__The review contains spoilers for the entire series.
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Naoki Urasawa's Monster is a series I have quite a complicated relationship with. On one hand, I don't like the elitism that exists around 'dark and gritty' stories like Monster, Vagabond, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Berserk and so on, although I do like those stories themselves to varying degrees, and among them Monster would be one of my favourites.
In 2020 I wrote a review for Monster and took quite the negative tone on it (rating was more or less the same at 7.2), criticizing that Tenma and Anna both reach the same conclusion about Johan on their two very different character journeys and argued that the series is overly thematic or ideological to the point of overpowering the characters' diegetic logic.
Writing this review now, still does feel like the story could be more interesting if Anna and Tenma acted as oppositional forces to each other during the climax, one of them wanting to deny him any chance of redemption and the other offering it, but this isn't a major critique for me anymore.
What I've completely turned around on is the second criticism and the thematic nature of Monster is one of its main strengths alongside episodic stories.
I personally think that nurture far outweighs nature and I hated that the story seemed to be using the mystery solving aspect of the show to argue against this while rather clearly still believing in nurture itself. So while I appreciated that the story made it clear that at least for all of the main characters Johan could be rehabilitated, I thought this had been undermined by the show taking away everything that could've explained why Johan was a monster.
But after a second watch and having talked about this series more, what started to stand out about this story is the faith or trust in humanity that it holds. Even though it was not Johan who was taken to the Red Rose Mansion or that Johan had already been a monster before being rescued at the border and taken to Kinderheim, it still vouches for it that he wasn't born to be that way and that it isn't an impossibility for him to change.
Because of this, the story ends up as sort of a question for the audience on their own beliefs, whether they think that intrinsic evil exists or not. The story dangles various explanations for Johan's personality but dismisses them one by one, not to argue that Johan is evil by nature, but to pose that against the rest of the story which consistently shows that people can change or have good in them. I think the conclusion that the story would like an audience member to have is that while no one knows what made Johan the way he is, it had to be something because no one just happens to be a monster.
This contrast of the main story and the sidestories is really nice and it reminds me of Frieren. Have to say though, Tenma, Anna, Grimmer, Reichwein or whoever helping people and finding nice people is very heartwarming and also feels quite a bit more genuine than Himmel. And Frieren actually happens to also have a question about nature and nurture, but it comes to the opposite conclusion by vindicating a character that thinks a species is inherently incapable of peace. At least in the anime.
All that said, Monster still is not the best anime ever or perfect. No story in any medium can be the best so that's just a very pointless conversation to begin with, but the flawlessness of Monster's narrative is also overstated, I think.
First of all, it is incredible how dedicated Monster is to depicting lots of shades of humanity and to doing an impressively accurate depiction of post unification Germany, but a lot of the time it's limited to middle-aged or elderly men getting to be introspective. There are great characters that are women, but it's surprising how few. It also keeps to a rather centrist position on wealth inequality despite that showing up quite a lot due to its accurate depiction of Germany. And there is next to no representation of non cishet people.
Secondly, a bit of criticism that's more universal across worldviews, I think the way that the main plot of solving mysteries to get to Johan and the change in Johan halfway through the story interact is very wishy washy.
The mystery is a string of names, phrases, and pictures that keep coming up everywhere and seemingly link everything in the story to Johan and his past. It's really grand but I feel like it doesn't work too well because this story has two Johan's.
The Johan without his memories whose ambitions are left rather unclear and Johan that has his memories and wants to erase his existence while making a point to Tenma and Anna.
If Johan was as he's at the beginning the entire story, it would be a classic thriller about chasing a criminal mastermind. If it was the Johan with his memories, it would be wholly an exploration into the past of an Ultimate Despair.
Breaking storytelling conventions or writing stories in ways that are not obvious is great, just not sure it works here because so much weight is given to every piece of evidence being crucial to understand Johan, meanwhile Johan as a character is hard to pinpoint because of his change. Maybe it's not a change but that's my read on it and it's not fleshed out and doesn't feel believable with what the story has for it. As for whether this is something thematic, I really don't see it in this case. It could play into the idea that Johan can change because we see him do it but as long as that change is so incomprehensible and distant, it doesn't seem like it can be used one way or another.
All in all, Monster is a really dark story with very heartwarming characters and lots of them. It takes time to develop many different storylines and Tenma, Anna, Eva, Lunge and Reichwein all feel like the main character whenever they're on screen. Johan and the story around him might be the most dubious aspect of the show while being the most iconic. And the first ending is just absolutely horrifying and mesmerizing.