This Blog is an outlet for the random thoughts of an amateur opinionator.
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An opinionator is somebody who has power without responsibility, and the ability to spout off on any subject without worrying too much about the consequences of what comes out of the mouth. All you need is an opinion and the opportunity to voice it.
TV is full of professional opinionators. The internet gives the amateur his chance.
> naOki uraSawa's monsTer
Author: aLmich
I have long been planning to go back into reading. After finishing Harry Potter series, no other book has caught my attention again. It was only after my good friend JD lent me his manga book that I tried to open some pages again. But since I’m not really a fan of mangas, I ditched it.
Few days ago, while trying to get a sleep and nursing myself from pain brought about by my “kidney stone sickness” or whatever you call it, I resorted to reading. Not with the intention of really being drawn to the story but just to get my eyes tired thinking that it will help me sleep.
Few pages after, the bug hit me. I can’t allow myself to sleep anymore. Not after I’ve been introduced to Dr. Tenma.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the medium of manga. The obvious ones are that it is childish and conceptually weak. I am guilty and I hate it. The reason for the misconception is that manga is not a genre, manga is a fairly diverse medium that covers everything from the children’s shonen [means "young boy" and is a genre] all the way to more adult [non-pornographic] themed dramas.
Monster is a manga that I suggest for people to read when they are coming from this misconception. I bet you’ll also be sorry for how long you’ve disregarded the manga venom. Monster is a complex drama that reads like a puzzle as it puts together pieces slowly throughout the story until you have a whole at the end.
The bright white cover of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster [VIZ signature] belies the subject matter of this gloomy suspense series: a serial killer story centered around a gifted Japanese surgeon who may have saved the life of a nine-year-old murderous psychopath.
Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant Japanese neurosurgeon based in Düsseldorf, Germany has the skills to save lives. His life turns upside down on the day he finds out that a boy he operated on nine years ago has grown up to be a murderer.
Dedicated to the healing arts, Tenma finds out early on that his idealism leaves him ill-equipped to deal with the vicious backbiting of hospital politics. After operating on and saving the life of a famous opera singer instead of a poor immigrant laborer who arrived at the hospital first, Dr. Tenma finds himself haunted by his supervisor’s and his fiancé’s contention that “not all lives are created equal.”
So when Tenma must next choose whether to operate on a highly-placed political official versus a young boy with a bullet wound to the head, his decision to work on the boy sets in motion a series of events with repercussions that will ripple across his life almost 10 years later.
As the many mysteries of Monster reveal themselves, Tenma finds that the little life he saved nine years ago is at the center of a vast conspiracy of Eastern European espionage, mind control and murder. Can he solve this dangerous puzzle before it kills him?
I have not read enough of Urasawa’s works to make this claim yet, but if he continues to weave suspenseful stories that keep you turning the pages the way Monster does then I may start calling him the Hitchcock of manga.
I have yet to finish the whole story though. I’m just on the 1st book.
