From the back cover:
Tenma’s former fiancée Eva Heinneman’s life has gone downhill since the death of her father and her breakup with Tenma. Now she’s involved with a menacing man with a shady past and a mysterious connection to Johan. Meanwhile, Johan has worked his way into the graces of a powerful but lonely old financier. Could Johan be targeting this man for more than just his money?

Review:
Volume six picks up directly where the previous one left off, with Tenma fleeing the copycat crime scene where he had encountered Inspector Lunge. Lunge, for his part, is delayed in pursuit by the copycat killer, but this results in an AWESOME scene where Tenma is in a car, trying to get it to start, when Lunge suddenly appears and taps on the window. My reaction can only be described as, “Eeeee!” The rest of this first chapter is also great, as Lunge is wounded and Tenma would like to treat him, but Lunge is fixated on getting Tenma to confess.

Unfortunately, the rest of the volume is not as riveting, though it’s at least interesting. The story checks back in with Eva, who has hooked up with an assassin in Johan’s employ. He uses her to try to get into an ultra-secure villa where Tenma is treating a patient, but she betrays him, he shoots her, and, of course, Tenma patches her up. There’s a terrific panel at the end of these chapters where Eva is sharing a meal with the other guy (a criminal) that Tenma had been treating. It’s the perfect place for her to be at the moment, I think.

The last few chapters involve a likable pair of college students who work part-time for a very rich old man. One of them is writing a paper on him while the other is actually his son. Someone else is also claiming to be his son, so they team up to figure out who. Johan is involved for some as yet undisclosed reason, but what’s interesting about this story is that Johan either truly suffers from multiple personality disorder and is seen in his nice persona here, or he’s a manipulative actor extraordinaire. I lean toward the latter interpretation at present.

One thing that frustrates me about the series is it’s hard to tell exactly how much time has passed. As near as I can figure, it’s a little less than a year since Tenma was forced to go on the run, but it would be nice to be thrown an exact date every once in a while. Also, while these side trips are good, they’re not want I want to be reading about. Probably this is on purpose, though, to stoke the anticipation for a Tenma and Lunge reunion so that it’ll be extra exciting when it happens. If that’s the case, it’s certainly working.

From the back cover:
Suspecting that Johan suffers from a multiple personality disorder, Dr. Tenma calls upon expert criminal psychologist Rudy Gillen to help him in his campaign to stop Johan. But will Dr. Gillen come to the same conclusion as the authorities—that Tenma is the killer with the split personality?

Review:
Wow, this volume is really good! I’m sure I could spend several hundred words just detailing everything that happened, but I’m going to try to avoid doing that.

The highlights for me are the first few and last few chapters. In the former, Tenma consults with a former classmate who is an expert in criminal psychology. Once he hears Tenma’s story, the classmate is dubious about Johan’s existence. It’s really neat seeing this dude interviewing an inmate, and then how that fellow’s story actually proves Johan is real. Also cool is that Tenma says he’s not out to prove his innocence, yet he manages to convince a traveling British couple of that fact when he refuses to abandon them when they have car trouble.

The middle is devoted to Anna and one of the detectives responsible for killing her parents. It’s useful, both to tie up loose ends and show what she’s up to, but it doesn’t really hold a candle to the smattering of scenes Tenma and Inpsector Lunge share. The last couple of chapters are absolutely phenomenal, as Inspector Lunge uses a copycat killing similar to Johan’s M.O. to lure Tenma out. This is such a clever plot twist; I am really impressed.

I certainly hope this cat and mouse game between Tenma and Lunge continues to the end of the series; it’s my favorite aspect of a great manga. I am literally going to be starting volume six in about five minutes.

From the back cover:
Johan is a cold and calculating killer with a mysterious past, and brilliant Dr. Kenzo Tenma is the only one who can stop him! Conspiracy and serial murder open the door to a compelling, intricately woven plot in this masterpiece manga thriller.

As Tenma uncovers more about the infamous 511 Kinderheim orphanage, Johan’s twin sister Anna sets out on her own to stop her brother. Their separate searches lead them both to a powerful neo-Nazi organization conspiring to establish Johan as their new superleader! Can Tenma and Anna stop Johan from becoming another Hitler?

Review:
In the last volume, Tenma received a clue from one of the officials involved with the orphanage. He was told to seek out General Wolf. So, what is he doing as volume four opens? Is he seeking out General Wolf?

He is not. Instead, he has gone back to investigating the murder of Nina’s parents and looking for one of the suspicious police detectives who were on the scene that night. The leads he follows eventually (and completely accidentally) lead him to a meeting with General Wolf, so at least that thread isn’t utterly abandoned, but his lack of immedate follow-up left me quite confused.

Most of this volume has to do with some men involved with the orphanage who want to lure Johan back to lead their neo-nazi group. They plan to do this by setting fire to the Turkish part of town. Johan’s sister Anna returns, also on the hunt for her murderous sibling, and agrees to serve as bait for her brother. But, of course, Johan doesn’t care for petty issues like racism, so he kills all the neo-nazi dudes instead. Tenma and Anna separately work to stop the fires, and eventually encounter each other in a climactic scene in a factory.

The fire plot is largely unrelated to the actual story of the manga, but it did provide some suspense, and it was good to see the characters acting so nobly. I really like Deiter, Tenma’s boy sidekick, who is brave and honest. Anna, too, has become a strong character; my favorite chapter of the volume reveals how she (like Tenma) spent months learning how to shoot in preparation for a confrontation with Johan.

Artwise, I didn’t notice any of the Tenma-headshot-on-white-background panels this time, which I appreciate. The visual pacing of the action scenes is terrific, as usual, but so are some of the quieter scenes, like those Anna shares with the former hitman in whose restaurant she was once employed. I absolutely love the panel where he’s standing forlornly on the station platform as her train pulls away.

I’m not sure how I feel about the new information about Johan that is revealed in this volume. I can easily picture it leading to lameness or to awesomeness, so I’ll have to wait and see before I form an opinion on it.

From the back cover:
Tenma’s on the run! A wanted man, he’s the prime suspect for the serial killings he’s trying to stop. But he still manages to edge closer to the truth about Johan’s mysterious past, and everything seems to point to a now defunct institution of East Berlin—an infamous “experimental” orphanage called 511 Kinderheim!

Review:
The pace is pretty slow in this volume, making it seem less like Tenma’s on the run and more like he’s on the mosey. He travels about, forming temporary alliances with locals (both virtuous and not so) and performing medical procedures when necessary. In between, he meets with a government official with information about 511 Kinderheim, the government-run orphanage where Johan once resided, and obtains a sidekick.

I was a little disappointed in the reveal about 511 Kinderheim because, just like in Blank Slate and other stories before it, it turns out to be an experimental program to mold kids into perfect soldiers, cold-hearted and compassionless. The official, who gets progressively more creepy until he reveals an obsession with Johan, claims that the program isn’t responsible for Johan’s murderous ways, however, since he was a monster from the start. He does, at least, give Tenma a clue about where to go next, and I thought it was cool that Tenma ends up rescuing an abused boy from his clutches. I thought for sure something terrible would end up happening there.

The art is a mixed bag. Some images are gorgeous, the exteriors of homes particularly. Urasawa uses a wide variety of character designs, and I particularly like the way Tenma is drawn. However, some of the panel framing gets repetitive. There are many, many panels that focus on Tenma’s face against a white background as he reacts to something or other, for example. By contrast, Urasawa does exceptionally well with scenes where characters are in motion. I particularly love the scene where Tenma is trying to leave the abused boy (Dieter) at a bus stop on a desolate stretch of road but keeps turning back.

Tenma doesn’t follow up with the official’s tip immediately and, after an interlude helping out at a rural clinic, the story shifts to focus on relentless Inspector Lunge, who has now lost everything in his life except the conviction that Tenma is a murderer. Looks like things will be heating up soon!

From the back cover:
Tenma springs to action when he discovers that Johan, the boy whose life he saved nine years ago, has grown up to become a serial murderer. But when Tenma finds out that Johan has strong inside connections with government officials, he realizes that this monster is far more powerful than he could have ever imagined.

Review:
The second volume in this series is not a let down whatsoever. In fact, few complaints I had about volume 1 were not a factor here. As the essential premise has been established in the first volume, this one plunges on with the story, focusing on Tenma’s investigation and efforts to right the wrong he unknowingly perpetrated. The plotting and pacing are both first rate, the scenes so well-timed and organized that reading it feels very much like watching it on the screen.

It took me a little while to figure out what it reminded me of—an honorable, tortured leading character, racing around trying to do what’s right before more people are harmed, encountering twists and turns at every angle, and being pursued by others on the side of good. 24, of course! I fully believe that anyone who likes that show will love Monster. Even if Tenma does make a classic Kim Bauer-esque blunder in this volume.

From the back cover:
An ice-cold killer is on the loose, and brilliant Dr. Kenzo Tenma is the only one who can stop him! Conspiracies, serial murders, and a scathing indictment of hospital politics are all masterfully woven together in this compelling manga thriller. Tenma risks his promising medical career to save the life of a critically wounded young boy. Unbeknownst to him, this child is destined for a terrible fate. Who could have known that Tenma would create a monster!

Review:
Wow, this is good. I knew the essential plot of this first volume going into it, but the storytelling and pacing are so engrossing that even expecting certain things, I was never bored. Storywise, my only complaint would be that the instigators of the hospital politics are rather over the top and a little two-dimensional. Presumably, said politics won’t be a big concern of Tenma’s after this volume, however.

Urasawa has reportedly requested that Viz finish releasing Monster before releasing another of his series, contending that his art has improved and he wants the titles to be released chronologically. I can see what he’s talking about. In this volume, I’d sum up the style as “Crazy Noses and Eyebrows!” Nearly everyone has ’em. Tenma himself has a variety of expressions, but some of the other characters seem to just get one, which is then used multiple times. There are also a couple of panels early on where close-ups of Tenma’s extremely high-maintenance girlfriend look nearly identical.

Despite the distracting art and small element of cheese, there’s enough really good stuff here that I can state that I will definitely be continuing with this series until its conclusion.