“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast
rise up out of the sea,
having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns,
and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast
and they worshipped the beast, saying
"Who is like unto the beast?
Who is able to make war with him?"”
(The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, 13:1-4)
Kenzo Tenma is a young, highly skilled Japanese brain surgeon working in Germany. He has a promising carrer at the hospital, a rich and beautiful fiance... everything a man could wish we could say. One day, after becoming disenchanted by the hospital politics due to certain incident with a patient, he makes a highly controversial decision that will change his life forever: he decides to save the life of a young boy over the one of the mayor, disobeying his superiors' instructions on that matter. As a result, he loses everything: the support of the hospital director, his position in the hospital, his fiance... the only thing he keeps is his own feeling of self worth, knowing that he did the right thing by saving the boy, who came in first.
Shortly afterward, the director and two other big shots are poisoned to death. Immediately, the doubt is placed in Tenma (who is innocent, of course) because he will be obviously favored because of those deaths... though no proofs can be found against him. And some years later, a similar incident occurs near Tenma, and then he discovers the truth about the boy he saved: he's a brilliant and ambitious serial killer... a true, terrible monster. Tenma decides to leave everything behind to track down the Monster, to try and stop him... something that will make him find about a larger, terryfing conspiracy.
- About the manga series
- About the anime version
- Meet the genius behind the story, Naoki Urasawa
- A Monster live-action movie...?