[Categories: Manga Reviews]
Monster volume 4
I know it’s been a while since I’ve done a manga review so I thought I’d kick things off with the fourth outing of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. This is the first Frankfurt-set arc and features a rug thief, neo-nazis, an evil-minded midget and Nina brandishing a gun. Surprisingly, it also continues to be the most true-to-life and believable graphic novel I’ve read to date.
This volume opens on something of a side-story featuring Tenma’s former fiancee, Eva. It does little to add to the bigger picture but neatly highlights how far-reaching the effects of Johan’s case have proved to be - it is also easy to hate Eva and dismiss her as a complete bitch but I’d be missing the most interesting aspects of her character. By the end of the chapter I actually felt quite sorry for her…just.
Meanwhile our man Tenma is hot on the trail of Johan, which takes him into the Turkish quarter of Frankfurt where he runs up against some nasty characters who are planning on making Johan their new leader who will, in their eyes, supersede Hitler in terms of charisma and ruthlessness. Unless Tenma can stop them it really does seem like a likely outcome.
It is at this point that we meet the Baby, a fellow whose short stature is the likely explanation for his delusions of grandeur. He also reminds me of that guy from Twin Peaks for whatever reason…anyway, he appears to be a key player in the nasty goings-on in Frankfurt where a number of others, to varying degrees, know Johan.
There are some pretty shocking moments in this volume but interestingly this aspect is conveyed without excessive gore or violence. An innocent woman is murdered but we do not even see her face; neo-nazi skinheads crop up in several scenes, babbling on about how they are expecting Johan to front their new world order; and the Monster himself (or is it…?) disposes of a number of his followers with seemingly little effort.
In terms of characterisation, Tenma is still doggedly determined but his reluctance to kill is still being tested; those he befriends realise how terrible it would be for a man of his moral standards to do such a thing. For this reason it will be interesting (for those of you who haven’t seen the anime series yet, at least) to see how long he can keep this up and whether he will be able to kill Johan in the end. Nina on the other hand shows a really tough streak that is inevitably mistaken for a manifestation of her brother’s evil. Twins they are but Nina is nothing like him; the Baby and his goons don’t know this of course, but she manages to use this to her advantage. She and Johan look alike and they are clearly both above-average in intelligence but the similarities end there.
Overall it’s another great instalment for what has to be one of Viz’s finest titles. The development of Nina’s character and the showdown between Tenma, the Baby and his henchmen were the highlights. Expect a review on volume #5 in the next couple of weeks…
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