading it or not is up to your conscience. Scanning is illegal, but Viz doesn’t ask to have its series taken down the way Tokyopop does. I was comfortable reading it online, but I knew I’d buy the whole series, and I didn’t want to wait.)

You’ll get the hang of reading manga. It took me a few volumes to catch on to everything, but it does come naturally.

Naoki Urasawa as I understand it spent several years in Dusseldorf, which is part of the reason he chose the location I think.

In any case, Monster starts out rough but by the end it is scintillatingly polished. I think you’ll find that the manga’s depiction of women becomes significantly less marginalizing with the second volume. Two of the author’s previous series focused on female protagonists (both sports prodigies, judo and tennis) so I can’t blame him for shifting to a male lead. Especially since Monster was his first opportunity to write for himself instead of strictly for what his publishers thought would sell.