Monster Review: Naoki Urasawa’s Perfect Thriller
Naoki Urasawa's flawless psychological thriller manga.
By Web Admin
Imagine you are a gifted young surgeon, and you make one principled decision: you save the life of a critically wounded child instead of the town’s wealthy mayor. Years later, you discover that the child you saved has grown into a serial killer — and that your choice set him loose on the world. What do you do? That is the engine of Monster, Naoki Urasawa’s landmark thriller, and it drives one of the most relentlessly tense stories ever told in comics.
This is our full review of Monster — the setup, the craft, the content you should be prepared for, and why we consider it a near-flawless piece of storytelling in any medium.
What is Monster?
Monster is a psychological thriller written and drawn by Naoki Urasawa. It was serialized in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original from 1994 to 2001, running to 18 original volumes, and is published in English by Viz Media in a handsome nine-volume Perfect Edition (each collecting two of the originals). It is complete.
The story follows Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant Japanese neurosurgeon working at a prestigious hospital in Düsseldorf, Germany. Passed over and manipulated by hospital politics, Tenma defies orders and saves a gravely injured young boy, Johan Liebert, over a more socially important patient. It costs him his career and his engagement. Nearly a decade later, a trail of murders leads Tenma to a horrifying truth: Johan survived, and he has become a charismatic, utterly remorseless killer. Tenma resolves to undo his mistake and stop the monster he saved.
The story: a manhunt with a conscience
On its surface Monster is a chase — Tenma pursuing Johan across Germany and the Czech Republic while himself framed for murder and hunted by police. But Urasawa is after something deeper than a thriller’s mechanics. The book is a sustained meditation on the value of a single human life, on nature versus nurture, and on whether evil is born or made. Every character Tenma meets on the road becomes a small, complete story about kindness, damage, and choice.
What makes it extraordinary is the discipline. Urasawa juggles an enormous cast and a plot that reaches back to Cold War experiments in the former East, yet never loses the thread or the tension. Chapters end on quiet, chilling beats rather than cheap cliffhangers, and the mystery of who Johan really is unspools with the patience of prestige television a decade before that became the norm.
Johan Liebert: one of fiction’s great villains
Johan is the reason the book haunts people. He is soft-spoken, beautiful, and terrifyingly persuasive — a villain who rarely raises his voice and almost never kills with his own hands, preferring to talk ordinary people into destroying themselves and each other. Urasawa resists the urge to over-explain him, and the slow, partial reveal of his origins is one of the series’ great pleasures. He belongs in the same conversation as Hannibal Lecter and Anton Chigurh.
The craft: Urasawa the master storyteller
Naoki Urasawa is, by broad consensus, one of the greatest cartoonists alive, and Monster is often cited as his finest hour. His art is naturalistic and restrained — real-looking European faces, real cities, no manga exaggeration — which grounds the horror in a recognizable world. His true genius is pacing and “acting”: a held reaction shot, a shift in body language, a single panel of a character realizing something terrible. He trusts the reader completely, and the story is richer for it. If you admire his later Pluto, know that Monster is where that mastery was forged.
A story rooted in a real place and time
Part of what gives Monster its weight is its setting. Urasawa grounds the story in the Germany of the early 1990s, in the immediate aftermath of reunification, and reaches back into the Cold War history of the former East. The trail Tenma follows leads to a defunct program that tried to engineer perfect human beings — a chilling echo of real twentieth-century horrors — and the manga treats that history with sober seriousness rather than pulp sensationalism. The European settings are meticulously researched, from Düsseldorf and Frankfurt to Prague, and that specificity makes the nightmare feel disturbingly plausible. It’s a rare manga that could sit comfortably on a shelf beside John le Carré or Patricia Highsmith.
Content warning
Monster is a work for adult readers. It deals with serial murder, child abuse, psychological manipulation, suicide, and the aftermath of state-sponsored experimentation on children. The violence is rarely graphic in a gory sense — Urasawa is more interested in dread than shock — but the themes are genuinely disturbing and linger long after you put the book down. It is bleak, humane, and heavy in equal measure.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Impeccably plotted from first page to last
- One of the greatest villains in any medium
- Grounded, cinematic, naturalistic art
- Morally serious without being preachy
Cons
- Slow burn — patience required early on
- Very dark, disturbing subject matter
- Large cast takes concentration to track
Which edition should you buy?
The choice here is refreshingly simple, because the modern edition is genuinely the best one.
| Edition | Format | Collects | Approx. price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perfect Edition (9 vols) | Larger paperback | 2 original volumes each | ~US$20 each | Everyone — the definitive version |
| Original volumes (18) | Paperback (out of print) | 1 volume each | Varies (secondhand) | Collectors only |
| Digital | eBook | Per volume | ~US$9 each | Trying it out cheaply |
Buy the Perfect Editions. They are larger, printed on better paper, and collect the whole story across nine books — a manageable shelf for a series this rewarding. It’s a title we single out in our guide to the best completed manga for exactly that reason: it’s all here, and it’s all essential.
AmazonCheck price on AmazonWhere it sits in the canon
Monster is a cornerstone of adult manga. It’s one of the first titles we reach for in our best seinen manga guide, it sits comfortably on our best manga of all time list, and it pairs beautifully with Urasawa’s other masterwork in our Pluto review. New to the medium entirely? Start at the manga hub.
The verdict
Monster is as good as serialized fiction gets. It is patient, humane, morally weighty, and impossible to stop reading once Johan’s shadow falls across the page. If you’ve dismissed manga as something for kids, this is the book that will change your mind — a thriller with the depth of a great novel and the momentum of the best crime television. It is, quite simply, one of the finest comics ever made.
Frequently asked questions
Is Monster finished?
Yes. The manga ran from 1994 to 2001 and concluded in 18 volumes, collected in English as nine Perfect Editions. It is a complete, self-contained story with a definitive ending.
Do I need to read Monster before Pluto or 20th Century Boys?
No — Urasawa’s major works are separate, standalone stories. If you love Monster, though, we’d point you straight to Pluto next, then 20th Century Boys.
Is Monster appropriate for teenagers?
It’s written for adults. The story centers on serial murder, child abuse, and psychological manipulation, and while it’s rarely gory, the themes are genuinely disturbing. We’d steer younger readers elsewhere first.
What’s the best way to read Monster in English?
The Viz Perfect Edition — nine larger paperbacks, each collecting two original volumes — is the definitive version, with better paper and printing than the older out-of-print releases.
Keep going: see our best seinen manga guide, or browse everything at the manga hub.
