[Categories: Manga Reviews]
Monster volume 5
The fifth volume shows little of Johan’s larger plan but makes up for this with portraying Tenma’s efforts in trying to understand him and track him down. There’s a great side-story featuring Lunge, who is still convinced that Johan is Tenma’s alter-ego but the main event is Tenma’s effort to understand Johan at a criminal psychologist level, which causes him to cross paths with an old friend and, ultimately, face Lunge himself.
It goes without saying that Monster is downright awesome on several levels; that said, thisvolume adds more background and side-stories than scenes that follow the course of the main story. There’s a married couple who are visiting their son who is serving time for murder, who Tenma and Dieter encounter while hitch-hiking; in another chapter we are introduced to a serial killer who has crossed paths with Johan. In this volume the level of mystique surrounding Johan increases though, as we are introduced to Roberto, the guy who annoyingly crops up during the rest of the series. His ability to survive and cause problems for Johan’s opponents wore on me after a while but at this stage he’s menacing and actually quite cool.
The main event of this volume is Tenma’s relationship with Rudi Gillen, although prior knowledge of what happens later in the story leads me to conclude that Rudi is merely a secondary supporting character. Gillen is an interesting guy though, having an almost pathological fixation on his tape recorder - not unlike Cooper in Twin Peaks actually (another reference/similarity to that series). We get to see a bit of Tenma’s character in this volume because of this, which is a nice change when we’re used to seeing his infallible ‘present’ self. If nothing else, this volume highlights Johan’s almost superhuman ability to use people for his own ends - in this case, Jurgans and his penchant for serial killings with some ‘family’ issues that probably attracted Johan to Jurgens’ M.O. in the first place.
There are plenty of ‘murder-mystery’ style scenes as Tenma learns a little bit more about Johan - if you’re already familiar with where the series is heading (i.e. you’ve already seen the anime like I have), this element of surprise is lost but revisiting it is as fun as always and it effectively builds on what’s gone before in a gradual and realistic way: we’re introduced to the character of Roberto, as well as Johan’s uncanny knack of manipulating others. It’s not an outstanding volume in the grand scheme of things but it can’t be called filler either; at the very least it’s another worthy if unremarkable addition to the series. If you’re already on track, keep reading and your patience will be rewarded.
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