Reviews Manga / Monster

However, Monster isn't live action TV, and it's not fair to apply the standards one would have for live actors to voice actors. The two labor under totally different expectations, and because they're working with a limited model of a human being, every emotion ends up being exaggerated to be properly conveyed. It's just the nature of the beast.

I think you'd probably find the manga more enjoyable. I wouldn't call it beyond criticism either, but the issue of how things sound is neatly resolved. Should the bad guys' utterances of "Dok-tor Ten-Ma" sound contemptuous and creepy? Then that's exactly how it does sound. It's all in your head.

I didn't watch much of the anime. Considering the length I checked out the beginnings of the anime and manga, and decided to pick one. As such, I don't have an entirely adequate basis for comparison. Still, I rarely had any complaints regarding the dialogue or dramatic flair of the manga.

I agree about Tenma being something of a marty-stu. I think it goes beyond his doctoring skills, however. His only flaw seems to be that he lets bad people take advantage of his oh-so-perfect nature.

The breaking point was where Dieter tells Nina that she can always MAKE good memories if she doesn't already have any. That's a very touching moment between the two. Where did little Dieter get this advice from, however? Tenma, of course (rolls eyes). What gets me is that this one COULD have been avoided with ease: either have Dieter come up with the idea on his own or reveal that someone else (like Otto Heckel) told this to him.

Long story short (too late), Tenma may be Asia's answer to Pollyanna (and I mean that in a bad way).

Definitely a YMMV about the voice acting - I thought Nozomu Sasaki's performance added a whole extra layer to Johann's Dissonant Serenity. Plus his voice being slightly higher than the other male voices adds to the androgyny. Though this is probably more by the accident of my being a Western audience member, since up against the Soprano And Gravel pitch difference between male and female voices in anime generally Johann's pitch hardly registers. (And his voice goes up a good extra octave when he's impersonating his sister, and (I believe) voiced by Mamiko Noto instead))

@ theweirdwarrior

I disagree - considering how many mistakes Tenma makes over the series (right from the start) and how his actions tend to have huge consequences (good and bad), he's far too flawed to be a Marty Stu.

And regarding Dieter, considering that his life was saved by Tenma, the fact that kids tend to hero-worship parental figures, and the fact that trying to make good things out of bad is half of Tenma's philosophy, it kinda seems obvious that he would have gotten something like that from Tenma.

I agree in part with randomfanboy, yes, Tenma sometimes represents sun shines and rainbows, and he gets thrown on the grown over it over and over, in fact the ending brings the conundrum about how that attitude actually made him fall into the initial situation, he saved a little boy because it was the righteous thing to do but that boy when on to kill a lot of people, now he saved that guy again even knowing full well unlike before of all the horrible things he's capable of, because is the righteous thing to do...and he escaped with almost no sign of change.

And funny you should bring that scene up, because when he said that I remembered that Dieter hadn't been with Tenma for some time now, all his relationships and what you have had been with Nina and the psychiatric, showing how they were pretty good people.

The guy fails more than a ambulant fair's gun and because of his choices people always dies... apart that he saved a serial killer twice. HE isn't the most perfect well-rounded character but certainly not a Marty Stu.

Kenzo Tenma- the guy who in the first three episodes drinks himself so plastered he falls asleep with the trash in a random alley in Dusseldorf. Total Marty Stu.

Tenma does fail a lot. A lot less later on in the series than in the beginning.

Here's the thing that bugs me about what most people *expect* about modern protagonists: that they have to be anti-heroes. Seriously. It's almost like it's a taboo to write up a character whose motivation is just to do the right thing. I understand that in a lot of cases this makes them a boring character. But in Monster? Tenma is totally compelling. He's just a really good person.

I wouldn't say he fails, its just that things often don't go his way But it is never his fault. He never knew that Johan would grow up to be a mass murder. We know he always makes the right decision early on; when pressured to save the mayor over some little boy. Of course, he does the right thing (even if that boy was a murderer). In the balance of things, he personally saves thousands of lives, either through his genius surgical talents or through stopping the nazis from burning down districts. It seems that circumstance always contrives to throw life or death situations at him for him to solve, even when he is hiding out in serene countryside settings, or in police custody. And as always, it seems he is the only one around able to do anything about it.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him a marty sue, but I wouldn't blame people for seeing that way.

Kenzo Tenma is not a Marty Stu. He wished the corrupt doctors that worked with him to be dead. He also Forgets to Eat and his Incorruptible Pure Pureness has its side effects, namely motivating certain psychopatic blonde guy to attempt ruining his life.

I support the idea of reading manga. Since its plot is happening in europe, reading it in english, with notes when characters talk in other languages, feels natural. More natural than watching it with japanese voice acting, even good and professional one.