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600bars 's review for:
Monster: The Perfect Edition, Vol. 1
by Naoki Urasawa
I can't remember who recommended this to me, but when I saw it at work I knew it was on my to-read and I had to snag it after the wonderful experience of reading Aku No Hana. I haven't read too much manga and I am enjoying getting into it. HOWEVER this fuckin book was priced at EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS!!!!!! I obviously couldn't buy it and was terrified to check it out. I literally would eat without reading anything and then wash my hands carefully and read it with the pages open at like a 30 degree angle so I would not damage the spine. I was just trembling like a leaf reading this 85 dollar manga! For this reason I am relieved to be done. I have the second as well and have requested the rest from the library.
This book is about a doctor Kenzo Tenma who is an excellent surgeon. He is from Japan but is practicing surgery in Germany after being taken under the wing of a German director of surgery. Dr. Tenma becomes increasingly dissillusioned with the field of medicine, seeing that his colleagues care more about research and funding and accolades rather than saving the lives of human beings. Dr Tenma chooses to blow up his career when he chooses to operate on a little boy who has been shot in the head rather than save the mayor from some medical incident. He thinks he is takinig the moral high ground, which he is, but the little boy ends up growing up to become a serial killer. This is kinda the "would you kill baby hitler" line of thinking wrt morality. Dr Tenma could not have known that the boy would turn out evil and in the moment it absolutely was the right thing to save him. I don't even see a moral dilemma here.
The boy had a twin sister and ultimately both of them disappear from the hospital. Ten years later, Dr Tenma tries to find the twin sister because he realizes that the serial killings follow a pattern (the boy was killing his foster parents) and he worries the sister, now grown, could be in danger. Meanwhile there is a detective who has been following this case since day 1 and there's a cat and mouse element. I felt distressed for Dr Tenma because I hate those situations where the reader knows he is innocent of all these killings but he looks veeeeerrrrrry guilty from anyone else's perspective.
Idk where the story will go now! Is he gonna be a hero or is he gonna do a monte cristo revenge will he stay morally upright or will he be jaded and cynical???? Can't wait to find out!!! Too early to make value judgements bc this is a great set up and could go many directions from here.
This book is about a doctor Kenzo Tenma who is an excellent surgeon. He is from Japan but is practicing surgery in Germany after being taken under the wing of a German director of surgery. Dr. Tenma becomes increasingly dissillusioned with the field of medicine, seeing that his colleagues care more about research and funding and accolades rather than saving the lives of human beings. Dr Tenma chooses to blow up his career when he chooses to operate on a little boy who has been shot in the head rather than save the mayor from some medical incident. He thinks he is takinig the moral high ground, which he is, but the little boy ends up growing up to become a serial killer. This is kinda the "would you kill baby hitler" line of thinking wrt morality. Dr Tenma could not have known that the boy would turn out evil and in the moment it absolutely was the right thing to save him. I don't even see a moral dilemma here.
The boy had a twin sister and ultimately both of them disappear from the hospital. Ten years later, Dr Tenma tries to find the twin sister because he realizes that the serial killings follow a pattern (the boy was killing his foster parents) and he worries the sister, now grown, could be in danger. Meanwhile there is a detective who has been following this case since day 1 and there's a cat and mouse element. I felt distressed for Dr Tenma because I hate those situations where the reader knows he is innocent of all these killings but he looks veeeeerrrrrry guilty from anyone else's perspective.
Idk where the story will go now! Is he gonna be a hero or is he gonna do a monte cristo revenge will he stay morally upright or will he be jaded and cynical???? Can't wait to find out!!! Too early to make value judgements bc this is a great set up and could go many directions from here.