Monster and Naoki Urasawa

Monster

Thanks to summer granting me some free time, I've finally been able to complete the Naoki Urasawa's Monster manga series.

If you don't know Monster, it's a psychological thriller telling the story of Dr. Kenzō Tenma, a young Japanese neurosurgeon working in Düsseldorf, who decided to save the life of the young Johan Liebert rather than the the one of the mayor the city who arrived at the hospital roughly later. His life then changed when a series of murders happened in the hospital, all of persons whose death would improve the hero's career, making him the prime suspect of these cases. But it turns out that the little boy he saved may not be innocent to this cases…

This very well paced story—full of thrills and mystery and served on a background of dreadful psychological experiments—asks lots of questions about the price of life, the right to choose which life to save, the good, the bad, humanity, and ultimately, the price of death. All of that is very well presented by beautiful graphics and interesting characters.

Naoki Urasawa's works

Naoki Urasawa's mangas clearly follow a pattern: 20th Century Boys and Pluto, two other series by him that I read, have very similar stories, abord similar topics, contain similar characters with similar development and a global "end of all good in humanity" tone; but all of present different universes and are very well executed. 20th Century Boys deals more about suspicions and sects, while Pluto is more about humanity in robots.

If you want to try out some of its work, I would definitely recommend you to do so, starting either with 20th Century Boys if you want to try out "pure" Urasawa, or Pluto if you want a shorter series and to be presented to Astro Boys universe in a darker tone.