View Full Version : "Complete Overview of Monster *NO SPOILER TAGS*"
The DKL EDITION: Comprehensive Monster Analysis
*I am cross-posting this with two other boards, ANN and THEMANIME.ORG, so don't be surprised if some of the stuff is modified depending on where I'm posting
Okay, yet another monster thread... but, what's the difference?
Well, as stated in the title, I'll go over the whole thing (I'm literally going to try to pin down all the motivation and whatnot) and there are no spoiler tags... this is pretty much only accessible to people who have seen the series in its entirety.
Also, the lack of spoiler tags is necessary given the sheer length of how long my posts will be; spoiler tags will just make everything cluttered and confusing, so this is the best way to go.
People don't need to worry about me stopping mid-way; I'm already 35 pages in Microsoft Word, so there's no way in hell that I'm gonna stop now. Expect a new part to come out every 2 days (I’m up to part 8 as of this post). Each part will be about 4-5 pages long (in MS word). I might speed it up though to impress the judges in the AnimEigo thread; this thing is gonna be HUGE.
So, today is part 1; the narration is pretty linear, so I'm serious when I say that everything is spoiled here.
Oh, and on a side-note, as of now, please don't try to debate my points too thoroughly. Wait for me to finish up everything and if someone still has questions by the end... then that's good! I'll be able to fill in more gaps in my theories and stuff that way.
Also, please allow for a degree of error in the locations or time or whatever; I literally cannot find too many good sources of research for the series online (outside of the MONSTER entry over at answers.com).
Also, I haven't read the book thing, so toss in references if needed. But I am under the impression that you can "figure the series out" without really having to consult with the book Urasawa wrote as a supplemental.
ANYWAY, all of this is pretty much stuff I’ve observed and/or discussed in the past. This is not an absolute interpretation of the series given that I make many assumptions, but I try my best to back everything up with as much evidence as possible; so far, I haven't really run into any walls, so that's a good sign.
So yes, Part 1!
It all starts out when someone in the Czechoslovakian government was doing breeding experiments between people to help form the “ideal” leaders; they used dozens of couples to do this.
One day, a man from the army pursued a young lady who was studying at the University of Brno; it was to fulfill this mission of creating superior leaders.
Something happened along the way though and the man actually fell in love with the woman; they decided to run away. While there, Poppe (I’m assuming it’s him behind the whole thing) catches up with them given that it was calculated that the man would eventually betray the experiment.
The woman may have tried to escape once (where she eventually met up with Helenka Novakawa), but was caught at the Czechoslovakian border and sent back.
After recapturing the woman, she was placed in a room in some secluded and secure hospital in order to oversee the eventual birth of the godsend twins; Poppe would come by a lot to sketch the woman a lot; this is where the woman realized that Poppe was behind the entire experiment and the possible death of the man she was in love with.
The woman eventually confronted Poppe and claimed that she would never be able to forgive him and that the twins growing inside of her would eventually deliver the wrath of god onto him when they got bigger.
During the time of her ninth month, the woman decided to try and escape (again) while everyone was off guard; while in the delivery room, she crawled into a ventilation shaft and jumped the barbwire fence; her attempt was unsuccessful given that her water had broken by the time she got out. After giving birth to the twins, the woman actually wanted to name them, but Poppe wouldn’t allow her since he thought that it was unnecessary to do so.
Some stuff happened and at one point the woman was actually able to free herself from Poppe somehow (again). During 1980, we actually see Schuwald (or Shuberts… I don’t really know how its spelled, but we’ll find out when Viz gets this far) visit the woman over at 3 frogs; the twins have grown up somewhat (Johan isn’t dressed like Nina though). I suspect that they may have moved to Three Frogs around 1976 (about a year after the birth of the twins), since this is when Margot Langer (Helenka Novakawa) received a letter from her friend from Czechoslovakia (the woman).
Since the STB started to poke around at one point (without Colonel Ranke’s knowledge), to evade detection, the woman made it out that she only had one child by having Nina and Johan dress-up the same (this almost threw off Tenma years later when he was doing his investigations in Prague). I can’t really say when this started happening, but it happened somewhere after Schuwald paid a visit… or maybe perhaps even before then, but the woman only had them dress up when they went outside.
One day, the STB eventually caught on and Poppe (along with Capek and some other guy) came to three frogs in order to take one of the twins away (and their mother); this was done in order to conduct an experiment (probably one of those cases where they experiment on one and leave the other to see the differences).
During the moment where the woman sees Poppe again, a monster arises in her and she suddenly feels the need to exact her revenge; an action of which that needs the correct twin for the job.
(This is working under the assumption that Johan had some of these abilities of calculation, manipulation and murder from the start, which no evidence seems to really dismiss… or it could be Poppe’s book that created Johan (he was left with it for a few days), but I can’t seem to fit this in with the above theory of revenge, so I’ll just work on the assumption that a true monster was indeed born into this world somehow (a thought of which everyone seemed to move toward anyway, so at least the theme is consistent like this) and that Johan had many of these abilities from the start, but he was led astray BECAUSE of Poppe’s book and everything else).
Going back…
In her haste, however, the woman accidentally picks Nina over Johan; she also gives Johan the impression that she was trying to get rid of him given that she couldn’t make up her mind as to which one she should let go of.
(Which isn’t really the case since she tells Tenma in the end that she actually loves Johan very much, but the monster inside of her brought out a situation in which she was actually willing to give Johan up (or for that matter ONE of her kids), hence Johan’s doubts of Tenma’s words of his mother’s love at the end of the series)
After this incident, Nina is dragged off to the mansion of roses and the experiment begins; Nina is secluded in some dark place for a few days; as for the whereabouts of the mother, I wouldn’t know… if anything, she’s definitely not around the mansion of roses even though she was taken away by Poppe earlier as well (this is based on the statements of one of the residents of three frogs who Tenma interviewed).
A (long) while later, Nina is freed from the dark room and is brought into this dining hall for the celebration of her “creation” and the experiment’s “achievement.” Unbeknownst to the people in the room however is the fact that Poppe was actually calling the quits on the whole thing; he decides to kill just about everyone in the room who is involved in the project by poisoning them using the ceremony wine (I don’t know where Capek is at this point however… he definitely wasn’t here though… I think he already fled to Frankfurt around this time or something; this is according to Milan’s testimony).
But, before Nina up and runs away, Poppe leaves her with a few meaningful words of how she and her brother are both beautiful jewels that should never be turned into monsters (he’s actually in love with the mother as well, so he decides to set them all free). Also, I’m assuming that Nina didn’t tell Johan about this one detail about Poppe later on at three frogs (maybe she didn’t understand the significance of it back then).
Nina is eventually able to make her way back to Three Frogs. Waiting for her there is her brother, Johan (whose real name I still don’t know yet… it’s probably hidden on purpose, to get the point through and keep the themes consistent), who’s still reading that book Poppe left. While there, Nina tells Johan all about her awful experience. While I’m not sure if Nina actually spent days telling this story, it eventually dawns on Johan to ask Nina where their mother went.
After the torching of three frogs (presumably by Johan… or their mother, but I’ll just say Johan since it fits in pretty well with my theories), Johan and Nina make their way off to their mother (this could’ve happened before the torching, but I’m not sure, so I’ll just say after); their mother then asks them that they now have to go and live on their own, probably in order to get away from Poppe (a monster); Johan is heartbroken at this point given that he feels like he is an unwanted child upon hearing this and that he’s also still glaring over what had happened earlier; his mom goes a little crazy since she can’t get over what she did; Johan’s crying brings out the full force of her guilt (if you need to know where this info is located… check the end of episode 72 during the scene with Dr. Gillen in it).
So, some other stuff happens and we eventually see the twins with their first set of temporary foster parents (I’m assuming that this is still in Czechoslovakia); Johan kills them while he gets Nina to go gather flowers some place else (so she won’t know what he did).
This is the start of his efforts to get away from the monster (Poppe) given that he thinks there’s a better chance that they won’t be found if he kills all the people him and Nina associate with.
Nina and Johan eventually make their way to the Czechoslovakian border where they are found, half-dead, by General Wolfe and 2 or 3 of his men. Upon checking the contents of Johan’s bag, Wolfe comes across a book (The monster without a name) and glances through its contents; Wolfe suddenly makes the decision to name the blonde-haired boy “Johan.”
There’s this one scene where Wolfe asks Johan how he’s doing right after Johan wakes up from his long sleep; Johan replies that Wolfe will know how he feels “soon enough.”
All of a sudden, one by one, people that Wolfe knew where slowly dying mysterious deaths; at one point, it probably dawned on Wolfe that it was all Johan’s doing (he was isolating Wolfe and stealing his “name;” Johan was recreating what he saw at the abyss when it was only him and his sister at the Czechoslovakian border in a world without names; this view is only accessible to people who have saved Johan’s life, such as Dr. Tenma); it was these actions, combined with the crumbling foundations of East Germany, that was probably the motivating factor behind Wolfe putting Johan into that orphanage: 511 Kinderheim (after all, Johan was a work of art that couldn’t have possibly been created at Kinderheim, and according to Hartmann, General Wolfe was the one who discovered Johan’s “talents”).
Shortly before Johan’s induction, the old director of 511 Kinderheim left (we see him later in the series when Grimmer finds him hanging out in Prague using a Russian identity).
Shortly after Johan’s induction (and probably somewhere around the time he was about to leave, since the Lieberts adopted him), he got everyone to kill each other, with the exception of 2 people.
The first survivor is Hartmann; we see him during the episodes where Dieter makes his way into the series.
The other survivor, who we see a lot later, is Christoph. Johan actually decides to use him in a scheme; since Johan was able to get people to kill each other, he made a prediction that everyone in the world would eventually fall into the same trap and that he should make preparations to ensure that him and his sister live it out till’ the end.
As we all know, while Johan is definitely good at making all these large calculations and predictions of human behavior in his head, that forecast of his is considerably a little overkill… but then, people like Johan think about complicated things, so it would make sense that he’d eventually come to this conclusion given that he was actually able to get 50 people to kill each other without really doing anything (physically).
Okay. We’re here in 1986 (I think), the Lieberts, with their newly adapted children (Anna came too since Johan didn’t want to leave without her), have defected to the west (a move considered most dangerous for politicians in the East, at the time). Since political defection is pretty big, the Lieberts get interviewed on TV. During the interview, Johan and Anna make it off to some acorn trees in a yard; there’s a moment where Johan declares that all the acorns here (or in the world, I can’t remember) belong to her (a neat way to say “I love you” to a sibling).
Then it happens! The night that sets everything in the series in motion! On some rainy night, shortly after the interview, Poppe decides to go and visit the Lieberts since he saw the interview on TV once. When Poppe gets there, he only asks to see the twins for a moment and that there is no need to tell them that he was there. What he doesn’t know however is that Johan must’ve been vaguely awake during that moment he came into their room.
Something happened! For some reason, even though Johan and Anna were able run away from Czechoslovakia, even though they have survived the turmoil in the East (Germany), even though they finally made it to the safeness that is West Germany… Poppe was able to find them. How was this possible? Johan killed almost everyone he came across in Czechoslovakia, after all, to ensure that “the monster” wouldn’t be able to find him and his sister.
There was only one possible answer for Johan.
Since Johan was really into that book “A Monster without a name” and since General Wolfe actually gave Johan the name “Johan” and since everyone has been calling him “Johan” for the longest time, Johan came to the conclusion that Poppe was actually a Monster that had been growing inside of him (again, Johan is a serial killer, so he works on a different logic than us regular otaku and human beings… notice how I segregated those groups, awesome).
So, since Johan was under the impression that Poppe was a monster inside of him, he decided to let his sister get a head start and to have her run away from him; he killed the Lieberts so that there would be a better chance that he wouldn’t find Anna afterwards, but then, Anna (who also felt Poppe’s presence in the room) woke up and accidentally stumbled onto Johan’s murder (which may have been part of the plan to begin with).
Johan then calmly asks Anna to take his gun and to shoot him in the head (since there’s a better chance of being killed and that it might possibly purge the “monster” inside of him should he survive); Johan is pretty okay with the whole thing given that he feels that him and Anna are one and the same (thanks to Poppe’s book).
AND REMEMBER, at the end of “A Montser without a name,” Johan EATS his other half; Johan wants to avoid this given that he loves his twin sister.
Oh yeah, notice how the window was broken when the police got there, awesome.
Going back… all things considering, the reason why Anna shot Johan in the head was not because she understood Johan, or because he asked her to, but mainly because she couldn’t forgive him for killing all of the nice people they hanged out with before in Czechoslovakia.
And there you have it! This is the end of part 1 of my analysis!
perigee
07-19-2006, 02:29 AM
From ANN [ QUOTE ]
<font color="blue">Monster (TV)</font>
Age rating: Mature (May contain sex, drugs, and extreme graphic violence)
Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Police, Psychological
[/ QUOTE ]
All the things that drove me away from network TV crime series and Hollywood shlock films. No thanks. /images/graemlins/relief1.gif
stfram
07-19-2006, 04:01 AM
[ QUOTE ]
perigee said:
From ANN [ QUOTE ]
<font color="blue">Monster (TV)</font>
Age rating: Mature (May contain sex, drugs, and extreme graphic violence)
Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Police, Psychological
[/ QUOTE ]
All the things that drove me away from network TV crime series and Hollywood shlock films. No thanks. /images/graemlins/relief1.gif
[/ QUOTE ]
So if you have zero interest in this show, why on earth do you post a snarky comment in a serious discussion thread about the show?
perigee
07-19-2006, 08:39 AM
[ QUOTE ]
stfram said:
So if you have zero interest in this show, why on earth do you post a snarky comment in a serious discussion thread about the show?
[/ QUOTE ]
I commented for probably the same reason you did - to express an opinion. If anyone is being short-tempered...
Judging by what was posted in the AnimEigo license thread, this is part of a campaign to persuade that company to buy the rights. If this show is licensed and released by AnimEigo, it may be the only anime they work on for a long time. There are many other titles I'd rather have them bring over. I'd rather speak up now than have regrets later.
cheezisgoooood
07-19-2006, 08:55 AM
I vote Monster for next new anime license!
golthin
07-19-2006, 08:59 AM
[ QUOTE ]
perigee said:
[ QUOTE ]
stfram said:
So if you have zero interest in this show, why on earth do you post a snarky comment in a serious discussion thread about the show?
[/ QUOTE ]
I commented for probably the same reason you did - to express an opinion. If anyone is being short-tempered...
Judging by what was posted in the AnimEigo license thread, this is part of a campaign to persuade that company to buy the rights. If this show is licensed and released by AnimEigo, it may be the only anime they work on for a long time. There are many other titles I'd rather have them bring over. I'd rather speak up now than have regrets later.
[/ QUOTE ]
Are they taking a vote for what they are going to license next?
Texhnolyze
07-19-2006, 11:46 AM
[ QUOTE ]
perigee said:
[ QUOTE ]
stfram said:
So if you have zero interest in this show, why on earth do you post a snarky comment in a serious discussion thread about the show?
[/ QUOTE ]
I commented for probably the same reason you did - to express an opinion. If anyone is being short-tempered...
Judging by what was posted in the AnimEigo license thread, this is part of a campaign to persuade that company to buy the rights. If this show is licensed and released by AnimEigo, it may be the only anime they work on for a long time. There are many other titles I'd rather have them bring over. I'd rather speak up now than have regrets later.
[/ QUOTE ]
You've never even seen the show.
Monster is as deserving as anything out there to be licensed. It's a rare gem of a series whos story expands beyond the anime/manga medium. Anyone who licensed it would have something truly special in their catalogue.
But you're brushing it off because of a brief description of the age rating and genre?
I'm actually surprised that someone even considers my hard work a licensing threat... awesome
But... must've had some bad experiences with this kinda thing (like, boredom), so... you know, it happens
I'll just say this:
Naoki Urasawa isn't so much the master of suspense as he is the master of meanningful drama
Give it chance!
====================
Part 2!
This is where we start following how the events in the TV series went and in what possible order did all the past memories of Johan and Nina manifest; things might get a little weird here since I’m basing it all on speculation and I might jump around, but I’ll try my best. I think this part will probably cover what the hell was going on before Johan turned 20.
So, the story actually starts out with our favorite neurosurgeon, Dr. Kenzo Tenma. Wow, he lives such a neat life! He’s the chief neurosurgeon! He’s engaged to the hospital director’s daughter! Things sure are looking up in the world.
Then it happens. He gets pulled off some construction worker’s operation in favor of some big-name opera singer dude, only to realize later that he could’ve saved the construction worker’s life had he operated on him first as planned; he could’ve chosen to save the construction worker’s life had he been paying more attention to the severity of the situation (well, and Dr. Becker dropped the ball).
As the haunting visions of the construction worker’s wife become ceaseless, the conflict of the equality of life grows within Tenma as he realizes that all the people around him, his fiancée included, are wrong and that people’s lives are of equal value regardless of what background they come from.
So when the opportunity arises and he has to make a choice between saving the life of a young boy, who came in first, and the mayor of the city, Tenma puts his trust into his conscience and makes the choice to save the young boy, not knowing that he’s about to make a terrible choice.
So, Johan is saved and the mayor gets dead.
Tenma gets his ass kicked by the system right afterwards: he gets knocked out of his position by the director; he can’t transfer to another hospital thanks to the director; Eva leaves him since he’s no longer a prominent figure in the hospital; essentially, everything just goes awry and it couldn’t possibly get any worse (but we all know that’s not true).
The key sequence here is when Tenma goes and visits the supposedly unconscious Johan. Tenma confides in him thoughts of frustration. More specifically:
“People’s lives are equal and people like them are better of dead.”
Oh dang, Johan totally heard him! So what better way to pay back the man who saved his life? Well, fulfill his wish, of course.
At this point, it’s open to interpretation… so, we assume that Johan got up, while no one was looking, and looked around for some muscle relaxant (it is a hospital). Since people were sending in gifts and stuff, Johan somehow calculated that the good director would be conceited enough to swipe some of the candy for his own and that he would give it to his cronies; naturally, that’s where Johan would put the muscle relaxant… a nice clean kill.
Anyway, something to take note of is the inspector who’s poking around here as we will see him later on in the series when he comes across a serial killer that was involved with Johan around the time Johan escaped from the hospital.
So, Heinemann, the new chief neurosurgeon Dr. Boyer and Oppenheim all end up dead and chaos at the hospital ensues.
During the chaos, Johan makes a run for it with his still shocked as hell sister, Anna.
I’m gonna insert another assumption here: originally, Johan wanted Anna to run away from him, but after witnessing how terrible some people are (Heinemann tried to exploit them, for starters), he must’ve decided that it was better for him to have some control over where Anna would go, all the while distancing himself from her so that the “monster” inside of Johan wouldn’t get her (he still thinks its inside of him after Anna refused to be near him that one time when Dr. Boyer tried reuniting them).
Anyway, while Johan did believe that he had a monster inside of him, some of the “monsters” outside are still quite bad.
Okay, for now, I’ll just focus on what Johan has been doing mainly since we all probably know what was going on at the hospital.
So, after running for a while, Johan eventually makes his way over to Griesheim park (in Frankfurt). While there, Johan meets several individuals.
It is here where Johan scopes out potential serial killers (although, he was playing with a bunch of kids too, it seems).
Let’s go over the first one we actually meet in the series: Jurgens (the dude with the weird thick glasses who killed that old lady, Ms. Kempf, who was one of Johan’s several foster parents).
I’ll go into how interesting Jurgens’s manipulation was:
Apparently, when Jurgens was a kid, his mom would take him into a room and kick his ass a lot; during this time of inconceivable pwnage, Jurgens took note of two things:
-There was a doll in the room that Jurgens would always call out for help to (of course, the doll wouldn’t do anything, which Jurgens found annoying).
-There would be a ton of pictures of Jurgens’s mom surrounding him when his mommy was laying the smacketh downeth on him.
So, what Johan did to use Jurgens to commit murder for him was that Johan snuck into Ms. Kempf’s mansion one day (actually, it might not have even been him… or he might have not needed to sneak in at all, Johan was sending (weird) letters to Ms. Kempf after all) and setup a room in her basement that highly resembled that traumatic place from Jurgens’s childhood.
Jurgens, as we all know, was actually a serial killer prior to Ms. Kempf’s incident; what was confusing the investigation of this case however was Ms. Kempf’s murder, which didn’t fit into his operating style (and Jurgens himself was well aware of this).
So, as we follow Dr. Gillen’s investigation, we soon learn that someone was manipulating Jurgens somehow (Johan) to do that one murder.
One day, Jurgens would receive anonymous letters from someone (Johan) saying that he understood Jurgens. It was annoying to him at first, but as the letter kept coming, Jurgens became under the impression that this person (Johan) might actually be a friend. One day, Jurgens received a letter telling him to go to some place (Ms. Kempf’s basement), when he got there however, he became disoriented because of the setting:
-There was a doll
-There were pictures of him as a child and a motherly figure (which is actually Johan and Ms. Kempf, but then, Johan’s faces are cutout and they have pictures of Jurgens on top of them).
From there, he suddenly lost track of what the hell was happening and before he knew it, he had already murdered Ms. Kempf. He was pretty weirded out by the whole thing and was even wondering if Ms. Kempf was his mother or not (she’s not).
Wow, that was so intricate, but HOW did Johan know so much about Jurgens?
Okay, jumping a few episodes forward, there is a scene where Dr. Gillen goes to visit Jurgens again, but this time, Dr. Gillen is loaded with a photograph of Johan that he got from Dr. Reichwein.
After showing it to Jurgens, Jurgens said that he didn’t know the guy… but what he did know was a guy with the same face, but without the blonde hair (he blacked it out with a pen… the pen he used to kill himself with, I might add).
There’s the answer! Apparently, Jurgens, after his first murder, must’ve met Johan when he was still hanging around over at Griesheim park; Jurgens recalls a specific memory of Johan asking him to “come here too.”
When one puts the logic together, it’s really quite obvious:
At one point, Johan must’ve gotten Jurgens to reveal information about himself (those two key points mentioned above) and Johan must’ve convinced him to keep on murdering people somehow (through sympathy or something). This is much like how Johan did it with several other people, so, apparently, he’s been pretty good at this from the start.
That’s so awesome.
And moving on… let’s jump way into the future, but this will center around a character I’m pretty sure people will remember: Johan’s apprentice, Christoph.
On episode 63, we see that detective guy from the beginning of the series again (who was trying to get a statement out of Anna), inspector Weißbach.
So, a point of interest in these episodes is that the serial killers we all see here have something in common with Jurgens: they’re all serial killers, but there’s that one murder that just doesn’t fit into their profile.
The most concrete one I can describe is Reinhard Dinger, the frustrated taxi driver (who Weißback was actually escorting to another jail). Mainly, Dinger goes around killing “the scum of the earth,” but for some reason, he ended up killing a considerably decent man at one point. This man was an investment banker who was actually about to blow the whistle on a “certain organization” (Sievernich Financial Group) on some bribery scandal, so it was kinda questionable as to how such a man could be “the scum of the earth.”
Apparently, what had happened is that Dinger committed the murder at the request of a friend and that if this friend thought that the investment banker was the scum of the earth, then Dinger would wholeheartedly agree with him even though he didn’t really say anything (blind faith).
Going back to the past, Dinger actually met up with Johan, when Johan was still a kid, over in Griesheim park.
There was this guy that was kicking his dog around just because the dog took a dump in the park and Dinger told the guy to quit it; after getting brushed off rather harshly, something snaps in Dinger and he attacks the guy. When the police come over to stop Dinger, before a potential arrest happens, Johan steps out and claims that Dinger was attacked first (which isn’t true, but Johan saves Dinger from being hauled away by the police).
Apparently, Dinger is the first person that Johan and Anna stayed with. In fact, Johan was the one who turned Dinger onto killing. Dinger even remembers a specific moment where he was watching the news and bitching about how crappy everything in the world was; Johan agreed with him and put the logic into Dinger’s head that disposing of the scum of the earth is okay.
So, naturally, when he met up with Johan years later, and when Johan asked him to do something (kill the banker), he did it.
There were two other people with two different serial killers, while the interpretation as to how their relationship with Johan works is pretty much up to the viewer, everything gets tied in because of the similarities:
-They admire/believe in Johan
-They all did the murders after Johan wrote down the names in a sandbox; no need for words here, apparently.
Leaving this open to interpretation works here mainly because we know how it worked with one guy, so we just assume that this is how it might’ve worked with the other guys; pretty genius.
Okay, going back to Christoph. Remember, back in Kinderheim, Christoph was one of the survivors and Johan was intending to use him to his own ends by encouraging Christoph to go and rule the world (or something along the lines of that).
What happened along the way to developing a good background however was that Christoph got involved in a stupid scandal.
There was this girl who worked in a café next to the Gymnasium (High School) that Christoph was going to and he ended up getting her pregnant (When they were like 16 years old or something). Christoph’s dad had to step in and bribe the girl to keep it quiet (her family used the money to open a store and I’m assuming that one of the terms of the bribe was that she was not to tell her family as well), but then, an investment banker was able to uncover this scandal (recently).
Before anything could be said however, the girl AND the banker end up dead (thanks to Johan’s use of serial killers).
There was a third guy who was murdered, a child trafficker, but it would seem that The Baby and Capek weren’t aware of his significance; apparently, he’s the guy that sold Christoph to West Germany, so he’s technically evidence that Christoph was adopted. This fact isn’t such a great thing given that The Baby was supposedly the one who was gonna take over as one of the leaders of the organization after the passing of Ernest Sienervich, but Christoph was able to move up thanks to his position as Ernest’s son (and now pretty much no one knows that he’s adopted, so there is little conflict); Christoph and Johan sort of put a wrench in The Baby’s plans of advancement thanks to this.
Anyway, Johan and Christoph (and someone else) have been working together, behind Capek’s back (Capek thought he was in control, but he wasn’t).
So, who is this “someone else,” well, my theory is:
At the end of episode 67, after Johan learns about how he confused his and his sister’s memories, he pays someone, who has no introduction, a visit. I’m gonna just assume that the person is actually Christoph’s adopted dad.
Where’s the evidence? Well, the man does say that he did use a lot of money, so… who else could it be? I’ll also assume that he faked his death to make his moves better and that he probably didn’t want The Baby to take over his position. Yeah, that’s what I have on the topic right now; besides, being “dead” seems like a comfortable life (But then, being “dead” causes little trouble when you’re actually killed, hence Johan straight-up shooting the guy with no real problems and all the hoopla of getting other people to kill him).
But, why was Johan using all these people (Christoph included)?
I’ll just fall back on the “everyone is going to eventually kill each other, so I might as well take some steps to ensure that me and my sister are the last people standing” scenario (which I will elaborate on as I continue), but, remember, this is what it started as.
So, I’m assuming that the earliest thing Johan really remembers is his time over at Kinderheim (and he actually remembers a monster, Poppe, but not necessarily WHY Poppe’s a monster).
He did say that the “funny classes” were erasing his memories, so most of the stuff before that must’ve been missing from his memories (hence the need to piece everything back together like what I’m doing now).
As for Nina, she actually didn’t even remember she had a twin brother when she was living with the Lieberts.
Oh yeah, going back:
So, they lived with Dinger for a while.
Johan did some more of those neat calculations; he estimated that it would probably take about until the time he was 20 to get stuff and his connections in order and that he might be able to start making moves to go and “get” his sister by that time without much hassle. There was a six-month gap between Johan and Anna’s disappearance from the hospital to the time Johan was first sighted in Munich, so, during that 6-month gap, the thing with Dinger and the Lieberts happened; Johan left his twin sister with the Lieberts since he could operate better if he didn’t have to drag her along, all the while knowing that she’s safe and that he’s keeping the necessary distance.
But what HAS Johan been doing all that time?
Well, since he wasn’t old enough to survive on his own, he had to attach himself to various couples that didn’t have any children (he used his charm and manipulation skills).
But by the time he was old enough though (around 1991, so he’s… 15 or 16 years old), he somehow setup an underworld bank that would launder illegal money (I don’t know how, but it happened), which allowed him to live on his own (which is why we don’t see many couples that housed Johan when he was older).
Since I’m having a hard time pinning it down, I’ll just assume that the Sievernich group had been involved with Johan’s underworld bank at one point and maybe this is where Johan met up with Christoph again; from there, a plan to take down Schuwald’s financial group had been set in motion and they most likely got Christoph’s dad in on it.
Also, I’m not really sure, but at one point, Johan (when he was about 16 or so) came across a couple from Bruntal by the name of “Lieberts” and offered them his “love” and a bunch of money (from which they bought a house and moved to Munich). Johan burned down the city hall over in Bruntal and had the Lieberts re-file their dead son’s birth certificate as if their son was still alive; Johan probably did this so that he would have a fabricated background that he could use. Anyway, the Lieberts have seen him off to Munich University and he’s probably been there up until the present (more on this later).
The birth certificate and fabricated background was needed to throw people off (like Richard Braun, Schuwald’s private investigator) had anyone became suspicious of Johan’s activities during the time he would attempt to get close to Schuwald.
Oh, and one more point of interest before retuning to the present (Johan at 20) is that before Johan left the underworld bank around the time he was 20 or 21, when he was 18 (or somewhere around there), he apparently met up with Helenka Novakawa (Margot Langer) Right afterwards, he moved in with her (by meeting her, maybe this jolted some more memories since this is a person Johan knows a lot about because Schuwald actually discussed her in front of Johan and Anna when Schuwald visited Prague to go and meet their mother).
Since Schuwald was a target, approaching this person made sense.
After getting any possible info that Helenka had on her (on herself and her lovechild with Shuwald, who had a history that only Helenka would actually know about, like how she let Karl leave on a train), Johan does away with her.
And that’s the end of Part 2! Hopefully, I covered all the bases of what Johan had been doing before he was 20.
nakimushi
07-19-2006, 08:28 PM
What great timing, I just finished this show last night. It really was a great show.
Very nice write-up. I have a few comments.
[ QUOTE ]
DKL said:
The DKL EDITION: Comprehensive Monster Analysis
(This is working under the assumption that Johan had some of these abilities of calculation, manipulation and murder from the start, which no evidence seems to really dismiss… or it could be Poppe’s book that created Johan (he was left with it for a few days), but I can’t seem to fit this in with the above theory of revenge, so I’ll just work on the assumption that a true monster was indeed born into this world somehow (a thought of which everyone seemed to move toward anyway, so at least the theme is consistent like this) and that Johan had many of these abilities from the start, but he was led astray BECAUSE of Poppe’s book and everything else).
[/ QUOTE ]
Since both twins were both part of the reading sessions, I should think that this wasn't Johann's first introduction to the book. Nina seemed to be well versed in the complete works of Poppa/Scherbe/Bonaparta et al.
I wonder if the book was left with Johann intentionally. Leaving him alone with the book could have been as much as an experiment as what was done to Nina.
[ QUOTE ]
DKL said:
In her haste, however, the woman accidentally picks Nina over Johan; she also gives Johan the impression that she was trying to get rid of him given that she couldn’t make up her mind as to which one she should let go of.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I agree with calling her choice "accidental". In Dr. Tenma's vision/daydream, Tenma only imagines Johann saying that, but as far as I remember, there was no other mention of this being the case. Since Johann himself never actually says it, we can't really know if he thinks this is true or not. But I will admit it seems likely that he could feel this way.
Although the twins looked alike, they didn't sound alike, and I would guess that their own mother would have been able to notice the difference, so I personally don't think she gave away one child thinking it was the other.
This was almost the same choice from the book/movie Sophie's Choice, where <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>Sophie had to decide which one of her children (her son or daughter) should be sent to the gas chamber. She chose to save her son, but was haunted by the choice for the rest of her life.</span>
I don't know if we are meant to know whether their mother made a rational decision, or an irrational one out of sheer panic. I personally am leaning towards the latter, but I think the rationale/motive behind her choice was intentionally left vague - because it is only told from the children's point of view - and they would not be able to determine for sure what she was thinking.
Having the twins see their mother forced to choose one of them was probably yet another experiment.
I actually thought her indecisiveness and changing her mind at the last second, actually shows that she loved both children equally. She didn't have a clear favorite.
[ QUOTE ]
DKL said:
This is the start of his efforts to get away from the monster (Poppe) given that he thinks there’s a better chance that they won’t be found if he kills all the people him and Nina associate with.
Something happened! For some reason, even though Johan and Anna were able run away from Czechoslovakia, even though they have survived the turmoil in the East (Germany), even though they finally made it to the safeness that is West Germany… Poppe was able to find them. How was this possible? Johan killed almost everyone he came across in Czechoslovakia, after all, to ensure that “the monster” wouldn’t be able to find him and his sister.
[/ QUOTE ]
I didn't this get this when I was watching the show, but I think you are correct. I never quite understood why Johann kept killing his guardians. Killing them as a way of covering their tracks in order to keep Poppe from finding him would make sense (in a scared psychopathic child sort of way).
[ QUOTE ]
DKL said:
So, since Johan was under the impression that Poppe was a monster inside of him, he decided to let his sister get a head start and to have her run away from him; he killed the Lieberts so that there would be a better chance that he wouldn’t find Anna afterwards, but then, Anna (who also felt Poppe’s presence in the room) woke up and accidentally stumbled onto Johan’s murder (which may have been part of the plan to begin with).
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm don't know if I agree with you in saying that after killing the Lieberts, Johann was going to give Anna(Nina) a head start. Considering he took her with him after he woke up from the hospital, I don't think he was planning on parting with her at that point. If she hadn't figured out that he had killed the Lieberts, I think he would have just taken her with him like he had always done before.
I'm also not sure if I agree with the notion of Johann thinking the monster inside of him was Poppe. He definitely blames Poppe for what he has become, and he obviously had some problems differentiating himself from his sister, but I think he thought of Poppe as an external threat - one that had to be run away from.
I don't wanna go into detail, but I'll bring out one line:
"The monster I thought that was inside of me... actually wasn't... where is Franz Bonaparta?"
Yeah, this is where Johan meets up with Capek... so, that's why I came up with the above theory
The thing about Johan and Tenma, I'll go over later... just, hold on to stuff for now (if details need to be pointed out, write them down because I might actually get to it later)
As for everything else... well, I did try to explain why Johan took Anna with her: he did drop her off with the Fortners quite fast... other than that, he never really (REALLY, this means that Library fire doesn't count as they barely spoke to eachother) gets near Nina again until he learns of the fact that Poppe wasn't a monster inside of him
But I could be wrong, I'm still working on stuff
As for their mother... I dunno, she said that she couldn't forgive Poppe (even now), then later, we get a shot where she's panicking, but when she sees Poppe, her mood changes
As for Poppe's book... I'm actually not sure where the first introduction to it was... when they moved to THREE FROGS, the twins were 1 (1976)...
so... uh... I'm not too sure how they could've processed the books when they were infants, but again, I could be wrong... I actually have a correction to go over right now
yeah, like I said, I really need to finish everything first (because I might actually answer stuff) and people should hold on to their questions until we see the end... then, like, re-ask them and we'll able to point this and that out (which will be fun and extend the discussion)
CORRECTION TIME:
Ooops, I found something... need to make one modification to part 1!
Er... I'll just talk about it here.
I was going through stuff and apparently, Margot Langer crossed the Czechoslovakian border around 1970 (I didn't write that down for some reason) and this is when Johan and Nina's mother was caught and sent back... uhh... 1970 is like 5 years before the twins were born, so their mom couldn't have been associated with Poppe by then.
Yeah, so, just fit that in.
This means that Johan and Nina's mother only tried to escape TWICE. The one from the ventilation shaft and the succesful attempt when she got to Three Frogs (in 1976 or so).
I think that's it, everything else is as is.
Man, this is confusing...
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WOAH I'm in a total rush... gotta finish up part 8 since I sped-up everything
golthin
07-19-2006, 08:52 PM
[ QUOTE ]
DKL said:
Dude, I'm in a total rush... gotta finish up part 8 since I sped-up everything
[/ QUOTE ]
the bad thing is that so many people will be disregard the show because it requires people to do too much thinking when watching the show. It probably will have a good audience from the people in AOD, but for your average Joe with an attention span that only can go as far as 4 episodes back, the show is too much. /images/graemlins/happy.gif
Part 3!
Okay, so, this is where we’re at… it’s 1995, and Johan is finally ready to "get" his sister back from the Lieberts.
Dr. Tenma is doing pretty well for himself; since everyone up and died back then, he got promoted to head surgeon (or something prodigious like that) and has been saving lives ever since.
Also, around the same time, there have been various murders of middle-aged couples all over the place; it’s been pretty big news.
So, let’s start as to why Johan has been working on getting rid of his past.
Since this plan of getting close to Schuwald required killing people (people who knew Schuwald), what easier way to kill people undetected than to make your past non-existent? (not that Johan actually does it himself, but the less info that exists, the less connections that can be made) With the backing of the Sievernich group’s money and information network (bought with money), Johan has been tracking down all these serial killers (some of which he knows personally, as I’ve elaborated on earlier) and thieves and so on in order to start getting rid of any possible traces of his existence, so he could finally start moving that “isolate Schuwald” plan forward.
Roberto fits in somewhere here, of course, I just don’t know exactly where. So, we’ll just assume that Johan had already approached him with that drinking mug to help him remember his past over at 511 Kinderheim (and Johan is from Kinderheim, after all, so he must’ve got some info while he was there).
So, the first traces of Johan’s relation to everything comes up when one of the thieves he hired to help take out the middle-aged couples, Adolf Junkers, gets tossed into Dr. Tenma’s care.
After some prodding, some of which coming from Inspector Lunge, Dr. Tenma is finally able to convince Junkers to confess (about who hired him) and start his life over again; also take note that Eva had been stalking Tenma for quite some time now.
While all should be quite well, Johan eventually makes his way to the hospital where Junkers is at (Johan, or someone associated with him, even takes out the guard on watch with his signature candy). Scared, Junkers makes a run for it and eventually ends up in a building under construction (where Dr. Tenma follows him to), right into Johan’s hands.
Here, we learn that what Dr. Tenma had believed in all this time, how people’s lives are all equal, had been a total lie; Johan killed those three people from the hospital on Dr. Tenma’s request (learning this truth is the sum-equivalent of getting kicked in the balls, I’m assuming).
Take note that Eva has actually seen Johan in the flesh and overheard the three gunshots used to kill Junkers.
Anywho, this is essentially where Tenma’s hunt for the monster gets started; he revived it, so he should be the one to kill it.
After doing various investigations of the murdered middle-aged couples and how they all had an adopted son at one point (probably off the record, but the people around these couples knew that they saw Johan at one point), it eventually hits Tenma that he hasn’t been looking for the twin sister.
At one point, Tenma ran into a blind old man who actually had a lot of conversations with Johan when he was young; this old man reveals some interesting tidbits about Johan:
-Johan values Tenma more than a parent because Tenma saved his life.
-Johan will go and pick up his sister on their 20th birthday in Heidelberg.
In Heidelberg, Tenma starts to look up some news about a missing child, since it’s possible that whoever he was with during the time may have reported him missing.
Oh yes, remember, there was a six-month gap between Johan and Anna’s disappearance from the hospital, but when Johan was spotted in Munich 6 months later, he was alone and Anna wasn’t with him. Anyway, Nina is happily attending the local university in Heidelberg and is enjoying her nice peaceful life with her parents, the Fortners (who she thinks are her real parents).
She gets an anonymous e-mail one day (from Johan) that says that he’ll come and pick her up on her 20th birthday.
So, some stuff happens: Tenma figures out where Nina is and Nina heads out to Heidelberg castle. After leaving the Fortner residence, Tenma makes his way to the castle as well.
Here’s yet another scene that we don’t necessarily see:
After Tenma left, detectives Muller and Messner hit the Fortner household and murders everyone in the house.
The reason why they did this is that Johan contacted them (Muller, specifically) and blackmailed them into doing it; Johan somehow knew about their various drug-deal relations (maybe they came across the underworld bank at one point to launder drug money) and Johan was threatening to reveal this to the authorities should they not cooperate.
Over at Heidelberg castle, Tenma eventually realizes that they were actually drawn away from the Fortner house (because of what that gardener dude told them), so he rushes back with Nina, only to not make it in time. When Nina sees the dead, she has her first real flashback and remembers that she killed Johan (the reason being that he killed all the nice people they stayed with before), but Tenma brought him back to life.
So, Johan initially got them (Nina and Tenma) out of the house so that the Fortners could be killed without much trouble; Johan was actually over at the castle and did away with that gardener dude, who had some evidence on him that belonged to Tenma. Oh yeah, the neat thing about that is that Johan placed the tie somewhere so it would look as if Tenma tried to get rid of the evidence (Lunge was led astray thanks to this).
As to why this even happened… well, since people actually wanted to use Johan (like, Capek and the Neo-nazis), it’d be a good idea to have Nina move around so that they wouldn’t be able to hold her hostage should things get bad (she even went on and got gun training, excellent).
After Tenma and Nina get away from Muller and Messner (because Messner dropped the ball by referring to Tenma as “Doctor”), we jump forward again and see Tenma back at the hospital, all exhausted and stuff.
Okay, since Lunge found Tenma’s tie at the Heidelberg crime-scene, this is essentially where Tenma begins his fugitive status; at first, Eva was covering for Tenma when Lunge first showed her the tie she gave him, but when she tried to get Tenma back again and she was refused (because he needs to go and kill Johan, so she gets the wrong idea), Eva sung like a bird and Lunge jumped at the opportunity to bust Tenma and maybe solve several other cases while he was at it.
But, by then, Tenma had already gotten away (partially thanks to the patients of the hospital).
Another gap in time happens; Tenma got some gun training for five months, but abruptly dropped out after hearing of the latest middle-aged couple murder scene over in Verden. While at the scene, Tenma meets Otto Heckel, who actually turns Tenma to doing some underground doctor work later on in the series (he does it more than once).
More importantly, Otto knows who actually killed the couple, so Tenma is lead to an apartment of this guy, who’s apparently there waiting for him given that he relays a message from Johan after telling his story of woe.
The way in which the couple, the Springers, was killed is very interesting (like many of the manipulated murders found in the series).
So, this glasses dude had a mother who he used to walk with in a field of sunflowers when he was younger; take note of this.
One day, glasses dude met Johan at a bar (he was using the name Erich); this is most likely where Johan extracted the above information; what better place to do it than a place where people get drunk? Oh yeah, it also must’ve slipped out that glasses dude’s mother was actually someone’s mistress back then when his mom was still alive.
After they became friends (sort of), Johan invited glasses dude over to the Springer estate where Johan claimed that he was staying (but Johan wasn’t actually staying there according to Heckel, who was staking out the place for a month, but never saw Johan… obviously, Johan did live there, but just not recently); ANYWAY, glasses dude was most likely able to become friends with the old couple by claiming to be one of “Erich’s” friends and that he had pertinent info that only “Erich” would know of which could be used to strike up a wonderful friendship.
On some random day, Mr. Springer had a patch of sunflowers removed to make room for more driveway; this irritated glasses dude quite a bit. What pushed him over the edge though is that Johan told him that he was leaving the family on the basis that Mr. Springer had a mistress (which might not necessarily be true). Johan then puts it in the guy’s head that the past can be erased with the pull of a trigger; glasses dude wanted to make it so that his mother was never anyone’s mistress, but as we all know (and Tenma sure did point it out), the past cannot be changed… especially with a gun.
Glasses dude suddenly realizes that he just got owned right after the conversation and is now regretting having ever listened to “Erich;” only one way out now, it seems.
Oh yeah, but before glasses dude offs himself, he tells Tenma that Johan left him a message over at the Springer estate.
“Look at me! The Monster inside of me is getting bigger”
Okay, how to interpret this? Where are we now?
Johan still thinks that the “monster” is inside of him; it’s sort of a parallel of the story, the only difference is that Johan is well in control of what he’s doing (he knows that he’s killing people for a purpose of his own); he just thinks that as he kills more people, the “monster” (that will eventually “eat” his sister) inside of him will continue to grow.
End of part 3!
Part 4!
I really liked the episode with the East German lawyer terrorist dude in it; it was brilliant drama (just like all the other times we see Tenma interact with new people… such well-rounded characters).
Okay, let’s see…
Right after the above event, Tenma makes his way over to East Berlin where he ends up investigating the old Liebert household; the dude who’s trying to sell the place doesn’t know a whole lot other than the fact that high-ranking officials use to stay around the neighborhood, but fled after the Berlin wall came down (in 1989… yeah, I actually researched that when I was watching Master Keaton). Tenma gets directed to some former official dude who actually remembers the Lieberts; Tenma is then told about how Liebert adopted kids from 511 Kinderheim (well, just Johan, actually).
After conversing with some old lady who remembers an incident at Kinderheim, Tenma gets sent to Hartmann, some former official dude who worked at the orphanage (Oh yeah, Tenma meets Dieter on his way to the place).
Skipping through all the hubbub of the discovery of Kinderheim and how it maltreats its kids, Dieter is actually being abused by Hartmann. When Tenma finds this out, he runs away with Dieter.
Hartmann put Dieter under the impression that the world sucks, but Tenma says that that’s a lie and that “Tomorrow will be a good day” (another thing to take note of as it will be taken into consideration like 2 or 3 times in the series).
After leaving Dieter at the hospital, Tenma goes and visits the orphanage that Anna was staying at; it sure was a lot better than Kinderheim. Anyway, since the lady can’t take Dieter in for Tenma, Tenma goes back to the hospital only to find out that Hartmann came and picked him up.
After doing some investigative work over at Hartmann’s place, we learn two things:
-Johan is in one of the various pictures in Hartmann’s place, he’s posing next to some old guy (General Wolfe)
-All the pictures were taken over at Kinderheim (which alerts Tenma to the fact that Hartmann may be trying to come up with another Johan)
Over at Kinderheim, an exchange happens. The surprise is that, while Hartmann is indeed trying to create another Johan, the truth of the matter is that Johan wasn’t actually created at Kinderheim and that it was General Wolfe who discovered Johan’s abilities. During the climax, Dieter is able to break away from Hartmann because of Tenma’s insight as to how “tomorrow will be a good day.”
I also liked the episode after this; Petra and Schumann was very interesting! I especially liked the scene where Heinz gets kicked out of the operating room, powerful stuff.
Okay, the main plot thread here though is where Lunge gets taken off of all of his cases because he reads too much into that one crime about how a politician named Boltzmann may have been involved with the murder of a prostitute (oh yeah, it can’t be Margot Langer given that her death was concluded as a random murder… I thought it through, apparently, but I could be wrong); to put it bluntly, the secretary did it and Lunge gets served a plate full of his ass. This “opportunity” gives him a lot of free time so that he can pursue Tenma, who he still thinks is the killer in all those unsolved cases.
The other half of this episode has to do with Eva; wow, she’s messed up. Anyway, after a failed attempt at starting over, she burns the Heinemann household and starts roaming all over the place (she does pop up at Lunge’s office though, but she’s eventually received given that he has a lot of free time now).
The standing theory for Lunge is that the serial killer named after the child runaway from 1986, “Johan,” is actually a character that Tenma came up with in his head.
Okay, so now is the neat Neonazi arc; wow, nazis… I actually didn’t think that the series would go here. Anyway, Nazis make for good antagonists; pretty much everyone dislikes them. Not only that, but they are actually a good source of comedy as well when used properly (please see the movie “Death to Smoochie” as a good example… “The Produces” is also a great example).
We initially see Nina all dolled up (damn, she’s hot, actually) and trying to get into contact with someone named “The Baby” in some local right-winger-nazi bar (or something).
Oh yes, take note of the fact that a hooker was kidnapped because she overheard a plot to burn down the Turkish quarter in Frankfurt.
Okay, so Nina eventually gets in and meets “The Baby” who’s some old midget guy, hence “The Baby;” I liked the dancing sequence.
The reason why they’re receiving Nina quite well is that they know that she’s Johan’s twin sister (probably through Petre Capek who was actually around the time when Nina and Johan were still in captivity with their mom… so yeah, that’s how they know that Johan is twins… oh, and they probably observed Johan while he was at Kinderheim at one point given that General Wolfe is actually one of the 4 leaders of the organization, so… just connect the dots and one will realize how they have this mountain of information); no need for rough stuff given that she actually came willingly.
Anyway, they need her to lure Johan out so that the organization can turn Johan into their “leader” (which is explained by Professor Gaedertz later).
Oh, Tenma is actually here as well!
Tenma meets up with former detective Messner and shakes him down for some info; oh yeah, he’s a total drug-addict now. Tenma looked for Messner mainly since there was an article in the paper with him in it.
This dialogue scene between Messner and Tenma is where the viewer actually learns as to why they murdered the Fortners; they were blackmailed. Another detail is that a large sum of money made its way into their bank accounts after the murder (money of which, I’m assuming that Johan got from the Sievernich Financial Group); Muller got more money since he was the one that actually killed everyone. Also, it seems that Muller quite the force after the murder incident.
Since someone is trying to silence them, Muller and Messner are sort of on the run; Muller is in France and Messner was rescued by “The Baby.”
So, Tenma is eventually able to get info on who rescued Messner and seeks “The Baby” out at a bar called “Candy.”
Oh yes, a brief history of “The Baby” is that after the Berlin wall came down, he went to the east side to form a city of pure Germans, but it failed and he came back to the west and setup shop in Frankfurt.
And finally, The Baby needed Messner so that she could lure out Nina and have Messner send her to him.
While poking around, Tenma comes across a hooker who was a friend of that other hooker, Ayse, who was kidnapped (because she learned of the arson thing, which nobody knows about yet, by the way); she’s concerned for the safety of her friend, especially given the fact that Ayse actually has a child at home.
In the next scene, Tenma gets hit by a car.
Over at some mansion, we meet 1 of the 4 leaders of “the organization,” Professor Gaedertz. He uses an interesting fruit diagram and Jesus Christ correlation as to how they intend to use Johan; Johan needs to be the leader and under his leadership, they will change the face of the earth (or something ambitious like that).
After finishing up, Nina goes to her room where she has a heartfelt conversation with Ayse. Here, she also learns about what is going to happen to the Turkish quarter and decides to skip out on the mansion and meeting Johan.
Oh yeah, Tenma knows about this too since The Baby blabbed about it; The Baby is welcoming Johan with a fire festival (how extravagant).
Okay, some stuff happens (Ayse is killed by one of Gaedertz’s men, Tenma is saved by Wolfe’s men; gotta love The Baby’s look of surprise when one of his guys is shot right before he offs Dieter).
When Nina heads downstairs, she’s shocked to find that everyone is already dead.
Yup, Johan was here and he killed everyone. Probably because they were stupid enough to use his sister as bait; ALSO, Nina would’ve been done away with after they got to Johan mainly because she’s trying to kill Johan (this is what The Baby said), so Johan saved her and snuck away, but left Nina a message to go somewhere while he was at it.
Johan and Dieter are on their way to Professor Gaedert’s, but Tenma stops the car and has Dieter get out so that he can warn the people over in the Turkish quarter.
The conversation between Tenma and Wolfe is interesting given that we learn that Wolfe is now afraid of Johan. Also, he doesn’t even want to think about trying to get Johan to “lead” the organization as nothing good will come out of it given the past experiences Wolfe has had with him (even more so since the organization intends to set him up as the next Hitler, it’s insane); he tried it before in East Germany, but it was bad idea upon contemplation.
All the people that know Wolfe as “Wolfe” are slowly disappearing, it’s like his existence is being erased from the world and that he’s being left in complete solitude.
At the end of the conversation, Wolfe wants Tenma to go to the location Johan talked about and he wants him to KILL Johan; Tenma seems pretty capable, so why not?
End of Part 4!
nakimushi
07-20-2006, 08:07 PM
First, I want to say these posts have been very informative and I have enjoyed reading them.
I have a few comments though.
I'm not sure where you got the date of 1976 as the date when they moved into the Three Frogs, but I really don't think that they escaped from Poppe when the twins were only one year old. I think that when Nina recovers her one of her memories, she actually says that she remembers moving to the Three Frogs.
I'm pretty sure that they didn't even have an entire year at the Three Frogs before they were discovered. I would guess that the twins are 6 or 7 years old when Poppe finds them and their mother again. I seriously doubt their mother would have been able to hide from Poppe for 5 years in the same city (considering he had the resources of the secret police at his disposal). Also, if their mother had been able to raise them without interruption for 5 or more years, don't you think she would have given the twins their names?
I'm of the opinion that all three were held in close custody, and the twins spent the first 5 or 6 years of their lives getting raised the Bonaparta way. I think it would take more than just being left alone with a book to turn Johann into the monster he becomes - it was more like the finishing touch. Being raised this way would also explain how Nina became familiar with all of Bonaparta/Poppe's books, and why their mother wasn't able to name them.
Minor issues:
[ QUOTE ]
Part 3!
Okay, so, this is where we’re at… it’s 1995, and Johan is finally ready to "get" his sister back from the Lieberts.
[/ QUOTE ]
Don't you mean the Fortners?
Also, the BKA detective's name is Runge, not Lunge (it's the old, R/L is the same in Japanese, problem ルンゲ can be transliterated as either Lunge or Runge). When I was watching the show, it was really bothering me that everyone else had real German names except for the detective. I kept wondering where they came up with Lunge? Well, when there was finally an episode where they show the Detective's name spelled in Roman characters, it was clearly spelled Runge.
Runge is German name, Lunge is not. Even ANN has gotten this wrong. Well, if we are lucky enough to get Monster licensed in R1, the subtitles will be spelled correctly.
Anyway, enough nitpicking. Your posts are really interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif
christianlf
07-20-2006, 08:31 PM
[ QUOTE ]
nakidasu said:
Also, the BKA detective's name is Runge, not Lunge (it's the old, R/L is the same in Japanese, problem ルンゲ can be transliterated as either Lunge or Runge). When I was watching the show, it was really bothering me that everyone else had real German names except for the detective. I kept wondering where they came up with Lunge? Well, when there was finally an episode where they show the Detective's name spelled in Roman characters, it was clearly spelled Runge.
Runge is German name, Lunge is not. Even ANN has gotten this wrong. Well, if we are lucky enough to get Monster licensed in R1, the subtitles will be spelled correctly.
[/ QUOTE ]
Lunge (http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/LOB_LUP/LUNGE_GEORG_1839_.html) is a real German name, and it's also the only official romanized version of his name, as evidenced by Viz's release of the manga.
THANKS FOR READING! It's totally worth it typing all this stuff with that in mind...
okay, on to some points...
I don’t know how to spell Lunge, but Viz is going with that, so I simply follow. Schuwald is spelled as Schuberts in the series (on a sign), and I don’t really know how to go about that either, but the fansubs spell it Schuwald (even though it is pronounced Shuberts); I’m really just following a combination of Viz and fansubs here
As for the Lieberts, yeah, you’re right, it’s the Fortners; like I said, give some allowance; I’m already well past 40 pages, so errors are expected (I actually haven’t uploaded it yet though, but I’m already on part 11… I might just toss in 3 parts later tonight).
As for the monitoring the woman thing… then why was their mom having the twins dress-up the same? I… can’t think of another reason other than escaping detection
And if she was trying to throw them off, then it’s not likely that the organization let her go willingly (yeah, we actually went over this at another board, so it’s good that you brought up it)
The “she only had one kid” thing almost threw Tenma off years later, when he showev up at three frogs and asked around.
Also, even if it was in the same town, if people thought that she had one kid, then it’d still be a pain searching (and the last place people usually check is under their noses); the old guy Tenma interviewed said that she didn’t go out a whole lot either, so the residents would always gossip about her (like, maybe she has connections to the anti-government movement or something).
Had suspicious people been visiting her normally (for survaillance), they would’ve known and the old guy would’ve told Tenma, but it seems like the only real memorable incident where she was approached by people was that day that she and Nina were taken away. The only other incident is Schuwald’s visit to three frogs (during 1980).
It seems that Poppe’s organization had found them by 1981 or 1982; this is based on a visit he made to his book editor where he hints at what he’s trying to do
“How about this other story? One about a door that never opens”
I interpreted this as the event where he kills everyone at the red mansion and he sealed away the room where it happened
Also, the woman was actually able to escape from Poppe and his organization around 1976, this is a year after the twins are born
The proof for this for this can be found in that letter that she sent to Margot Langer in 1976 that said that she gave birth to twins and recently moved into three frogs, and was living happily… so… uh… I’m assuming that you don’t work hard to smuggle a letter across the country only to lie about being happy…
So yeah, that’s the evidence
But still, I could be wrong… someone just needs to point something out, and my whole stuff could fall apart… you never know, right?
Anyway, we’re throwing a theory around that Poppe probably aided the escape of the woman before (but she didn’t know about it), but now, Poppe is forced to capture her again since he’s being pressured by his colleagues… but, well, we know what happens next; he gets rid of said colleagues
Okay, back to part 11…
Part 5!
Okay, so on the way to the site where Johan is, Tenma changes his mind and threatens the driver into taking him to the Turkish Quarter; this is good mainly because Dieter and Heckel were caught by the neonazis (because Heckel has a big mouth).
Tenma finds his way to that hooker lady he met a while back and has to deliver the bad news about the fire and how Ayse is already dead. After playing grab-ass with the locals, Tenma and the hooker lady are finally able to convince everyone to start a neighborhood watch thanks to some leader guy (who gave a nice little history lesson while he was at it).
In the next scene, we see “The Baby” having some fun living it up with the fine dining and fine ladies; Nina crashes the party though and what ensues is an intelligently written dialogue exchange between Nina and The Baby. She’s looking for the “main dish,” but The Baby is hesitant to reveal its location.
She eventually gets The Baby to talk though because of her scary-ass eyes. This is followed by quite possibly the single greatest pieces of dialogue ever written for an anime/manga:
The Baby: “Let’s continue the dinner… but that girl… she really tried to kill me. She is definitely Johan’s sister. I almost told her where the real main dish is”
Random thug guy: “Then, let us bring out the rest of your dinner.”
The Baby: “No, go get me some underwear first.”
Okay, so Tenma is around saving the place completely unaware of the fact that these are just small fries compared to what’s coming next; the reason why everyone eventually heads out to the factory is all thanks to the very cynical Otto Heckel (because he knows where a good fire should be lit), you can even say that he saved the day; I like how Dieter grabs his rug to stop the fire.
Oh yeah, something to pay attention to is that when Nina has her confrontation with that nazi guy, she says that Johan doesn’t want any of this and that he’s suffering at the brink of despair (or something like that… yeah, this is sort of true and I’ll expand on it later).
So, some stuff happens and Tenma is on the run once again; the people in the Turkish quarter cover for him when the cops get there. But before Tenma leaves, Nina tells him to head over to that place where Johan left another message (for Nina).
Nina also claims that she finally knows why Johan wanted her to shoot him; she’s under the impression that Johan has a dual personality (no, he doesn’t really, but the ambiguity of his message implies this). Tenma gets there too and is also set on the same conclusion.
“Help! The monster inside of me is about to explode!”
Okay, once again… how to interpret this?
This is essentially a message directed to Nina and maybe to a lesser extent, Tenma; Johan tries to explain why he can’t be near her, but apparently, everyone just ends up confused (they think he has two personalities, one is Johan and another is a murderer, which, again, isn’t true; the mass-murder is all Johan and he’s clearly in control of what he’s doing).
Johan says “help” since he wants to be near his sister, but he can’t because he fears that the “monster” inside of him may have grown too big already and that if he gets any closer to her, something bad might happen to his precious sister.
After this whole thing with the Turkish quarter gets settled, Nina settles down a bit and meets up with an old friend, Mr. Rosso.
Apparently, Nina initially approached this person before because she wanted to know how kill people; the answer is quite simple: “forget what sugar tastes like.”
My interpretation of this is that Rosso had been murdering people for a living since he was younger. He wanted money and wanted to eat good meals, but on one specific occasion, he suddenly realizes that what he’s doing doesn’t really have a point given that he can’t enjoy thing to the extent where he “can’t remember what sugar tastes like.” Heck, he cries during movies mainly because:
-He is moved
-He can’t believe that such great movies existed when he was still using all his time killing people; so many years lost.
Anyway, she decides in the end that she doesn’t want to involve Mr. Rosso given that he has already left that life behind (as shown by his happy life as a Italian restaurant owner).
Oh yeah, Nina was able to find him since one of her professors back at Heidelberg college was piecing together a profile of Rosso.
The episode after this, I’ll just glare over shortly; we meet Dr. Rudy Gillen.
Initially, he’s pretty skeptic about Tenma’s story and this Johan character he speaks of, but thanks to his interactions with Jurgens and his further investigations, Rudy is eventually able to come to the conclusion that Johan actually exists and that Tenma is innocent.
I like the ending to this one; Rudy initially thinks that Tenma always looked down on him ever since college because Tenma caught Rudy cheating, but this isn’t the case at all! Tenma was cheating too, and I was all “well ain’t that a kick in the head!”
One last thing to note is that Rudy says to not take the whole “I have two people inside of me” thing too seriously given that Johan might be lying; this was pretty funny given that they made such a big deal of it just an episode before, but it makes sense.
After Rudy helps Tenma escapes, we get another interesting episode (they’re all interesting) having to do with a British couple. Tenma and Dieter are on their way to Freiham.
Going back to Nina, right now, she’s in France! Also in France, former detective Muller, who is now living his excellent new life with a wife and her child. Muller’s only recurring problem is that his wife’s child, Fritz, is having a hard time accepting Muller as his father.
Oh yeah, Muller is also having haunting visions of the innocent couple he murdered back in Heidelberg; he sees the ghosts on the second floor of the house opposite to his (it’s actually Nina, so I guess that should explain things).
Also, this episode marks the arrival of everyone’s favorite henchman, Roberto, who is initially made out to be Muller’s hired-on bodyguard (he needs one given that Johan may come and try to get him… but, well… you know).
Down to business. Muller has hired on a detective to find out about certain things, of which are:
-Tenma is made out to be the main suspect in the murder of the Fortners.
-Tenma is pinning the blame for the murders on Johan.
-Nina, the daughter of the Fortners, is missing.
-Messner is in Frankfurt and worked for The Baby; he’s dead, some guy stabbed him (and it wasn’t someone from the organization… it was someone from Dusseldorf… hey, I think it was Roberto, since it’s in the investigator dude’s notes)
Anyway, Muller was hired onto the Syndicate where he laundered his money and eventually washed his hands of everything in order to settle down with his new wife and kid (maybe the laundering he did a while back is how Johan traced him). He questions how it is that he got off so easy though. He is also still confounded as to who the hell was on the other side of the line when he and his partner were blackmailed into killing the Fortners; so many questions, not many answers.
Then it happens: Roberto shows his true colors and is apparently on a mission to get a hold of Johan’s info and simultaneously get rid of Muller who seems to be having an episode of “attack of the conscience;” he might eventually start trying to snoop out Johan as well, which is why he has to go.
So, after running from the house with Nina, Nina has a confrontation with him and is moving towards the thought of killing Muller. But, she lets him off given that he now realizes what he did was wrong and that he has something that he wants to live for. But wouldn’t you know it? Roberto is now holding Muller’s family hostage; he wants the investigator’s report.
Okay, it’s manipulation and calculation mode once again.
Johan must’ve known that Muller’s guilt wouldn’t allow him to just drop what had happened and that he’d probably persist in his investigation as to who Johan is, so a scenario is set up.
During Roberto and Muller’s last conversation, Roberto implies that he’s going to kill Nina (which isn’t the plan, I assure you). So, some evidence as to where Nina was being held at was probably left all over the place so that Muller would eventually follow the tracks and make his way over to Nina for the big rescue.
Okay, so Roberto is able to get Nina to cooperate because he tells her that he knows where Johan is; Roberto leaves some hints as to where Johan is so that she’d go looking for him (Johan is in Munich), and then he leaves and implies that he wants Nina dead (again, this isn’t the plan). But of course, it’s all calculated and Muller makes it in time, only to be shot and mortally wounded.
Before Roberto drives off (so that he won’t be at the scene when Muller makes his way in), he says that the only person left is Tenma; I’m assuming that he means that the only person left to lead to Munich, Johan’s location, is Tenma.
Yeah, ambiguity is key here.
Uh… these theories, I think, are pretty plausible. Again, Johan is really good at making all these accurate calculations and predictions of human nature in his head; a key point to take note of is the confrontational scene between Roberto and Lunge during episode 72; Roberto pretty much says that Johan is brilliant at the whole “calculations” thing. In disbelief, and with a gun to Roberto’s mouth, Lunge responds that even he can’t process those kinds of calculations in the computer in his head, so how is it that someone like Johan can?
So yeah, that’s my evidence.
Next episode! This is the one where Lunge uses a copycat crime in order to lure out Tenma (I think this is in Hamburg or something); his deviousness and dedication is quite shocking here.
Anyway, long story short, Lunge gets Hamburg Tag to print stories as if this was connected to the serial homicides of middle-aged couples; the reporter who did this however did some investigating and eventually stumbled onto the truth, but he backs down since Lunge threatens him. The truth of the matter is that this was a copycat crime committed by the nephew of the middle-aged couple (since he needed money).
A point of interest is how Tenma and Lunge come to the conclusion that it was a copycat crime; they re-enacted the murder (individually) and figured out that it was fake when there was this air of emotion and hesitation to be found right before the actually killing happened.
So, some climactic stuff happens (like Lunge getting stabbed by the guilt-ridden nephew and Lunge slapping the cuffs on Tenma in the car) and Lunge and Tenma eventually find themselves one-on-one in a warehouse somewhere; Lunge is bleeding to death, but he is hell bent on having Tenma confess. Tenma takes it upon himself to rescue Lunge, no matter what.
After that, we’re at the hospital and Lunge’s colleagues have doubts as to whether Lunge is still capable of objectively pursuing Tenma; he seems to still be pretty enthusiastic, so there’s nothing to worry about.
End of Part 5!
Part 6
So this part of our story starts out with Eva getting drunk all over the place; she’s locked up in a cell since she was found in an alley; she’s also missing her bag (that has a photo album in it).
When she gets back to her motel room, she’s shocked to find out that it had been raided recently (by Roberto). Oh yeah, it seems that Roberto has he way with the ladies, which is surprising to say the least (must’ve taken some tips from Johan, since he’s also quite good at manipulation here and there). Anyway, he’s trying to get near Eva so that he can obtain Johan’s photos that are in her possession (Johan must’ve remembered being pictured with Dr. Heinemann when he was still staying at Eisner hospital). But, to Roberto’s surprise, she has seen Johan (information of which wasn’t really divulged to him or it could be that Johan honestly doesn’t know what Heinemann’s daughter looks like and didn’t know that the person he saw back then was actually Eva and that what Eva looked like was only uncovered during Roberto’s investigation here).
Anyway, Roberto didn’t actually report back for orders, so he had to go it on his own judgment (not cool).
The original plan was probably just to off her then and there, but Roberto sort of got interested (and lazy), so he decided to use Eva to help him storm the villa; also, it was probably concluded that Eva didn’t have Johan’s photo anymore or something or maybe they were hidden, but there’s no real way to get to them at this point (the whole BKA thing was a load of BS, for one thing).
Also, it seems that Roberto may have been behind that old man at villa’s assassination attempt as Roberto does know where to find him; notice how the old man gave clues as to where Tenma might be able to find the former president of the underworld bank (Johan).
Also, I’m assuming that Roberto wanted to SEE if Eva would try to kill Tenma, but I’m pretty sure that he would’ve stopped her or something should it have come to that; I’m also assuming that Roberto was probably just supposed to kill everyone over at the villa, except for Tenma, who would’ve made his way over to Munich afterwards.
Anyway, Roberto drops the ball and isn’t able to storm the place; in the end, all this crap Johan does in his head is still all based on statistics, so it’s not 100%, but it’s still pretty high, or to the very least, way above average, but this gets lowered when you pass it through other people, of course. But yeah, Tenma and crew do get the upper hand here and there as they are able to outsmart the people Johan sends around to mess with them.
Wow, this is iffy as hell, but I’ll proceed anyway with these assumptions and I’ll just whine about it later if something doesn’t fit.
Okay, the plan to get to Schuwald is finally moving forward; if we look back, I’ll just say that this was originally encouraged by the Sievernich group’s interest (Johan’s apprentice’s dad’s financial group). What better way to gain more ground than to eliminate one of the biggest competitors?
Johan is at Munich University and had been working on getting a stand-in for Schuwald’s son for quite some time now. He even went with Fahren to pay a visit to Blue Sophie to prove Fahren’s authenticity by discussing details that only Margot Langer would know and how Blue Sophie is a total fake (this is because Johan met the real Margot Langer at one point, as said earlier); Johan actually knows more than the fake Langer, because Blue Sophie seems to be under the impression that the real Langer is trying to get revenge, when that isn’t really the case (more on that tidbit later).
However, Schuwald’s real son showed up (Johan probably got some hints of this when Lotte, who he’s friends with, was snooping around for Edmund Fahren, the “Thursday boy”) and it was time for a change of plans: to reunite the real son with his father.
Anyway, Johan had been originally using Fahren, but it seems that Fahren was going to become a liability, even after making the claim to Schuwald, especially now that the real son is here… so it was time to do away with Fahren.
Johan probably convinced Fahren into killing himself, but the neat thing is that Fahren didn’t actually leave a suicide note; before Johan got Fahren to kill himself, Johan probably asked him to translate a line from a Latin book that read “I can’t deceive him any longer;” this is why the police was able to thoroughly conclude that it was a suicide and that Fahren was deceiving Schuwald (it was in his handwriting after all… but it’s totally taken out of context here).
At this point, Schuwald had already okayed a private investigation into Fahren’s death; Johan must’ve figured out who it was and started looking into what his background is. When he figured that out, he started some research into that UN child’s rights convention thing that he would later use on Richard Braun (the investigator) along with his knowledge of 511 Kinderheim.
There’s the scene here where Johan tries to get close to Karl and drag information out of him that Johan can use for manipulation by playing the heartstrings.
Please take note of that thing Johan does where he walks at the edge of the rooftop, this will explain a lot of stuff later; it’s that weird game that he teaches to kids.
Anyway, Richard is all over the place and is slowly catching onto the fact that Fahren’s death may not have been a suicide (it is, we will know why later) and that something fishy is up especially since Fahren isn’t actually Schuwald’s son; Schuwald is a little blinded by everything though and doesn’t want to let go of the fact that Fahren is his son.
So, some more stuff happens and Johan is able to conspire with Karl and Lotte to get Schuwald out of the house and he brings Karl closer to his dad in the process.
Next episode is the beautiful reunion of Karl and Schuwald, all thanks to Johan’s manipulation (he actually got Karl to give him his rabbit’s foot of which was used to prove his genuine relation to Schuwald).
I think I need to mention that while this reunion was indeed quite lovely, we still can’t overlook the fact that this is all part of Johan’s manipulation; the sheer contrast behind this is crazy.
Afterwards, Richard starts reading into everything and thanks to his newfound sobriety, he realizes the fact that a bunch of unsolved cases from his detective days were actually just one case in which the murders were all of people that were close to Schuwald (the people he went with on his bird-watches) and that it would seem that he’s being isolated.
Also, the source of the murders and everything all pointed to one person by the name of Johan (the same name as Schuwald’s secretary). These suspicions were also confirmed thanks to Dr. Reichwein and his coordination with Dr. Gillen on Tenma’s case.
Johan is right next to Schuwald.
Oh yes, the “isolate Schuwald” plan had been taking place for 4 years, so it could be that Johan met up with Christoph again right around the time he was 16 or 17, which would fit into the time frame when Johan first met Margot Langer (he moved in with her when he was around 18, actually).
At the beginning of the next episode, we see a slightly disturbing conversation between Johan and one of the orphanage kids he hangs out with.
They were playing some kind of make believe game where the kid was planning to take over the world. Johan then asks him how world conquest goes and what does he intend to do after he’s ruled over everything; the kid replies that it’s hard, but if he ever succeeds, while he’s not quite sure as to exactly what he’ll do, he’ll probably just mess it all up; the kids he’s playing with think that it’s a good idea and decides to join the “evil” side.
Oh snap! It seems that Johan is actually thinking the same thing; remember: it’s like “playing with a procession of ants.” Going back: since everyone is going to eventually kill each other, might as well make it interesting, right?
In an effort to identify Johan, Dr. Reichwein supplies Dr. Gillen the photo of Johan that Richard (I think) came up with and Dr. Gillen goes on to show it to Jurgens (please refer to part 2 for the explanation and what happens after).
As we go through all the investigations, we actually see Richard show up at the Liebert household; remember, I said that they were hired on to throw people like Richard off. But, Richard was able to see through the veil of deception when he remembered the face of the child in the Liebert’s photo; it wasn’t Johan.
In fact, the real Johan Liebert died quite some time ago; y’all know the rest of the story about the city hall in Bruntal burning down and whatnot.
This is also the episode where Johan gets Richard to kill himself (this is why Fahren’s death is most likely a suicide, albeit he was manipulated into doing it); Johan uses that UN child’s convention stuff from earlier (for purposes of relaying guilt) and he also convinces Richard that he wasn’t drunk during that time when he killed that serial murder, Stephen Joos, and that he wanted to execute him (which is sort of true, actually).
ALSO, Johan has actually met Joos at 511 Kinderheim (he was probably adopted before the whole massacre thing). In fact, Johan might’ve used his talents at one point. So, Johan uses this “abused child” information on Richard to push him over the edge since it’s quite obvious that Richard doesn’t know the whole story behind the person he killed; take note of the whiskey Johan took with him before they left the bar, that was pretty neat.
What really gets to Richard is that while Joos is buried somewhere, he gets to go and see his daughter again; it’s not fair.
And that’s it.
Anyway, Richard’s suicide, right before he was to meet his daughter, is pretty much what gets Dr. Reichwein in on the whole thing and he starts his own little investigation; proving that Johan actually exists first is the best way to go.
This catches Johan’s attention, so he sends over Roberto and that lady pretending to be his wife in order to get rid of Dr. Reichwein. Some attempts happen, but it’s ultimately Roberto who tries to do the deed, but he’s stopped when Tenma makes it into the picture (he’s here because he was looking into Richard Braun’s case as well (because Dieter identified Joos as someone from 511 Kinderheim) and saw Dr. Reichwein hanging out at his grave).
Oh yeah, Roberto has been hanging out with that fat prostitute lady, Blue Sophie. We initially think that he killed her because of his conversation with Dr. Reichwein, but that actually happens later.
Oh and Lunge strolls into the picture as well given that he saw Dr. Gillen’s message to Tenma in the papers; he’s still being a hardass about everything, but pretends to believe the story to get Dr. Gillen to reveal Tenma’s location (Munich).
Tenma has apparently ordered a sniper rifle.
Okay, before I wrap this part up, there’s just a few more things to go over.
Nina is in Munich and is snooping around and is investigating Margot Langer and whoever (she’s still looking for Johan as well, of course) and seems to have stumbled onto the same facts that Richard Braun had stumbled onto before he died (the 4-year isolate Schuwald plan). I don’t think she remembers having ever seen Schuwald in the flesh though, much less the conversation he had with her mother back in Prague.
The other story in that episode is actually quite important; also, it demonstrates how important Tenma’s interaction with other people in the past has been given that his decision to change the location of where he was gonna kill Johan wouldn’t make much sense without the full understanding of his character (based on those past interactions).
Tenma was able to find out some places where Johan commonly hangs out at.
One of the places was in the park with the orphans; there’s no way he’d kill him in front of kids, also, what if he misses?
The other place is where Johan accompanies Schuwald and Karl on bird-watches in the forest; Johan needs to come along to narrate what the scenery is like; as we all know, he’s quite good at that kind of thing as we saw earlier when he managed to somehow convert a factory ground into a lush forest by way of detailed narration.
This would’ve been the perfect place for Tenma, but he backed down after having a conversation with an old man there who killed someone (an innocent foreigner accused as a spy) in this forest before when he was still with the nazis in WWII. The old man says that birds refuse to be near him now because of what he did; he feels really guilty even after all these years. When the birds finally come back, Tenma sympathizes with him and decides to change the location after talking with him.
See? That wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense without knowing who Tenma is now would it?
Again… it’s excellent drama.
End of Part 6
Part 7!
Okay, here’s where the motivation changes a little. Johan is to finally remember something even worse than whatever he saw at 511 Kinderheim.
For a minute though, I’ll deviate into this weird little game that Johan got a bunch of his kid friends to play.
Some “suicides” were being reported, but actually, it was all because of this game that Johan taught the kids how to play in which they’d step onto a rooftop and try to walk past each other on the narrow roof-edge; like a duel or something. The point is that: whoever wins (meaning the person that doesn’t fall off and die) gets to play the game again, and whoever ever plays the game again and keeps winning will essentially be some kind of “chosen one.”
Given what Johan is trying to do, this is arguably a way of showing his brand kindness to all the little kids; the world is a “dark place” and to survive, you have to do stuff like this.
Yeah, there’s that confounding logic again, but that’s how it goes; he’s giving them a “fair” chance at seeing “the end.”
I’ll expand more on this later.
So, we also meet one of the game’s survivors. He hangs out with Dieter for a while (and is a total douche at the same time) and eventually leads him up to the roof where he tries to play the game with Dieter; Dieter wakes his ass up though when he claims that tomorrow being a “dark place” was a lie and that there are a lot of great things to live for.
Wow, Tenma’s nobleness follows through once again!
Okay, then it happens.
Johan is scoping out the library where Schuwald will have his book donation ceremony; he spots the place where Tenma might try to kill him from (he actually sends Roberto there during the ceremony, more on this later).
Anyway, Johan was thinking that he might as well pick up a picture book for his little friend (who is one of the survivors of his rooftop game… he’s banned from watching TV and stuff for a while after the whole thing, so he’s bored) while he was there at the library.
While screwing around with that lady, she accidentally comes across one of Poppe’s books: “A monster without a name” (written under one of Poppe’s pen names) and hands it over to Johan.
After reading this, he suddenly remembers something and collapses. This was one cool scene… it’s one of the few times in the series where we actually SEE Johan in a negative light (hence it being more surprising).
Okay, so while Johan does remember the actual story of “A monster without a name” (he even narrates it on his Kinderheim hypnosis tapes we see later), what he doesn’t remember was that feeling he had when he tried to cross the Czechoslovakian border with his sister (Czechoslovakia being a “fairytale” country); Kinderheim must’ve erased it: a world in which no one had any names, a world where “you don’t exist” (although, Wolfe did expand on this a lot earlier in the series, but Johan probably hadn’t remembered this yet at the time, obviously… the viewer gets a sneak peek, essentially).
So yeah, the book reawakened that memory and changed his motivation a bit; Johan wants to regain all his memories now and wants to see what it is that Kinderheim made him forget about.
There are scarier things in the world than what Johan currently knows about now (Kinderheim, the darkness that is tomorrow, human society and, to some extent, the “monster” inside of him… but I’m assuming that that’s still pretty high on the “scary” list given that he’s still distancing himself from Nina as much as possible), so Johan wants to know exactly what that is; Johan has had an interest in fear after all.
(Refer to Tenma’s conversation with that blind old man. Johan was mainly interested in his description of ultimate fear during his days on the U-Boat in WWII, so I guess that carries over to his current motivation here).
For further discussion, I’m assuming that even though some aspects of the past (not all… he was able to recall Margot Langer after all) were erased from his memory after Kinderheim, Johan does remember a “monster” (Poppe) following him and his sister around, but it was sort of a generalized monster that he was aware of during that time he had his sister shoot him; Johan didn’t actually remember as to WHY Poppe was a monster, it’s that he just WAS a monster.
That’s a little vague, but I can only move forward at this point using this assumption, so I’ll stick to it.
So, when Johan wakes up and heads back to the Schuwald estate, Karl hands him a letter that’s from someone named “Red Hindenburg” (the fat hooker lady); Johan goes and pays her a visit over in the red light district (which is glorious! we even get some free nudie pics).
Okay, during Johan’s interesting conversation with Blue Sophie, we learn some more interesting details:
-Sophie knew where Johan was after seeing him on the news
-Sophie thinks that the reason why Johan is killing a bunch of people is that he’s trying to get revenge for Margot Langer (which isn’t the case at all)
-Talking about Margot Langer, Sophie actually had a conversation with her once in which Margot Langer revealed some details (that may have implied hate, hence Sophie’s assumptions… or maybe because Margot was drunk at the time and the story got distorted, either way, she pulled out some info she would then use on Schuwald).
So, since Sophie found all this out, she decided that now would be the best time to shake Johan down for some quick cash.
Mid-conversation, Johan changes the subject and discusses how he has seen a much darker place than whatever it is he has seen up until now (listed above); if anyone has lost track, I’ll just reiterate the Czechoslovakian border; before Johan leaves, he says that he has not much to be afraid of anymore because “he doesn’t exist.” Anyway, because of that, Johan isn’t all that interested in toying with Schuwald anymore and is now working on the “let’s see how far the darkness goes” scenario.
Oh, okay, so, apparently, Blue Sophie’s lover is Roberto, ain’t that something? Naturally, people know what happens next.
BUT WAIT! There’s a scene of interest here! When Johan walks off, he runs into people that saw him enter Blue Sophie’s place. Upon leaving, Johan takes a balloon from the crackpot and he gives money to the junkie; why did he do this, you say?
Simple, so that these people would forget that they ever saw him. Or to the very least, render their testimony useless (who listens to a hooker on drugs anyway? Who would believe that a killer would up and ask for a balloon before leaving the crime scene?).
Next half of that episode is essentially another interesting round with a new character; a local Vietnamese doctor that is helping out the local Vietnam illegal aliens and stuff; Tenma approaches her mainly because he needs to confirm Blue Sophie’s crime scene; the doctor lady was the first one there at the crime scene.
So, Lunge is now running around in Munich (thanks to Gillen’s advice) looking for Dr. Tenma; while there, he met some old friends of Tenma that were in Germany for business (with Schuwald). There’s some back-story with Lunge’s daughter trying to get him to meet his newborn grandson, but Lunge drops the ball since he’s too immersed into his investigation:
“I am Tenma, I don’t get along with my family, I don’t fit into Japanese society, etc.”
You know how it goes.
Anyway, while at the Karaoke bar, one of the Japanese businessmen who took a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic came back with a book that was requested by Schuwald’s secretary (Johan); he says that getting good with the secretary is the best way to Schuwald’s heart. A page catches Lunge’s interest and he decides to try and translate the text (since it’s in Czech). Well, it captures his interest enough that he looks into it even though he thinks that it has nothing to do with a case (but in fact, it does!).
“Look at me! The monster inside me is getting bigger!”
Oh yeah, I have not the slightest idea as to what happened to the Lieberts (Johan’s Munich parents); they ran away or something after their talk with Dr. Reichwein (who approached them on Dr. Gillen’s advice, of which he got from a serial killer who sees Johan as a hero), and I haven’t seen any hint of them in the series ever since… so… uh… yeah.
Also, I think that Dr. Reichwein was able to extract some info out of that snotty kid from the rooftop episode; Johan told the kids, that he taught that game to, that some Asian man was going to shoot him soon, so naturally, everyone is jumping towards the conclusion that Tenma is about to kill Johan soon and that they’re running out of time.
Lotte is looking into that book Johan read at this point; she actually meets Tenma while she’s there. Anyway, Tenma is getting ready for the big show and decides to camp out in the library given that it will be hard to sneak in the next day when the library will be closed for the ceremony (he found out about the book donation thing since it was sort of advertised at the school itself).
Next episode, since the Doc’s investigation wasn’t going anywhere, he decided to just confront Schuwald himself. While there, Schuwald offers in some insight as to how such a perfect person like Johan shouldn’t exist in this world, but he does.
I also like the neat idea he has about how his nickname is such a huge behemoth, but the person himself is rather feeble in comparison, especially in his old age; maybe Johan is trying to steal that name from him (not anymore he isn’t).
Anyway, it’s concluded that people like Dr. Reichwein and himself (Schuwald) can’t possibly defeat such a monster and that an even bigger monster is needed to eliminate Johan from this world.
Since Dr. Reichwien and everyone was distracted however, they didn’t realize that the book ceremony was going to happen soon. It’s the most likely place where Tenma would do the job; literally everyone jumps to the same conclusion at the same time and it was pretty intense!
So, Dr. Gillen came over to Munich to oversee what was going on, but Lunge still hasn’t changed his mind about Tenma’s guilt; I like how Lunge comes to the conclusion as to where Tenma will be; he pretends to be “Johan” and concludes that Tenma will target Schuwald next since it will cause the most chaos (which is true, actually). To his surprise (as well), today is the day of the book ceremony and that it will have a bunch of important business people attending it. Best place to be at to mess everything up.
So, by the end of that episode, Lotte was able to catch Nina before she left Munich; she chased after her mainly because Lotte was able to conclude that Nina was actually Johan’s twin and that the story of “A monster without a name” somehow felt connected to all of Lotte’s investigations and stuff.
End of part 7!
================
There's 3 today since I'm almost done... I'm kinda stuck though (again), but I'll get through it soon enough
Part 8!
Let’s go over “A monster without a name” for a moment. Although, I’m pretty sure most people know the story, but I’ll recap anyway.
It starts out with 2 monsters that don’t have names. They go off on a journey, one to east and one to the west, in search of a name. The one that goes east is the one that ends up at a village. While in the village, the monster convinces people to give up their names and in exchange, the monster will make them stronger. The names of the people the monster victimizes are Otto, Hans, Thomas and Johan; these are names that Poppe used in his other book “The God of Peace” (which I’ll go over later as it’s apparently symbolic to the story itself).
So, the monster eventually comes across the sickly prince, Johan. The monster decides to not eat up Johan given that the monster really enjoys the high life. So, instead of eating Johan, the monster (and Johan) just eats up everyone else (oh, dang). After killing everyone at the castle, Johan leaves and eventually meets up with his other half; Johan tells the other monster of the cool name he got while hanging out at the castle. On the other hand, his other half is totally okay without a name.
Oh, and after that, Johan eats the other monster.
So, some more new memories come out for Nina too! She knows how to speak Czech and she also distinctly remembers someone reading the book to her once (it may have been Poppe or someone… or maybe Johan… I’m not sure given that I think Poppe stopped using those hypnosis books after the twins were born and even if he did use it on them, the only time he would’ve had this opportunity is when they were infants given that their mom was able to escape one year or less after the twins were born). But she is vaguely familiar with the story and that is for certain.
Okay, so Schuwald feels that something is about to go down and before anything happens, he sends Karl back home to go and get a file for him (which is actually a file having to do with the private investigation of his mom). Schuwald thinks that he’s about to be murdered, but it doesn’t actually stop there.
One is probably thinking: “why not run?” Well, Schuwald is probably under the impression that there is nowhere to run (especially given Johan’s record of success) and that he might as well deal with it like a man (he doesn’t want to have Karl witness his murder though).
During the actual moment when Schuwald gets up to speak, Johan hints at what he’s trying to do. When it finally hits Schuwald, that Johan actually intends to kill everyone here, he asks everyone to calmly exit the library; by then, however, it’s too late and Johan starts a fire inside. Oh, and Roberto’s fake wife person was the one who started it, that was nifty.
The part where Schuwald realizes what’s going on was done pretty well: he’s at the podium, and even though he’s blind, he stares into the crowd and can only imagine how many people are actually sitting there; then there’s a shot of the audience. It’s so awesome.
Okay, panic ensues and Johan is having his moments with Schuwald; the current situation is like “playing with a procession of ants.” Oh yeah, totally keeping with the themes.
Oh, and by the way, Tenma was there all ready to shoot Johan, but Roberto intercepts him and tries to snipe Schuwald (only to be stopped by the fire). Like I said, Johan had already pinpointed the location where Tenma would shoot at. Roberto was initially under the impression that he was supposed to kill Schuwald, but then Johan changed his mind; Roberto thinks that the current scenario is better (of course).
Okay, let’s go back a little to the iffy part of my analysis. The one where I went over how Roberto was given explicit orders to keep Tenma and Nina alive; there are really two ways of looking at it:
-Roberto was given specific orders, but he was being manipulated in a way that would keep Tenma and Nina alive.
-Roberto was given specific orders to keep both Tenma and Nina alive.
Either case you look at, Tenma and Nina stay alive, so, I’ll just chuck it up to viewer interpretation as to how Johan was manipulating Roberto. As for me, I’m on the second assumption. After all, Tenma is allowed to see “the land of the end” (which, I will also explain by the end of this whole thing of mine).
So, Roberto was supposed to leave Tenma alive (which is why Roberto didn’t shoot Tenma) and have Tenma watch him kill Schuwald; during that moment where they had their guns to each other, Roberto was quite confident that Tenma wouldn’t shoot him, actually (he says that he was surprised that he actually did shoot him when he came to visit Tenma in jail). But, Tenma shot twice and… well, now Roberto’s right-arm doesn’t work all that good.
So, while I’m pretty sure that most people knew that Roberto would’ve popped up sooner or later, it was still pretty surprising to see him at the jail posing as an attorney many episodes later.
Back to Johan and Schuwald. All the doors are locked and the library staff is concerned for Schuwald’s life.
After getting people to leave him and Schuwald alone (by asking them to go look for an escape route), Johan tries to do what he does best: narrate the current atmosphere in glorious detail. Schuwald was wondering why Johan didn’t just kill him and take his place afterwards (well, not immediately, but Johan was in a position to). Johan replied that he had already abandoned the plan of taking Schuwald’s place.
Again, this is in order to go and search for that “true darkness,” but naturally, Johan still wants to put Sievernich (one of the leaders of “the organization” and Johan’s apprentice’s dad, who actually is the head of a large financial group) under the impression that he is still working towards his goals so that he won’t withdraw his resources and whatever; this whole fire thing is pretty much a good way to cripple a financial group anyway, so no arguments here.
Johan notices that the flames of hell don’t seem to scare Schuwald, so he tries something a little different: why not show Schuwald that horrible world that Johan remembered when he read “A monster without a name” again (a world without names, a world of isolation, etc.)? This vision should only really be available to people who saved Johan's life, but I think that he was making today an exception.
It works pretty well; Schuwald was shaking like a leaf. I can only imagine how interesting this was to Johan given the fact that physical fear wasn’t enough to actually scare Schuwald. All it took to scare Schuwald was some narration and looking into Johan’s eyes. Just think of the contrast!
Okay, after Tenma’s valiant efforts (I’m reminded of Master Keaton in which the best way to take down a door is to shoot off the hinges), it’s time for the face to face. And hey, Nina is here too!
So, what does the scene where Johan walks towards Tenma look like? Oh! What do you know? It’s that game he taught the kids! Slightly modified of course, but it’s sort of the same thing. A game with fate! Will Johan be able to live by crossing paths with Tenma? Suspense! So, Nina heads into the scene as well and tells Tenma that he shouldn’t shoot; when Nina takes her shot, she can’t hit Johan because of all the obstruction (or she just forgot about all her training because she was lost in the moment, either way to explain this is fine).
Anyway, before anything else happens, the whole thing is interrupted by the collapsing stage curtains; Tenma helps Nina and Schuwald out. While escorting Schuwald to the door, Tenma has a conversation with him. Since there’s not enough time to discuss stuff (what with the fire and everything), Schuwald is gonna send his son with a message for him later over at the Dresden train station.
At the hospital, Lunge tries to go get some info out of Schuwald. While there, Karl asks Lunge about the possible whereabouts of Johan, Schuwald’s secretary. Also, after talking to Schuwald, Lunge notices that there was only a reaction from him after Lunge makes an inquiry about his secretary. I wonder why? *sarcasm*
While the police guy with Lunge thinks that Schuwald has gone senile, Lunge says that that’s not necessarily true as Schuwald’s eyes are the eyes of someone who sees everything. How poetic… I mean… he’s blind after all.
Since the name “Johan” has been tossed all over the place, Lunge agrees to put out a search for the guy. Lunge also comes across another familiar name: “Nina Fortner.” And just to be sure, Lunge pays Johan’s dorm room a visit. I like how he walks into the room and he can’t use his computer mainly because there is no data to input. OKAY! This is it! Lunge is finally having doubts of Tenma’s guilt and that this Johan person that everyone’s been yammering about may actually exist in the physical world.
So, after some hypnosis session, Nina remembers something and heads out to Prague in search of “The three frogs;” Dieter tags along since he wants to see Tenma (hopefully).
When Tenma meets up with Karl, he learns of Cedok Bridge and The Three Frogs… oh yeah, and Johan’s mother is (possibly) in Prague.
I think that Schuwald put the logic of his memories together… he has seen Johan and his mom before after all, and while that alone isn’t proof enough that one of those twins is indeed Johan, there aren’t that many people who actually know stuff about Margot Langer, much less the fact that he had a love affair with her. So, if no one knew about that, why is it that Johan knows about the fact that Schuwald had a lovechild? Let’s look over the process:
-Johan remembers Schuwald’s conversation with his mom
-Johan needs to approach Schuwald at one point (with Sievernich’s backing)
-Johan approaches Margot Langer, thanks to remembering Schuwald’s conversation, and gets info about her lovechild
-Johan has a stand-in pretend to be Schuwald’s son
-Johan does away with the stand-in and reunites Karl with Schuwald
-Goal!
It’s pretty easy (sort of) to jump to the conclusion that his trip to Three Frogs back in 1980 and everything that’s happening now are related to each other. And remember, Schuwald said “IF the monster you’re looking for is twins…”
Anyway, Schuwald is on the money and Tenma is on his way to Prague.
End of part 8!
nakimushi
07-21-2006, 07:33 PM
[ QUOTE ]
chmblspuzz said:
[ QUOTE ]
nakidasu said:
Also, the BKA detective's name is Runge, not Lunge (it's the old, R/L is the same in Japanese, problem ルンゲ can be transliterated as either Lunge or Runge). When I was watching the show, it was really bothering me that everyone else had real German names except for the detective. I kept wondering where they came up with Lunge? Well, when there was finally an episode where they show the Detective's name spelled in Roman characters, it was clearly spelled Runge.
Runge is German name, Lunge is not. Even ANN has gotten this wrong. Well, if we are lucky enough to get Monster licensed in R1, the subtitles will be spelled correctly.
[/ QUOTE ]
Lunge (http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/LOB_LUP/LUNGE_GEORG_1839_.html) is a real German name, and it's also the only official romanized version of his name, as evidenced by Viz's release of the manga.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, it was clearly written as Runge in the show, but it wouldn't be the first time that a name was misspelled in an anime.
I would hope Viz would have definitely checked with the Manga-ka to make sure - so I guess that what is is. I had never seen Lunge as a name, and I have met a lot of people with the last name Runge, but I obviously haven't met every person of German ancestry /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif, so thanks for the link.
christianlf
07-21-2006, 09:06 PM
[ QUOTE ]
nakidasu said:
[ QUOTE ]
chmblspuzz said:
[ QUOTE ]
nakidasu said:
Also, the BKA detective's name is Runge, not Lunge (it's the old, R/L is the same in Japanese, problem ルンゲ can be transliterated as either Lunge or Runge). When I was watching the show, it was really bothering me that everyone else had real German names except for the detective. I kept wondering where they came up with Lunge? Well, when there was finally an episode where they show the Detective's name spelled in Roman characters, it was clearly spelled Runge.
Runge is German name, Lunge is not. Even ANN has gotten this wrong. Well, if we are lucky enough to get Monster licensed in R1, the subtitles will be spelled correctly.
[/ QUOTE ]
Lunge (http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/LOB_LUP/LUNGE_GEORG_1839_.html) is a real German name, and it's also the only official romanized version of his name, as evidenced by Viz's release of the manga.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, it was clearly written as Runge in the show, but it wouldn't be the first time that a name was misspelled in an anime.
I would hope Viz would have definitely checked with the Manga-ka to make sure - so I guess that what is is. I had never seen Lunge as a name, and I have met a lot of people with the last name Runge, but I obviously haven't met every person of German ancestry /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif, so thanks for the link.
[/ QUOTE ]
I did leaf through my tankoubon to make sure, because I seemed to remember it being so, but it's definitely written in roman letters as "Lunge" in the tank, so that's about as official as it gets.
And yeah, shows are unfortunately not very good indicators when it comes to western words and names. I'm still shuddering over "Blandon" Heat from the broadcast version of Gungrave. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif
Part 9!
Okay, so this part will be marked with the arrival of everyone’s favorite spy: The Magnificent Steiner!
We first see Grimmer at some school doing some investigative work and trying to uncover facts about 511 Kinderheim (where Grimmer is from… he was there in the 60s); before he leaves, he makes a comment about how the school’s male nurse was involved in all those weird programming experiments back then and that the director should watch his ass. Oh yes, Grimmer is also headed to Prague and it is this journey there where he meets up with Tenma (he even helps him get past the border).
Which reminds me, going back to Master Keaton, Keaton had an interesting way of smuggling people across the checks; that was a lot of fun. In fact, it’s because of Keaton that I’m actually somewhat familiar with the whole passport-check thing they do on the trains; Prague is in another country, so of course they’ll have to check your passport.
Okay, here’s where we get tied back in to something I said earlier. The old director who left before Johan’s manipulated massacre is still alive and is living comfortably in Prague; he has a Russian name now, but he was originally called Reinhard Biermann.
Take note that Biermann sics a couple of STB members on Grimmer.
Grimmer is persistent in getting some info out of him and is also trying to prey on his guilt, but Biermann is saying that the experiment, before he left, was a success and that it only got bad when an unknown factor (Johan) got tossed in. Biermann wanted to create people that wouldn’t be taken in by “darkness,” but the real solution only hit him when he started living in Prague with his newfound grandchildren; they needed love (awww)!
Anyway, at the end of the episode (and after his powerful speech), Biermann dies, but is able to relay to Grimmer where all the documents and crap are that contains information about that “unknown factor” that happened over in Kinderheim.
Oh yes, let me analyze this too. So, what happened is that Johan (dressed as his sister… this is actually very plausible, for reasons I will go into later) came in with the intention of getting his hypnosis tapes, whether or not he actually asked for them from Biermann, I don’t know. But Biermann’s survival until Grimmer got there was apparently planned. Biermann did, after all, hand Grimmer the key and stuff.
Okay, this next one has really complicated politics to it, so I’ll just explain it all now.
The STB (Czechoslovakian state security) used to be the significant power in Czechoslovakia. The Communists, who were able to stay in control until 1989, were the people the STB took their walking orders from. Before Czechoslovakia was divided into two countries in 1993, by 1990, the STB had already disbanded and several prominent members went underground given that they would have to stand trial if they didn’t (Lunge actually takes digs at Ranke over the STB’s current position later on when they meet). In the context of the series, when the Berlin wall fell, a bunch of “right-wingers” (Capek and his crew) from East Germany gained influence in the Czech republic and eventually formed a crime-syndicate with the former STB. So, this next part I’m discussing has something to do with Colonel Ranke (the head honcho of the former STB) trying to get a “monster’s” hypnosis tapes and to sell it to a friend in Germany (Capek… who else would be looking for these tapes that might help in the search for a “monster?”).
Okay, now that that’s settled, onto the show!
Grimmer gets held overnight at the Prague police station since they need to get a statement from him about Biermann. Naturally, since Grimmer is a spy, he knows damn well that he shouldn’t disclose of any information that Biermann bestowed upon him; he keeps quiet about the key and stuff.
Detective Zeman (whose main quirk is his nail-clippers, which I found especially intriguing) is trying to poke around and get the key out of Grimmer, but it gets to a point where he knows that Grimmer is hiding something and that the only way to get it is to rough it out of him.
Before that really wicked torture scene happens, Grimmer is able to pass off the safe key to one of the kids before they were sent off to different orphanages.
Okay, so Grimmer gets the shaft and ends up enduring Zeman’s nail torture (this was such a well-executed sequence). The main point is that Zeman needs Biermann’s files given that the STB is looking for it and he intends to sell it to them (those two Czech guys were with the STB, so he apparently asked for some help). What’s on those files is information about the “roots” of the “monster;” it has some information as to where the mother of the twins might be (not current though, but any hints are fine). Oh yes, it is also restated that Johan is able to control people from 511 Kinderheim.
Even after all the stuff, Grimmer is able to stay silent long enough. Right after Johan (dressed as Nina) makes the scene, Grimmer does his nifty “The Magnificent Steiner” transformation and hands everyone (who is still alive… which is like 2 people) their ass; Zeman’s s*** has just been officially ruined (man, I’ve always wanted to say that online… the last time I was able to use that phrase was during that one time I was playing Condemned for the X-Box 360).
At this point, we meet Jan Suk, who’s on Zeman’s murder case; it’s personal too since he looked up to Zeman when he was still a rookie (he still is a rookie, actually). Hey, actually, you even see Zeman talk to him over the cell right before he tortured Grimmer. Suk’s a little depressed over the whole thing (and his inability to stand up with the best of them), so he drowns his sorrows over at the local bar where he “coincidentally” runs into a girl he saw earlier, but didn’t talk to (okay, it’s debatable as to whether this is a coincidence or not, but it is here where Johan guides the hypnosis tape into his direction). After some help from his buds, Suk strikes up a conversation with Johan and Johan, once again, works his magic and gets some important info out of the person he’s talking to. Suk essentially identifies himself as the person looking into Inspector Zeman’s case.
When Suk asks for Johan’s name, he tells him that he doesn’t really know and that the only real memories he has at this point are “Three Frogs and Cedok Bridge.” Okay, so he’s on the same track as Nina, apparently. I’ll just assume that this memory popped out when Johan read “A monster without a name.” Unlike Nina, he didn’t need hypnosis, I guess.
Moving on…
Since Suk wasn’t paying more attention during Zeman’s murder case briefing about the description of a man seen at the location of the murder, Johan had to bridge the logic for Suk so that he’d start looking into Grimmer (seriously). Right after, Suk tries to follow Johan and ends up at Three Frogs; Tenma is here now too.
So, the next day, Suk makes it over to the hotel that Grimmer said that he was staying at during his interrogation, about Biermann’s death, over at the police station. Suk gets there only to find that Grimmer had already checked out 2 days ago. Okay, since the lower STB guys who infiltrated the Prague police station are still running around and looking for Grimmer (for the key to the safe deposit box), it’s not all that surprising that one of them, Patera, ends up at the hotel too; Suk and Patera were pretty surprised to see each other at the hotel. Later, Patera tells Suk to stay quiet about the Grimmer thing since Patera doesn’t want people looking into it yet given that he needs Grimmer for his STB purposes; if people were to nab Grimmer now, they’d never get the key. So, he deceives Suk into keeping it secret by telling him that Zeman was doing some STB investigation (which is true, but it was done a long time ago and Zeman had already taken a bribe to keep quiet). Also, to keep Suk distracted, Patera tells him to sit put at the hotel and stake it out since Grimmer might show up again (Er… yeah, right).
Okay, so Suk accidentally lets out that thing he’s doing at the bar with Johan (dressed as Nina). Since Patera is such a douche, he heads over to the bar while Suk is busy staking out the damn hotel.
When Patera gets to the bar, the first thing he tells Johan is that Suk is at said stakeout; Johan is a bit annoyed at this given that he needs Suk to get into contact with Grimmer (again, so that he can get his hypnosis tape) and it’s quite obvious to Johan that this Patera person and whoever he associates with will get in his way (again, a stakeout?); Johan gives him the bonbons.
A while later, after getting back from the stakeout (and after getting in a tiff with Patera over the whole bar thing), Suk is instructed to cleanout Zeman’s stuff where he eventually uncovers the bribe thing in Zeman’s locker (as hinted by Patera and Janeck’s missing files from Zeman’s report, and also a huge wad of cash found in his locker). After telling the commissioner about it (who tells Suk to keep quiet about it), he goes back to the bar to go drown his sorrows once again (and now he’s under the impression that Johan is the only person he can really trust right now… not that that’s surprising).
Oh, and the commish, Patera and Janeck all end up dead thanks to Johan’s bonbons.
The next day is chaos; speculation gets out that the police may have been penetrated by the STB and that the commish may have been in on it. The press also thinks that these current murders may have something to do with Zeman’s murder (which isn’t too far from the truth).
Since Suk was the one who uncovered most of the stuff, he’s told to start the investigation off from the beginning again since they might find something new like this. The first place he goes to is the orphanage kids since they did see Grimmer speaking with Petrov (Biermann). After learning a little about Kinderheim and a blonde lady at the crime scene, Suk hits pay dirt when the kid who has the key tells him that he’s going to meet up with Grimmer again soon.
After Suk observes Grimmer and has his conversation, even though Grimmer says that he’s not sure if he killed Zeman or not, Suk believes that it’s likely that Grimmer is innocent (he’s not, but that doesn’t really matter). This is especially since Grimmer handed him the key to Biermann’s safety deposit box. Heck, Grimmer even gives Suk the phone number of the hotel he’s staying at.
Take note of the investigation Tenma is conducting at Three Frogs; this is where I was able to deduce that Nina was taken away with her mother during that incident with Poppe when he came to get them for the experiment at the rose mansion. Also, this is where I was able to deduce that the mother was trying to pass herself off as to having one kid (hence the cross-dressing). ALSO, the old guy narrates how the fire happened a decade ago; after checking a room from which the fire may have been started, they were surprised to see that the little girl had come back even though she was taken away (it’s possible that this is Johan still in drag). The old guy assumes that the fire must’ve been started when the little girl tried to make something to eat. Anyway, the fire was probably on purpose, and this is why I think it’s Johan’s doing.
Going back… according to the old man, shortly after being rescued, the girl disappeared.
And if anyone is wondering, Johan was already with Nina around this time… there’s a scene where you see them running away from a burning building later in the series; it has to be this incident.
So, back in the present, Suk is over at the bar again; Johan does his thing and is finally able to figure out where his hypnosis tape might be at. He also gets Suk to stay quiet about the whole thing with Grimmer by pretending to worry like how his mom would worry about him (dang, that’s sharp).
Oh, and we discover that this blonde girl who looks like Nina is actually Johan.
I need to say that while I’m not sure about everything else in the series, this little thing with Johan cross-dressing actually has basis in real-life; I don’t know if anyone will remember this, but a long time ago, there was this one incident with this cross-dresser guy who hanged out with a bunch of guys and had sex with them a lot. It took them forever to figure out that the person they were doing it with was actually a guy; the cross-dresser person was murdered after he was found out.
Johan IS Nina’s twin, so it’s not really all that outlandish, especially when you think about it in the context of the story above. Sorry I don’t have concrete names and stuff; it’s hard to research, but I do remember seeing it on Discovery or something (I think it was a forensics documentary) back in the Philippines. Given the subject matter, it wasn’t all that hard to remember the raw details.
End of part 9!
Part 10!
All right! So we’re finally gonna go over Johan’s tape!
The episode starts out with a special investigation team being formed to discover the truth behind the matter. The problem here though is that Suk is an immediate suspect given all that’s happened; his investigations and the murders seem too convenient, so of course he’s a suspect. Anyway, the new commissioner orders the team to follow him around and see what happens.
Suk heads over to some café where he has another talk with Grimmer (without passing it through the higher-ups) discussing everything and is considering going over the tapes with Grimmer so that they might unravel the mystery behind this “monster” that everyone is after; Suk is happy to know that Grimmer didn’t betray him unlike everyone else. Suk is thinking about proving Grimmer’s innocence as well, but Grimmer thinks that that might be a little hard given that there’s a good possibility that he’s guilty.
And they’re off!
So, not only is the investigation team after Grimmer, but the STB is all over the place too; that isn’t cool.
Oh yeah, and Johan, dressed normal-like, is watching too (Grimmer even feels the presence of the “pretty blonde lady” while there at the café); Johan is gonna follow them and listen in on the tape when the time is right.
Over at the bank, they get to the safe-deposit box and listen in; Grimmer is only able to make it during the part where Johan describes eating people in the story; we don’t know what Johan is most afraid of yet at this point, but I’ll go over it in a minute. Grimmer’s greatest fear though seems to be Kinderheim (which is why he couldn’t listen anymore, because the question the researcher dude asked reminded Grimmer of what he feared the most).
Some things to take note of on the tape thing:
-This is where the first hints of Johan’s memory confusion comes out; he’s the one reading the book while waiting for Anna at Three Frogs. BUT, Johan isn’t actually waiting for his sister… he’s waiting for “Anna.” If people can recall, Anna is actually the name of their mother (remember Poppe’s love-letter novel). This ties into my observation (along with the scene I referenced) about how Johan was actually looking for their mom when Nina came back. Anyway, this is what Zeman (nail-clippers dude, just in case anyone has forgotten) was talking about: “Anna” (their mom) still might be alive and that Ranke wants this tape with that info on it so that it can be sold to Capek.
-Johan, when asked who he is, is recalling the story of “A monster without a name;” I am assuming that the person in the tape is asking Johan all this stuff, but Johan is being ambiguous and is only recalling memories of the story and how the people around him fit into the story.
Also, Johan is describing what people might assume is that scene where him and Nina are all alone at the Czechoslovakian border, but it’s actually the incident at the rose mansion:
“A lot of people were dead… it was as if there were only two of us, Anna and myself, in the whole wide world.”
What this means is that it was as if it was just Nina, Johan and their mother in the whole world after that rose mansion massacre (because a lot of people were dead); I will go into why Johan thinks that himself and Nina are “one” in just a moment. But for now, Johan doesn’t know the fine details of the massacre and only recalls: a lot of people being dead, some names and the rose mansion, but not necessarily how it all ties in together.
Let’s go into it in a little more detail, the tapes contains info on:
*A place where a lot of people died, the “rose mansion”
*Franz Bonaparta, “the man of the rose mansion”
Since Johan remembered this place where “a lot of people where dead” and a person named “Bonaparta” connected to it all, he is suddenly able to remember someone who looks like Capek (more on this in a moment).
To reiterate, Johan remembers these specific things after listening to his tape:
=A place where a lot of people died (not the specifics), the rose mansion, and that there was a man named “Bonaparta” connected to it
=Johan also remembers meeting Capek at one point (when Nina was taken away… but, Johan thinks he was taken away). And because of that, Johan is able to conclude that Capek might have info on Bonaparta.
Johan, by my theories, forgot all about the rose mansion after 511 Kinderheim, which means that he also forgot about who Capek was even though Johan knew of Capek’s existence. Johan knows about Capek’s existence because of Capek’s association with “the organization,” of which Christoph (Johan’s apprentice) and his dad are affiliated with. So, since Johan didn’t remember the rose mansion, Johan didn’t know about Capek’s significance; Johan only figured out Capek’s significance after having listened to his hypnosis tape.
At this point, let me expand on in detail the plan that was set in motion when Johan remembered these people named “Franz Bonaparta” and “Capek.”
He sent Roberto on an investigation to look for someone named “Franz Bonaparta.” In the process, Roberto was eventually able to lead himself to someone named Vardeman (who’s dad was a spy and had meetings with Bonaparta when he was still alive). When Tenma was arrested, Johan thought that it would be easier to kill two birds with one stone by having Roberto commission Vardeman to be one of Tenma’s lawyers. The reason why Roberto is associating with Vardeman is because Johan needs his dad’s spy notes (that might have hints to the location of the rose mansion on it, remember: “steeple to the left, weather vane to the right” and “Franz Bonaparta” was written in the notes). The reason why Roberto is pressuring Tenma to escape is because Johan wants Tenma to see “the end” and you can’t see “the end” from the inside of a jail cell (I’m not talking about the end of the series where Johan tries to kill himself, I’m talking about how Johan wants Tenma to see a world without names, but Tenma can’t see it from where he’s at now). During the pressuring of Tenma to escape, Roberto pretends that he’s going to kill Eva, but he’s pretending just for the sake of pressuring Tenma... to escape. The truth of the matter is that Johan needs Eva to identify him for Capek; approaching Capek is so that Johan can find out hints as to where this “Franz Bonaparta” person might be (Capek knows where his son is, actually). Anyway, Roberto’s actual association with Eva is that Roberto leads Capek to Eva after getting Eva’s location out of her when she thinks that Roberto is one of Tenma’s attorneys (she only gives her location out BECAUSE she thinks that Roberto is one of Tenma’s attorneys).
Okay, moving on…
*Also on the tape is that what Johan fears the most is forgetting about Anna.
*The tape might have some clues as to where Johan’s mother is in the Czech Republic (she must’ve told Johan before they separated, which Johan in turn revealed to the hypnosis person on the tape). Take note though that at the end of the series, the mother of the twins is actually in Southern France.
Since Johan wants to protect her, especially now, he records over the vital information to throw just about everyone off... this is after listening in on everything, of course.
*And finally, Anna is the name of Johan’s mother
Oh, dang! There it is! This will actually explain Johan’s weird monologue later; that whole “I am my sister and my sister is me, I am you and you are me, etc.” thing he was going on about.
Oh yes, notice how Grimmer and crew didn’t get to the part of the tape where the Johan most likely answered who this “Anna” person really was (because Johan recorded over it)… it’s his mom; we only assume it’s Nina because she had the name “Anna” at one point. The rose mansion clues were probably on there, but they already knew about that thanks to Ranke (but they were busy here, fiddling around with the tape). Oh yeah, but Ranke didn’t tell them where it is though, he just confirmed its existence.
Anyway, everyone was saying that Johan’s tape had info about the mother of the twins, so... yeah, my theory is somewhat plausible when you take that into consideration.
Before moving forward to the linear story, let me divert everything first in order to explain the above (man, this is gonna be complicated… this motivation is all post Kinderheim, take note):
Let’s jump a bit forward to when Johan finally makes his way back to the rose mansion (although, technically, it IS his first time in that room even though he thinks that it only FEELS that way).
Going back a bit, I was going on about how Johan really loves his sister and how he is distancing himself away from her in order to prevent the “monster” inside of him from “eating” her. Apparently, this applied to something greater: his mom; he REALLY loves his mom. The story actually applies to THAT scenario, but Johan was confused at first given the fact that Nina was actually named after their mom (this is the name they came up with over at Nina’s orphanage… whether it was by coincidence or that they knew their mom’s name through someone, like Wolfe maybe, it was decided that her name would be Anna, which is actually her mom’s).
I’m assuming that Johan, when he got out of Kinderheim, could distinctly remember that he loved someone named “Anna” a lot and that this person named Anna was in danger (which pretty much erases the mother from memory given that Johan thinks it’s Nina… remember, the classes at Kinderheim were erasing Johan’s memories, so he could only go on various clues after Kinderheim to remember his past). When the whole “I have a monster inside of me” scenario came out, this is pretty much the reason why Johan distanced himself from his sister who was named “Anna” at the time. But the truth is that (this is the logic that he runs on post rose mansion) him and Nina are actually “one,” The monster that Johan thought was inside of him actually wasn’t, and the “other half” that was going to be “eaten” was, in fact, their mother.
These are symbolic representations in the story of “A monster without a name,” not literal interpretations. In a “world without names,” it seems that Johan could really only remember names of the humans in the story and the names that he gave the monsters; since the monsters in the story didn’t actually have names, Johan named them Franz Bonaparta and Anna.
So, after his visit to the rose mansion, it’s okay to approach Nina now given that Johan thinks he has finally settled his confusion of fantasy and the truth, but he has some stuff to do before then; he needs to learn of where the “monster” is, maybe in order to stop the “monster” or get revenge, or both.
Explaining the whole Nina and Johan are “one” thing… During that time at the three frogs, their mom would have the twins dress-up the same and that their mom couldn’t tell them apart; this, to Johan, is the reason why him and Nina are “one.” One “monster” is their mother. Johan remembers her turning into a “monster” because of that incident where she felt the need to get revenge on Poppe.
So, Johan already recalls that scene in the ending of the series by the time he recalls the massacre at the mansion of roses. He does say: “you couldn’t tell us apart” after all.
Looking over all this, that’s not to say that Johan doesn’t love his sister (in fact, he tries to show her that he loves her at the end of the series), but her taking their mom’s name is what confused Johan and he only understands everything now because of his trip to the rose mansion.
I was able to conclude that his mom being “eaten” was his worst fear because of the structure of Johan’s dialogue in his hypnosis tape: right after the part where Grimmer quits listening (the “chomp chomp, crush crush, etc.” thing) is actually where Johan says that he’s most afraid of forgetting “Anna;” from there, it’s can be said that he’s most afraid of his mom, a “monster,” being “eaten” by another “monster.”
To conclude all this: Johan was finally able to rationalize all of his confusion and the only real problem now (this is even after his visit to the rose mansion) is the fact that he doesn’t know that he mixed up his and his sister’s memories of the rose mansion massacre.
Okay, going back… people are probably wondering… what’s the significance of mixing up the characters in the story? The main problem with confusing Nina and Anna is that Johan, thanks to his associating of people he knew with characters in the story, wasn’t able to see the fact that Poppe was actually a monster “outside.” Poppe was a “monster” that was going to “eat” their mom, but because Johan confused Nina with Anna and because of Poppe’s visit to the twins one night over in Dusseldorf, Johan was under the impression that he was going to “eat” Nina, which in turn put Johan under the impression that he was a character in a book, which in turn didn’t acknowledge Bonaparta’s existence (phew).
Confusing who symbolized whom in the story blinded him from the truth (that being that Poppe is a real person).
…
Oh, and the reason why the mansion is burned down is so that Nina won’t be able to recall most of her memories yet. Maybe Johan did this so that she wouldn’t interfere in his search for the monster, “the dragon,” Poppe (I’ll explain this later). And given where it is Johan is going, he can’t have Nina follow since Capek might just end up using her (again) to get to Johan (By the time the organization is able to come into contact with Nina, Capek’s power was already falling apart thanks to Johan’s manipulation).
Anyway, after listening to his tape and visiting the rose mansion, Johan now knows what his true ultimate fear is and he’s looking for the monster that will eat “Anna.” This ultimate fear is associated with the horrible ordeal Johan thinks he went through given that the “monster” might put his mom through that same ordeal when he “eats” her.
Okay, I sure hope I expanded on that clearly enough (it’s really abstract).
Back to the linear story, but let’s take note of where we are after Johan listens to his tape, but before the visit to the rose mansion:
The first thing to do is to find out where the rose mansion is; this is done through Vardeman (Tenma’s lawyer). The next thing to do is to find out where this “Bonaparta” person might be, even though his significance isn’t apparent yet; this is done by going directly to Capek. This is pretty much why Eva gets involved later on and quite possibly why she was kept alive after the whole villa thing; Johan needs her to point him out for someone in the organization, eventually (it’s not like Christoph could do it given that they still have to pretend that they don’t know each other).
So, after leaving the bank, Suk decides its best to hold onto the stuff. Also, Grimmer decides that it would also be a good idea to get Suk’s phone and address. Not only that, they should leave the bank separately just in case.
So Suk gets home only to be received by the special investigation team. He’s under suspicion mainly because he didn’t tell his superiors of his meetings with Grimmer and stuff (thanks to Johan’s manipulation earlier that got him all paranoid and crap of his superiors). Also, Johan is actually over at the place and plants the bonbons and muscle relaxant in Suk’s room. Oh yes, and prior to this, he put a lot of money in Suk’s bank account since he knew it would fit well into a motive given that Suk probably revealed some details about his sick mother at one point (in fact, Johan pays her a visit eventually, so it could be that Suk’s fugitive status bought Johan some time so that he could listen in on his tapes which eventually found its way to Suk’s mom).
Oh yeah, Johan stepped back in and killed those investigator guys to further cement Suk’s guilt. Grimmer sees Johan (dressed as Nina), but is frozen on his way up to Suk’s flat because he gets scared of Johan’s presence.
So, Tenma is over at a Czech-based newspaper and is looking into the STB abductions that happened a while back (because of Nina and her mom’s abduction); this is where he gets on Ranke’s trail. After reading the current news, he’s also able to deduce that Suk is probably innocent and that maybe Johan used him at one point; this is mainly because of all the similarities to his own case. Anyway, he pays Suk’s mom a visit and tells her of his son’s innocence (even though she can’t really comprehend it); too bad Tenma didn’t stay sooner since the lady actually has Johan’s hypnosis tape.
Anyway, Tenma is able to figure out where Suk might be because his mom tells Tenma about this place Suk use to hang out at as a kid; when Tenma gets there, “The Magnificent Steiner” had already done his job. Grimmer and Tenma leave everyone to the police, but it seems that someone affiliated with the STB got hold of the crime scene and made it out that everyone here got into a fight. So, Suk gets taken to some STB-related hospital (the other men were transferred, while Suk was at another hospital to begin with). After finding out that Suk wasn’t taken to the hospital on the news, Grimmer and Tenma head outside only to run into a bunch of men; they take Tenma and Grimmer to Colonel Ranke in order to negotiate over Suk and Johan’s tape. Also, while Grimmer is under the impression that the blonde lady is involved with Ranke, Ranke denies this given that he was actually carefully negotiating for Biermann’s tapes, but thanks to the power structure and that blonde chick (Johan), the orders got distorted and a bunch of unexpected stuff happened (such as Grimmer being tortured and etc.); it was a mess. Oh, and remember, Ranke is trying to sell Johan’s tape to Capek.
There’s a nice scene here where Grimmer (because of a moth… Ranke’s nephew liked insects, after all) is able to remember Ranke’s nephew (Roberto).
Take note that Nina is already in town (Prague) and that she was a little creeped out that complete strangers were acting all familiar with her.
So, the next day, Ranke is talking it over again and Grimmer agrees to let him hear the tape, but there’s no way in hell that he’ll let Ranke have it. After glaring over the STB abductions a bit, Ranke says that he never heard of a woman and her child being abducted and that there’s most likely only one person capable of keeping that kind of information from him: Franz Bonaparta, the man of the mansion of roses and the author of a picture book named “A monster without a name.” Oh yeah, Tenma is under the impression that it was Johan that was abducted… Johan is the “monster” after all.
Back to Nina, she’s at the Three Frogs and has a recollection… she also thinks that Johan was the one dragged down the stairs and taken away. But upon opening the door, she becomes confused given that she remembers that she was greeting herself home (that was Johan greeting her home). Since not all her memories are intact, it’s easy to confuse all of this.
Okay, so Tenma, Ranke and Grimmer all set out to go and retrieve the tape from Suk’s mom. It’s not gonna be all that easy though given that Johan is already there. So, using some info that Johan dragged out of Suk, he helps Suk’s mom recover a bunch of memories (for more information). So, before Johan leaves, Johan listens in and records over his tape given that he doesn’t want Tenma catching onto where he’ll go next just yet (he intends to go to the rose mansion to discover some more memories) and that there might be some other info that he doesn’t want anyone finding out (I went over it already); in the event that they didn’t listen in on the whole thing yet, Johan only leaves them so much info on the tape. But yeah, they didn’t listen through the first time, so it’s too late now.
Lunge is taking his first big vacation from the BKA in a long time. Since he hit a wall, why not relax a little? There was an ulterior motive though; he was interested in finding out the roots of this book that Schuwald’s secretary was so interested in. Lunge hits the Prague police station, to have “A monster without a name translated,” but he catches wind of Suk’s case (which involves poisonous bonbons) and becomes interested in reading into it while there. After interviewing Suk’s friends, the name Anna Liebert comes out and Lunge makes the definite connection between his case and whatever it is that’s going on in Prague. Also, he comes across Poppe’s publisher and finds Poppe’s sketches of a pregnant woman and her twins (oh, it’s getting familiar). Finally, after inquiring about the book he wanted the commissioner to translate for him, it has the name Johan mentioned at the end.
The neat thing I liked about this was that Lunge switched up back to coffee from beer when he decided that it was time to buckle down and do some serious investigating.
Okay, just 16 more episodes to go… can’t believe I made it this far.
End of part 10!
============
Okay, that was a pretty big bomb... if people are confused as to how it's all structured, I think they should ask now... I thought it out for a while and I think I got it, but I may have not have written it down coherently...
What I mean is that, it looks like this:
-Johan listens to his tape
-Johan has Roberto execute a plan
-Johan visits the rose mansion (he can only do this after actually learning of its location, so it makes sense)
...
okay, back to work (I'm gonna start part 13 soon)
Part 11!
To start everything off, I’ll note down that episode where Johan finally leaves his apartment, but toys around a little with one of the orphan kids, that’s trying to prove Grimmer’s innocence, before he leaves; it was messed up, but it seems this was done to delay Grimmer and Tenma’s trip to looking into the rose mansion. The point of interest here is that part where Johan has the kid, Milos, go and search for his mom over at the red-light district. Prior to this trip, Johan asks Milos that if he doesn’t find his mom while he’s there, what does Milos have to live for? Yup, another one of those neat manipulation tricks. Thankfully enough, Grimmer makes it to the scene in time and in the process recovers some of his lost emotions (though, he’s still not sure what he actually feels yet, it just comes out).
Elsewhere, using his l33t investigative skills, Lunge is eventually able to lead himself to Bonaparta’s rose mansion (which he will screw around in later).
Anyway, since Lunge heard that Suk was being accused of having connections to the STB, Lunge went around scoping out any hospitals that may have had some connections to the STB; he runs into Suk and asks if he knows who the killer is (given how thorough his framing has been). Since Lunge isn’t able to get some stuff out of him, he just leaves him with some advice about how he should look into the evidence carefully and suspect people he may not want to suspect; it’s the only way to not be betrayed by the people around you (Suk hasn’t thought of accusing Johan (dressed as Nina) yet).
So, Lunge gets one of those STB guys looking after Suk to take him to colonel Ranke (leader of the STB). After taking some cheap shots at each other below the belt, Lunge discusses the rose mansion with Ranke. Oh yes, it seems that Lunge wanted to talk with Ranke given that he can’t seem to find any concrete information on Franz Bonaparta; if that’s the case (non-existent past), it’s quite possible that this person was associated with the STB at one point and that it would be best to pass through Ranke in order to confirm this. Ranke is a little hesitant to reveal information on the mansion given that he’s scared of remembering anything that has to do with it (which is why he won’t even touch the mansion and leaves it standing even if it has bad stuff connected to it).
So, Lunge does his thing and eventually finds the room where the massacre happened; he is able to detect evidence of the massacre mainly because the room was disinfected as hell. Also, he discovers a painting of the woman he saw in one of Bonaparta’s sketches.
Tenma on the other hand is doing his own Bonaparta investigation and comes across his old editor who tells him some stuff about Bonaparta; unfortunately, this editor guy has been following Tenma’s case and reports him to the cops.
Anyway, the newest things we learn here is that Bonaparta had a doctorate in psychiatric medicine (which is probably how he came up with those hypno-books) and that he also wrote this love-letter story to the mother of the twins, the one about how a Monster falls in love (which was rejected by the editor); it seems like he thought about it around the time he met up with the twins and their mother again (1981 or 1982). And before Bonaparta left his editor, it seems that Bonaparta talked about one more story, the one about a door that didn’t open; I think Poppe was hinting off at what he was intending to do in the near future (he intends to kill everyone that’s involved with the experiment and to lock that room and its secrets away).
By the end of the episode, Grimmer is on his way (and confesses through letter to a bunch of crimes that only the killer would know to help get Suk off of the hook) and Tenma sees him off agreeing to do that picnic thing they did before again one day.
The neat thing here is that we actually see the cops that go and bust Tenma pass by Grimmer; unsurprisingly, Tenma is busted while he’s helping someone on the street… man… that was cheap.
So much for investigating the rose mansion’s location and stuff.
I might have gone over it before, but please take note of the specifics of Margot Langer’s letter in 1976 and the time where Schuwald goes and visits Prague in 1980. The letter in 1976 makes claims of the birth of the twins and the move in to three frogs. The visit in 1980 shows how Johan got some info on Margot Langer. Also, on Schuwald’s visit, it would seem that she (the mother) never heard anything from Margot Langer from that time that Langer left Schuwald.
Some minor notes:
-Dr. Reichwein visited Prague, but couldn’t find anyone
-News gets out about Tenma’s arrest in Prague (no, wait… that’s a big detail).
Anyway, Schuwald tells Karl to go and get a bunch of lawyers. At the same time, Tenma’s old patients (some of which we’ve actually seen before) gather together with the intention of pushing for proving Tenma’s innocence… Dr. Becker is there and is sort of a wet towel though; they eventually hire on Roberto without knowing who he really is. Roberto uses this opportunity to pass through poor people to get to Vardeman given that Vardeman rejected Schuwald’s call for a good lawyer earlier. Anyway, the doctors who Tenma helped out can’t make it mainly because they have people to take care of and can’t just up and leave (they were thinking “what would Tenma do?”), but, their hearts are with him.
It’s really heartwarming to see people come together like this.
So, with all this going on, Dr. Reichwein heads to Dusseldorf in order to speak with Schuwald; Eva tags along. Oh yes, Eva met up with the good doctor since she was referred to him by a friend. Actually, Eva was there when the doc learned about Tenma’s arrest, although, it only hits doc that she’s related to the whole Johan thing later on in the train going to the Czech republic. What Eva hasn’t revealed at this point however is her knowledge of actually seeing Johan during after an incident, but she seems to be struggling between her desire to get back at Tenma and her will to do what’s right.
At the end of the episode, Lunge comes across Poppe’s love-letter story; this and a scene from one of the last episodes is where I’m basing the assumption of Anna being the mother’s name.
Going over the story, it’s about some guy, possibly a “monster” (Poppe), who’s crumbling away (probably over the guilt of what he’s doing), but then there’s someone who shows herself before him. At first, he existed to “consume” this person (control her), but what happened is that the person “consumed” him (he fell in love); not only that, but the woman delivers onto this person a pair of Jewels (twins) that are like eternal life itself. It’s all symbolic and stuff about how when Poppe was being completely taken in by the guilt of what he was doing, this person showed up before him and gave him new hope for his humanity or something and that he saw the beauty of life when the ideal twins were born into the world.
Anyway, it goes on about how sinful it is to steal someone’s name and that the monster (Poppe) is now giving this person/monster/something, “Anna,” back her name (then there is a shot, right after Lunge reads the words “Anna,” of the painting of Johan’s mom… so there). But now, he’s just sad given that he can no longer be near her after “giving her back her name.”
Also, during the 72nd episode or so, Poppe discusses how he fell in love with the mother of the twins and then how he killed anyone having to do with the experiment afterwards; that is essentially “returning her name” after “stealing it.”
Anyway, I’m sticking to the “her name is Anna” theory and am going to move in that direction.
Before Tenma is hauled off to be sent back to Germany, Lunge leaves him some nice advice that’ll help confound the interrogation.
Also, after reading Poppe’s love-letter novel, Lunge is finally able to acknowledge the fact that maybe indeed a monster exists in this world and that it might’ve been created in that room in the rose mansion where many perished (but I’m still working under the assumption that Johan is like a superior human, but like I said, he was lead astray by this and that. A true “monster” was born into this world somehow by chance, and that’s Johan… there’s really no other way to explain his super intelligence and abilities of clean murder and human nature prediction, so it’s a safe bet to stay on this road).
So, while in prison, Tenma runs into Gunther, the escape artist; we’ll see him help Tenma out of jail later. Also introduced is the all-famous prodigal son lawyer (or whatever his titles is), Vardeman. Since Tenma is in jail, people have been scrambling around to prove his innocence; Vardeman didn’t take Schuwald’s offer since it seemed suspicious, but when his old patients, who went through Roberto (posing as some attorney named Baul), asked Vardeman to take the case, he agreed to take the case on the basis that this man (Tenma) might actually be a good person. I mean, there has to be a reason why people who don’t necessarily have a lot of money are trying to scope out this renowned lawyer, so why not?
After hearing about Vardeman’s involvement, Dr. Reichwein approaches him so that he too can help prove Tenma’s innocence. They discuss some general stuff, like about how Dr. Reichwein shouldn’t testify about the whole attempted sniping incident, but the point of interest here is that Vardeman needs to drag Tenma’s former fiancé in as a key witness to… whatever; Dr. Reichwein is later surprised to discover that, not only did Eva try to kill Tenma, but she has actually seen Johan.
The only problem here is that she didn’t see Johan actually kill the guy (Adolf Junkers), but it’s a good start given that someone has seen Johan in the flesh.
At the end of this one, Roberto shows his face to Tenma during a visit. Roberto tells him that he’s considering killing Eva (which isn’t the plan), mainly because she’s seen Johan. After Tenma tries to reason with Roberto by saying that she wants Tenma in jail and that there is no way she’d bring info about Johan into court (Johan’s existence would help prove his innocence), Roberto then goes on to say that killing Eva would benefit both Tenma and himself if that were the case; it’s that awesome use of manipulation once again.
Take note of a few things:
-Roberto tells Tenma that he could try telling the cops, but they might not believe him
-Roberto also says that he could go to Vardeman, but what guarantee is there that Vardeman isn’t one of Johan’s followers?
-Oh yes, Roberto is still a bit surprised that Tenma actually shot him
Going back to Gunther, he’s already setting his escape plan in motion and even has a nifty code in which he gets the lawyer guy (who works for the mob) to tell his brother and his girlfriend (Helene and Gustav) to record Tuesday re-run of “The Detective Forster Show,” which is code for “get me out at this time.” So, he does his pretending to be sick thing again and meets up with Tenma (again); Tenma wants in and it is here where Gunther hints off at what Tenma should do if he wants to join in the escape (confess, and in five days you’ll be transferred the detention facility).
Back to Vardeman, him and Dr. Reichwein are going over Eva to confirm whether or not she has actually seen Johan. She says she has, but she’s being a real cow about everything and says that she won’t give this testimony in court. But she’s slowly having recollections of the past and is now sort of regretting all the rotten things she’s done to Tenma and is thinking if she should continue to hold onto a grudge or not; it was pretty sad to watch.
What happens next shocks EVERYONE! Tenma has made a full confession and it’s off to the hoosegow!
So, after refusing to see even Vardeman, it seems like Tenma is on his way.
By the end of the episode, after much contemplation (and Vardeman’s madness), Eva finally makes the decision to help prove Tenma’s innocence.
Oh, and Roberto figured out Eva’s location (she gave it to Roberto herself over the phone, unknowingly) and passed it on to “the organization” along with some info that claims that she’s seen Johan.
Part 12!
I really like how interesting it was to watch Gustav and Helene’s interaction; they were fleshed out in a matter of minutes, which is impressive to say the least. I was especially fond of the “I’ll have a bunch of kids with you and form soccer team” bit: simultaneously very touching AND European (at least, I thought so). Thanks to this heartwarmingly optimistic view of the future, you just feel bad when the cops actually hit Gustav (I was shocked at how no-holds-barred the depiction of the collision was).
While everyone is standing around shocked, Tenma takes advantage of the situation given that Gustav actually had a gun on him; he’s on the run!
Gunther, after switching to Gustav’s car, is feeling a bit hopeless for the welfare of his brother (whether or not this is his actual brother, I wouldn’t know) and considers ditching him after switching cars again; Tenma doesn’t like the idea and tells him to drive his ass to Eisner hospital (Tenma’s hospital). This was another good moment that shows Tenma’s sheer determination: it’s not his brother, yet Tenma’s compassion for life still shines through. While risky, I do really like Tenma’s decision here. But then, when you think about it, the cops, after finding out about the escape, are most likely not looking for them INSIDE Dusseldorf and that the cops probably made the assumption that the motive for escaping was to, well, escape (which isn’t the actual plan in Tenma’s case, hence the difficulty in catching him later given that the cops were mobilized and sent elsewhere after finding out about the escape… they were mislead because they didn’t have all the facts down, BOO-YEAH!).
When Eva hears about the news of the escape, she’s quite shocked given that she had already resolved to help prove Tenma’s innocence, but now, it’ll be even harder to do this given the fact that escaping just has “guilty” written all over it. While there in the hotel lobby, she senses Roberto’s presence and heads back to her room.
It is here where people from “the organization” pick her up; again, this was most likely Roberto’s doing.
Pay attention to episode 55; a lot of it is reminiscent of the opening sequence.
After peeking into a bar that Eva regularly hanged out at, Tenma is able to pinpoint Eva’s location (he still thinks that Roberto is out to kill her, but by this time, she’s already in Capek’s hands). Since the barkeep was in a panic (and since he was suddenly interrupted by a customer over his missing coat), the barkeep must’ve completely neglected to mention the fact that he talked with Tenma about Eva’s location (which isn’t all that surprising when you’re scared). We later see the cops pass by Tenma, but he’s wearing that coat he stole, so they don’t see him; they were probably on their way to the bar. It is at the bar where they would learn of where Tenma was headed (after an interrogation, to make sure that the barkeep isn’t pulling their leg), but by then, it would be too late.
Oh yes, and there’s only one squad car headed there given that everyone is still mobilized elsewhere (which was mentioned last episode), because, like I said, the cops are working on the assumption that Tenma is gonna jump town. Hearing about a fugitive, who is supposedly making a run for it, spotted around the same vicinity from which he escaped, is surprising, to say the least (but again, they don’t know Tenma’s motivation for escaping).
Yeah, I really thought that out for some reason, but good old human nature, suspension of disbelief and viewer interpretation is always sufficient enough to explain stuff like this.
Also, I think that Tenma took that train thingy at the beginning going to Eva’s hotel (less people would see him and this speeds up travel time); it seems this way at least, judging from the opening sequence and that there was a shot of the train thingy in the episode.
I like the phone sequence where he tries to get Eva’s room number down; he actually gets the money for the phone from the dude’s coat (he might’ve used some of it earlier to pay for the train thingy). All things considering, the train thing is complete speculation on my part though. But anyway, it was fun to watch Tenma get the room number out of the guy.
Elsewhere, it would seem that Lunge is back in Germany; he’s paying Vardeman a visit since he’s interested in learning about Franz Bonaparta.
Okay, so, as we all know, Vardeman’s dad is actually a spy. The reason why Lunge was able to trace Poppe back to Vardeman’s dad is that Poppe actually had a program that aired on Vardeman’s dad’s radio station, but Poppe did it under his real name, Klaus Poppe (since it’s a German program). Lunge said that Bonaparta is actually a name that Poppe would use when he is an acting official of the STB and it would seem that Vardeman’s dad would visit Poppe in the rose mansion when Poppe was using the name “Bonaparta.” Put 2 and 2 together, and it’s not that hard to come to the conclusion that someone who goes out to meet an STB official is quite suspicious.
Lunge just reaffirmed what Vardeman had known as the truth all these years: his dad was indeed a spy.
The whole thing was tearing up Vardeman inside and this causes him to break down later when Tenma approaches him (which was an awesome scene that had a neat combination of paranoia and anger). After Vardeman explains his revelation to Tenma, Tenma eventually realizes that Roberto approached him because he says that his dad’s notes made mention of Franz Bonaparta and the rose mansion.
Over at the Vardeman household, it seems that Roberto wasn’t able to find the notes (since it was hidden in a “The Wizard of Oz” vinyl sleeve thing). But actually, he might’ve just read it and put it back into its hiding place. I think this mainly because it is after this episode is when Johan finally makes his way to the rose mansion and recalls and understands “everything.” So, it seems that he was only able to make it there after learning of the clues that can be found in Vardeman’s dad’s notes:
“Steeple to the left, weather vane to the right.”
Anyway, Roberto leaves a note telling Tenma to head out to the rose mansion. By the end of the thing, Vardeman forks over his dad’s notes, even at the risk of it falling into the wrong hands and proving his father’s guilt, given that he has a child now and it’s time to look to the future without being consumed by the darkness of the past.
Let’s recap for a moment though:
-Lunge was able to make it to the rose mansion because he was investigating the picture book and its creator (a totally different path from where Johan was going)
-Johan was able to lead himself to the rose mansion thanks to his tape, of which lead to Johan having Roberto dig up in Vardeman’s dad’s notes
End of part 12!
==========
Updates might slow down a bit given that it took me a while to figure out what Nina had remembered up to this point... so... uhh... yeah
Part 13!
It’s story interpretation time! Yay!
BUT, before we go to that, let’s just point out what everyone is doing:
-Lunge is still searching for some more info Bonaparta.
-Johan is in the process of receiving Roberto’s information as to where the mansion.
-Vardeman is heading out to where Tenma is going: the rose mansion.
-Nina is remembering the part of “Johan’s” story where “he” was taken from three frogs; essentially, she’s retracing the steps to get to the rose mansion (oh yeah, just be straight about everything, she still thinks that the rose mansion thing was Johan’s experience).
Take note that she suddenly has a flashing vision of Capek talking to her from the front seat of a car.
Eventually, this all ties back into what was in Vardeman’s dad’s notes; “steeple to the left, weather vane to the right.” When Nina and Dieter finally get to the rose mansion, they come across the room that Lunge had opened up earlier. After recalling the image of dead people in the room at the rose mansion, Nina faints and we meet up with Bonaparta’s son, Lipski (she still is not sure of what it is that’s going on… she gets interrupted here and there from remembering the whole truth, that being that the rose mansion massacre was her experience).
After some stuff happens, Lipski lets out some information about Franz Bonaparta. Like, he wrote those 3 books (“The God of Peace,” “The big-eyed man and the big-mouthed man” and “a monster without a name”) and that, back in the 60s, he would hold book-readings over at the rose mansion regularly; Lipski use to be a part of these readings, but he was chased away given that he wasn’t a “superior child” (most likely people born from those experimental couples, but that’s speculation… god knows how long they’ve been doing that… if that were the case though, then it could be that his father saved him). Nina has a flashback of Bonaparata, but again, she doesn’t know what the significance is (a complete trip to the rose mansion would’ve solved everything, but it’s hard given that she doesn’t WANT to remember the past… it’s so horrible after all)
OKAY! Here is it!
Lipski has a story that actually parallels to story of Monster (at this point) quite well.
There are 3 characters: a human, a devil and a dragon.
The man is essentially Tenma. The devil represents Johan. The dragon is Franz Bonaparta (although, Nina still doesn’t know the significance of this person yet, even if Lipski tells her about the book readings… it’s food for thought for the viewers and it’s not something that Lipski wrote out of like prediction or whatever. It’s just something he wrote that happens to coincide with the story).
The story is that there is a devil (Johan) on a quest to destroy a dragon (Franz Bonaparta, but remember that Johan use to think that Bonaparta was inside him). In the middle of his quest however, the devil is severely wounded (Johan was shot in the head by his sister), but a human (Tenma) comes across him and saves his life, not knowing that he’s a devil (Tenma did his head operation without knowing he’s a monster). When the human learns that he saves the life of a devil, he pursues this devil. At the end of the story, the human finds the devil and eliminates it from this world.
Wow, that was so cool! From here, we could say that while the twins were running away from a monster when they were younger, it would seem that Johan, when he remembered everything, would’ve eventually pursued the dragon (like he’s doing now). I’ll go back a bit and say that this reinforces the theory of how Johan would eventually set out to get revenge for his mother like she said he would.
There’s an interesting dialogue between Lipski and Nina right after this; Nina tells Lipski that you would save the devil if you were human, so it’s not the human’s fault that he brought a devil back to life by accident.
Next story! This one is called “The big-eyed man and the big-mouthed man” written by Poppe under the alias “Jakub Farobek.”
While I’m not sure which characters in the book symbolize which characters in the series, it can be said that the moral for this next story pretty much applies to a lot of people in the series.
Okay, so this story is about a big-eyed man and a big-mouthed man. One day, a devil (Johan) shows up and gives both of these men an opportunity to make a deal with him. When the small-mouthed man was approached, he decided against making a deal with the devil. When that happened, the big-mouthed man stepped in and made a deal with the devil. Not only was the big-mouthed man given the opportunity to eat a lot of food, but lovely flowers began to bloom in the big-mouthed man’s garden as well. On the other side of the fence, the big-eyed man’s garden sucked and he was starving to death. One day, while eating his food all casual-like, the flowers in the garden of the big-mouthed man began to wilt (since he was too busy eating). When that happened, the big-mouthed man cried a river and decided that he shouldn’t have made a deal with the devil. On the other side of the fence, the big-eyed man was still starving and it eventually hit him that he regrets not having made a deal with the devil.
How to interpret this? Essentially, what this means is that: regardless of whether you make a deal with the devil or not, if you come into contact with a devil (Johan), something bad will happen from the experience. This can be said for a lot of the people that were manipulated and manipulated against in the series; people’s interaction with Johan has more or less always ended in some kind disaster regardless of which side of the fence they were on.
The next story by Poppe is called “The god of peace” which Poppe wrote under his real name.
Okay, again, this story is probably Urasawa’s food for thought; Poppe didn’t write about this knowing what would happen (if anything, it was written in the 60s, so it’s coincidence that this parallels the actual story of Monster somewhat).
This story is about the god of peace who is always too busy, making the world a wonderful place, to look into the mirror. He’s too busy blowing his horn for people’s happiness, he’s too busy pouring out his magical water for good crops and fields and he’s too busy giving people names. One day, while giving out names (such as Hans, Otto and Thomas… names found in “A monster without a name”), the god of peace comes across a young boy and names him Johan. This Johan boy is so happy that he gives his red cap to the god of peace to say thanks.
Excited and happy about the gift he received from the boy, he finally takes a look in the mirror one day only to find out that he’s actually the devil.
Okay, there are two ways or so to parallel this with the actual story of Monster.
Let me go over the one that has Poppe in its interpretation.
You see, Poppe was doing all these mind-hypnosis-secret-governmental-experiments-etc. things without questioning the morality of what it is that he was doing. He only had the opportunity to “look into the mirror” when he came across a youth named “Johan.” What this means is that Poppe’s guilt hit him like a sack of potatoes when he “created” Johan and saw the result (he knew that Johan was behind the murder of the Lieberts and that whatever followed after was Johan’s doing as well; it was terrible, but he was only able to stand by and watch the horror that he created… although, take note that Poppe only thinks that he created Johan… more on that later).
Notice how before Poppe dies, he walks up to Johan, with a gun in hand, and tells Johan that they should die together; makes a little sense when viewed in the context of “The god of peace,” if you ask me.
There’s also another way to interpret this when you take Nina into the context, but it’s a little more abstract though.
So, Johan went around killing people thinking that he was doing a good thing for him and his sister, he even gives her acorns, but then the whole “I have a monster inside of me” scenario comes out and Johan realizes that the “devil” is inside of him. While Nina has been having it good so far (even after the rose mansion massacre thing), when Nina looks into her “reflection” (analyzes her life with Johan so far, like why people kept dying) she sees “the devil” (she figures it out that it was all Johan’s doing)… what do you do when you see the devil?
You shoot it.
That was shorter, but like I said, a little more abstract.
Anyway, every time that Poppe would finish his stories, he would always ask the children if they understood the readings; right after, he would pull out the next book and would suggest reading that one next.
Okay, here’s that cool scene where Johan makes his way back to the hall in the rose mansion where a bunch of people were killed. I’ve already expanded on the details earlier, so take note that Johan now recalls the massacre clearly (although its not his experience) and remembers people like Capek and Franz Bonaparta, who are connected to this memory of his. Also, Johan now understands his confusion while talking to the picture of his mom.
“I don’t think that even you could tell us apart”
“I am her and she is me; I am you and you are me”
“I am her and she is me” essentially means that Johan and Nina were perceived as “one” and that Johan and Nina are actually “one” character in the story.
“I am you (mother) and you (mother) are me” means that since Johan thought he was one of the monsters in the story, he used to think that Nina (who was named after their mom, Anna) was the other monster in the story.
From there, again, this explained all of Johan’s confusion in the past and he is now ready to do what he was originally going to do: to find Franz Bonaparta and to make him suffer for what he did and what he might do (“eat” the other “monster,” Anna).
Before Johan leaves, he torches the place (and his Nina costume, which would make sense). He now is sure of where he should go; he’s headed to the organization (much thanks to Roberto who had already finished setting everything up; Eva is already in the hands of the organization at this point). The torching, again, is most likely to prevent Nina from remembering everything and following Johan too early (Johan also now remembers that he told Nina about the whole experience… but we all know that he’s got it backwards).
Oh yeah, pay attention to how accurately the shadows are projected on the wall depending on the source of light coming from the fire; that was badass. Man, I love Madhouse.
At the end of the episode, Nina is able to recall that night she shot Johan a little more clearly now along with a few memories before that. While she did feel that someone was in the room that night, she doesn’t know it was Franz Bonaparta (I’m talking about even when she was a kid).
“A monster came.”
Okay, so the rose mansion has been officially owned; it’s burnt about as well as a ruined thanksgiving turkey, if not more so than. And here’s Tenma, successfully able to sneak pass the border, once again, only to be too late to the party over at the rose mansion. But wouldn’t you know it? Tenma gets a surprise visit by Wolfe’s men only to find out that Wolfe himself is already on his deathbed. Oh yeah, too bad Vardeman and Dr. Reichwein didn’t come earlier; they would’ve met up with Tenma.
So, Johan invited Wolfe to the rose mansion as well, it seems. Why? Well, Wolfe has a recollection of hearing about people being murdered in the rose mansion, but he never read too much into it. It happened back in 1981 (which ties back into Poppe’s visit to his editor discussing that one story about a door that never opens) when a certain “experiment” was being conducted. While Wolfe isn’t necessarily sure, he jumps to the conclusion that the monster was born there.
Take note (again) that it was Wolfe that named Johan “Johan.”
It is here that Wolfe also makes mention of the fact that Eva is now with someone in the organization (thanks to Roberto); Capek is trying to search for the monster, so Wolfe tells Tenma that he wants him to stop her from pointing him out for the organization given that Wolfe wants to save Capek and Sievernich (Johan’s apprentice’s dad).
Okay, remember, Wolfe is a person who saved the life of a monster (Johan), so, this Wolfe person is allowed to see that world of no names that Johan has seen time and time again; notice how right before Wolfe dies, and after going over the fact that those 46 people that were buried over at the rose mansion had no one who knew their names, is Wolfe able to see that world; he now understands it. Also, this meeting with Wolfe has apparently been planned given that Johan wants to show Tenma that same image eventually one day.
Finally, before Wolfe goes, he’s able to reaffirm his existence thanks to Tenma. I like the part where his men salute him after his passing.
So Dieter, Lipski and Nina head out to the rose mansion after hearing about the fire and all the bodies.
Nina comments on how the rose mansion may have been an important place to Lipski during his childhood; he says that he’s pretty okay with it, surprisingly. Maybe it’s because the place only held sad memories for him?
So, because of the rose mansion burning down, Nina can’t recall her memories as clearly as she’d like. She still thinks that it’s Johan who went to the mansion, and that Johan told her about all the dead bodies and stuff (she remembers that part when the news about it gets out). She also seems to think that Johan must’ve seen something so terrible (even worse than all the dead bodies) that it turned him into a monster and that, if she was there, she might’ve turned into a monster after having seen it.
After expanding on some stuff, Lipski says that he hopes that if Nina’s memories ever come back, may the happy ones come back as well.
While in the midst of all this, Dieter says that Tenma says that you should go build happy memories if you don’t have them; it’s that simple.
I really like the scene where Dieter and Nina leave Lipski (the one with the puppets); I think I could feel a tear drop somewhere after seeing the scene.
Okay, so Lunge is back in Prague (man, being in the BKA must allow you to travel all over the place); he’s looking for Lipski’s dad, Franz Bonaparta.
End of part 13!
====
... hmmm... I'm working on part 14 right now, but I'm stuck (again)
...
Oh well, I'll still try to update twice a day
Part 14!
Oh snap! I love this next character! Who doesn’t like Martin? He’s so cool and manly and this is like one of the best arcs in the series!
Apparently, Martin’s background is that he works for “the organization” but under The Baby’s chain of command; Martin is the person who is hired on to look after and protect Eva until later when she goes to various parties in order to point out who this “Johan” person is. This is since it’s been pretty hard to know what he looks like at 20, apparently… there was that one time on TV, but no one, from the organization, which is in Frankfurt, must’ve noticed… I mean, the TV thing was fairly brief and was in Munich and it wasn’t even known that this person was Johan. Come to think of it, no one who’s with the organization has ever seen Johan to live to tell about it (remember, everyone over at Professor Gaedertz’s house was murdered).
Okay, moving on…
So, The Baby has Martin meet up with one of the leaders of “the organization:” Petre Capek. Take note of the information that Martin reveals to Capek (the one about working for The Baby for 3 years, going to jail for 8 years and how Martin doesn’t like jobs that involves women and stuff); this info finds its way to Christoph (Johan’s apprentice) later on. The first thing Martin needs to do is to go and get Eva over in Dusseldorf and escort her safely back to Frankfurt; it’ll be an interesting journey.
Oh yeah, it seems that the first meeting between Eva and Martin coincides with Tenma’s visit to the hotel; they left shortly before Tenma got there.
So, Eva tags along willingly given that she still thinks Roberto is after her.
I really liked the tensely awkward interaction between Martin and Eva; it was so fun to watch: Eva keeps nagging Martin to talk, but when Martin makes an offer, Eva suddenly decides that she’s not in the mood for talking.
There was one scene in particular where Eva goes off to look for some alcohol and when Martin catches her hanging around someone, Martin goes out of his way to beat the hell out of him; since Martin’s not quite sure as to how to handle women during his jobs, he’s met with a bit of frustration and over-exaggeration. He beats up the guy, rather badly I might add, under the impression that it’s his job, but Martin’s only telling himself that; he’s trying to make the job seem more meaningful given that he’s not totally into it.
The scene afterwards is pretty good; right after Martin is done with the guy, he drags Eva back to their car. Pay attention to the shocked look on Eva’s face as she glares at Martin’s sheer indifference over the whole thing; she knows not to get on Martin’s bad side.
A neat thing about Martin’s habits that gives you some familiarity with him is that, while he’s a fairly heavy smoker, he actually doesn’t like drinking because his mom was a heavy drinker (and that got her killed one day).
After Martin and Eva finally strike up a conversation (over Tenma, no less), they finally get to know each other a little better. One scene that stands out is that Martin says that he killed his girlfriend when actually, he didn’t; he’s lying about it in order to put up his tough-guy front.
Naturally, I also like the sequence where Eva drags Martin along with her to go shopping (using a credit card Capek gave to her); the point of interest here most likely is where Eva tries to dress Martin up like how Tenma use to dress like, down to the same tie that Tenma used to wear. She uses the fact that she doesn’t want to be seen in public with someone dressed like Martin as a convenient excuse to cover up her ulterior motive.
“Wear your tie properly”
Pretty sure that Martin associated the tie with a dog leash at this point.
The scene that’s most important in this episode is probably the last one where Eva admits that she’s still afraid of dying even after returning to “her place in the world” (the ritzy life); we then figure out one of the (many) reasons why Martin doesn’t like to work jobs that involve women: he’s a sucker for the dames. Especially the seemingly weak and defenseless types like Eva.
The next day (or so), Tenma pays Martin a visit over at the bar Martin likes hanging out at regularly; Tenma is here trying to get them to release Eva not aware of the fact that Eva is actually not being held (Martin tells him this). Even so, Tenma is persistent given that he doesn’t want “the organization” coming into contact with Johan; this was also one of General Wolfe’s last requests: to save the remaining two leaders of the organization (Capek and Sievernich).
After Eva finally points out Johan, Capek comes to greet her and invites her out to dinner; before leaving, Eva tells Martin that this is probably her last party given that she already senses her impending death (although Martin is not aware of this yet). After Martin makes his way back to the bar, he meets up with Tenma again only to find out that that last party was indeed the completion of Eva’s job and that the organization was about to do away with her. After rushing back to the hotel the party was held at, Martin received explicit orders from Capek to kill Eva; there’s no way around it now.
To buy some time, Martin transfers Eva over to some local motel. The dialogue before then was quite interesting though; Eva openly admitted to turning Martin into a stand-in for Tenma and asked for him to just finish her off already while she’s all boozed up. Since Martin said that he doesn’t want to kill people anymore, Eva was wondering if he’d be willing to shoot the devil that turned him into a stand-in; incredible scripting.
The next day, back at the bar, Tenma (who’s aware of Martin’s intentions now) leaves his hotel address so that Martin can come see him later just in case something happens.
Martin is on his way to a party (using the tie Eva gave him and one of the invitations); it is here where he will eventually meet up with the Devil’s apprentice: Christoph Sievernich. While Martin was tailing him, it seems that Christoph was well aware of him following (the door was open when Martin got there); pay attention to the next scenes as this will show why he is the devil’s apprentice.
It seems that Christoph talked about the “end of the world” with Johan a lot when they were younger (he’s telling the damn story to Martin), which is probably how Johan got Christoph in on this whole “world domination” thing; as for their association outside of Kinderheim, it was probably rather minimal physically and probably mostly non-direct and through other means such as mail, e-mail, etc. given that this night would most likely be their first face-to-face meeting after the longest time.
Anyway, it would seem that Christoph was taking a lot of tips from Johan given that he knows how to do that whole manipulation and observation thing that Johan does.
Remember when I said to take note of the info that Martin reveals to Capek? Well, it comes into play here. Christoph probably figured that this Martin person would eventually betray the organization over this Eva chick (he was most likely able to conclude this after inquiring about Martin through Capek). So, after doing a background check and some research (with the initial info that was available, from Capek), Christoph was able to make a bunch of educated guesses during his conversation with Martin (or he thought them up earlier, either assumption is fine).
The key difference between him and Johan though is that Christoph seems a little unsure of his answers here and there (he’s impressed at the fact that he actually made correct guesses), unlike Johan who always talks as if he seems to know everything about the person he’s probing; that’s most likely the focal difference in their skill.
So, y’all know the story:
Martin had a girlfriend named Edda who was a terrible drug-addict; after finally getting her off the stuff one day, they lived a happy life together. This sort of ended though on the day Martin caught her in bed with her old boyfriend and doing drugs again. On the record, Martin confessed to killing his girlfriend, but the evidence actually said otherwise and that she killed herself (she had gunpowder residue on her hands). Because of Martin’s decision to lie during the trial, Christoph was able to deduce that Edda probably had asked Martin to kill her; when Martin flinched, Christoph was overjoyed that he actually got it right.
Pay attention to Martin’s flashback: he walks out of the room then hears a gunshot; when he runs back in, there’s a shot of Edda next to an open drawer; man, that was such a great moment of logical cohesion.
From there, Christoph then manipulates Martin’s reasoning for leaving the room: Christoph says that the reason that Martin left the room was in order to grant Edda’s death wish.
Before Martin is able to justify himself, Christoph hits him with another low blow: his mom’s death.
The story here is that Martin would always drag his drunkard mom back home from the bar every night. She would always ask Martin to just leave her on the street, but he would never listen to her since, well, she was drunk. However, one night, during snowfall, Martin just gave up and did what his mom asked him to; she died from the cold.
Since Christoph is so keen on the whole thing, he links his mom’s incident with his girlfriend’s incident; essentially, what Cristoph is saying is that they both wanted to die and all that Martin did was grant their wish.
I think that the main thing that really bothers Martin here is how Christoph is rationalizing that they wanted to die and that them dying is actually OKAY (it’s not) and that Eva probably wants to die too (she doesn’t).
Anyway, Martin leaves the room, shocked, and passes the devil while walking down the hallway; given that Christoph was the devil’s apprentice, he was too scared to look at the devil himself.
The conclusion here is that, regardless of what happens, the devil’s scenario must never be followed since no one ever wants to die; Martin decides to save Eva from the organization (although he does contemplate killing her, initially).
Before Martin jumps into action, he needs Eva out; he tells Eva to go to the place that’s mentioned on the note that he got from Tenma. While going to Tenma was cool and all, Eva decided that she wanted to run away with Martin after all and tells him that she’ll be waiting for him over at Frankfurt station; Martin says to stop screwing around, but you know deep down that he just wants to go to Frankfurt station too.
Some nifty action scenes happen and Martin proves himself to be a real badass… this is cut short however when he runs out of bullets and gets shot… by a rookie no less.
“You idiot… aim for the head!”
That line was just brilliant on so many levels; he’s a rookie, so of course he’s incapable of shooting at the head accurately.
The next scene is finally when Martin makes it to Tenma’s hotel in order to divulge the information he has uncovered. How Martin found out about all this is totally left to interpretation, but I think it was kept secret on purpose given that I was actually surprised that he found this stuff out.
Since people don’t know that he knew a lot of that stuff, the viewer is suddenly taken by surprise as to what motivating factor was strong enough to prevent Martin from choosing either to go to the hospital (which wouldn’t have guaranteed life anyway) or going to see Eva before he died; although, when Martin does get to the hotel, he has a line that suggests that he really wanted to go and see Eva over at Frankfurt station.
When viewing the whole arc in this context, I realize why the story was structured the way it was. There are only hints as to what is happening, and as the viewer moves along the linear narrative, Martin’s motivation at the end makes more sense.
Anyway, Martin relays information about Capek, a “survivor of the rose mansion,” and how the devil has now gained apprentice; there’s also talk about the “experiment” from the rose mansion still continuing (which isn’t the case here, especially in the end, it seems). This action of Martin’s in the end goes to show you how compelling Johan’s power is; Martin’s will to relay important information that might be able to help purge the devil from this world was so great that it superceded everything else; in fact, Martin was a little happy to go given that he wouldn’t need to see that horrible thing he saw from that world, that Eva’s tie allowed him to see, anymore.
Take note that Tenma is told about Christoph’s location; on the other hand, Eva knows where Johan is staying at (through Capek). This is pretty much how they run into each other later given that Christoph pays a visit to Johan’s flat later on (he has the key, I mean, since they know each other).
Okay, to summarize:
-Eva was waiting at the station
-Tenma tells Eva of the bad news
-Tenma tells Eva that the reason why Martin protected her was because “no one wants to die”
-Tenma also says that Martin was happy that Eva was waiting for him
-Tenma also says that he’s going to finally end it
At the end of the episode, Eva actually doesn’t take that trip back to Munich (to Dr. Reichwein’s place). She decides to stay out here in Frankfurt in order to take her shot at the devil; remember… if the devil is in front of you, you shoot it. Even that reporter guy at the Fortner household, Mauler, thought so.
End of part 14!
littleharlock
07-24-2006, 12:39 PM
Okay consider this just a random Eva-fanboy rant that may not make any sense at all ^_^"
I think it's safe to say that one of Naoki Urasawa's strength is characterisation. Along the long road of this story he introduces new characters that you can empathize with (i.e. Grimmer, Lunge, Martin, etc.) or which you simply can just hate (and IMO in case of Roberto discover new levels of hatred along the road ^_~). However (whil I assume I'm in a minority with that opinion) if I had to pick one character as favorite among the huge cast it would be Eva Heinemann.
It's simply wonderful how Urasawa developed this character along the road. At the very beginning of MONSTER she was just the "daddy's spoiled little girl in the body of a woman" type of character. However just like Tenma, her life takes a drastic change of events soon (not meaning the death of her old man, it may sound hard but that certainly was one of the best things that could have happened to her).
I couldn't help but feel for her when Eva reappeared in the story as the broken woman that blamed her misery on one man...Tenma. The man *she* dropped, yet Tenma crushed her remaining "Heinemann"-pride when he didn't want her back in the end.
This attitude of blaming one's misery on someone else just didn't bring Eva far (i.e. her little alcohol problem becomes worse) however the growth this character "receives" in the later half of the series is the reason I adore Urasawa so much ^_^"
By including her as one of those still alive that have seen Johan and moreover can proove Tenma's innocence he didn't just "give her up" (and let her drown herself in bottles of Whisky /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif) but turned her into one of the key characters to solve the whole issue of Johan (occuring in the "present time" of MONSTER).
The story about Martin and Eva is still my favorite short arc among them all. Not only did we get yet another decent character introduced with Martin, but moreover Eva finally reached the point where she could "forgive" Tenma...or better said she did realize that Tenma is not the one she can blame her crushed life on. Heck thinking of it she's one of the characters who can't even assert that Johan is the one to be blamed for a miserable life. Eva slowly does realize that SHE is the only one who's responsible for her life.
I just love the end of the arc when Eva "stands up" to hunt Johan herself (against Tenma's wish for her to return Reichwein-sensei).
so far
yours
littleharlock
I'd also like to point out that Eva is actually a beautiful woman, but you never really see this when she's either drunk or acting like bitch; that was a neat trick.
Yeah, I really liked her character as well (but that's a given considering that I liked all of the characters) and I'll probably go over it when I get to the part where she visits Johan's apartment (I mean, after Tenma apologizes through Christoph, which was a really good scene).
Good stuff man
...
okay... back to work...
Part 15!
Okay, so Vardeman is out here in Prague and is going over the people that used to participate in Poppe’s book readings; it’s quite obvious that there’s something a little screwy with these people even though they seem to live relatively normal lives.
Over at some apartment, Nina is settling down and has now found a job as a waitress, although, she wants Dieter to head back to Munich. She’s still busy trying to remember what it is she would’ve remembered had the mansion not been burnt down, so she’s still taking various trips to three frogs and the rose mansion.
A point of interest here perhaps is the scene where Nina is remembering Johan being dragged down the stairs, screaming; it’s a little blurry given that Nina can’t remember what or whose name was being screamed (which is another good reason to explain confusion).
One of the first solid clues that helps Nina remember the past is when she pricks her finger on a rose thorn (she’s vaguely familiar with the pain). After taking a trip back to three frogs again, she’s holding up a copy of “a monster without a name” and is trying to recall what happened after Johan came home; given that Nina saw “herself” when she opened the door so many years ago, Nina distinctly recalls saying the words “welcome back” since she remembers seeing “herself” saying it. Then it hits her! No matter how many times she says “welcome back” to Johan in her current memory, the door in her mind never opens; Nina remembering the past always gets stopped at “welcome back” mainly because it wasn’t her that said it, which is why the door never opens (in her mind).
Nina was actually the one who went to the rose mansion, but, before she actually recalls this, Dieter interrupts her and she loses track of the conclusion she came to. Nina was going a little crazy there, so of course Dieter would step in.
Back to Vardeman, he’s a little pissed off that he’s not getting more time and speaking rights with the rose mansion kids from the 60s. Also, it seems that the cops are simply concluding that the skeletal remains found at the mansion were most likely the STB’s doing and are leaving it at that; they want to stop the investigation there. This isn’t good for Vardeman given that he’s trying to prove Tenma’s innocence and everyone is making it a pain in the ass because they don’t seem to want to put in the effort to learning the real truth behind the mansion which might bring out some more info about this “Johan” person who’s behind everything.
“There are a lot of young men like you today… I’m pretty sure that you hit on girls by the book too.”
At one point, one of the people being interrogated makes mention of a man who works at a radio station (Vardeman’s dad) coming to visit the mansion one day; it seems that Vardeman’s dad might’ve been participating in these terrible experiments. The problem with probing for the truth of the mansion now is that it’s hard for Vardeman, especially after finally acknowledging the truth of his dad’s vocation. But, he mustn’t look away if he’s to help prove Tenma’s innocence. The surprise here though is that his dad wasn’t involved with it. In fact, he told one of the kids to stop attending the book readings and to run away (using a neat Wizard of Oz correlation); it must’ve been a real load off Vardeman’s mind to learn about that.
Okay, so Dieter was finally able to get Nina to come back to Munich and hang out with Dr. Reichwein. While there, Dr. Reichwein receives a letter from Tenma (from Frankfurt… but they don’t know that it came from Frankfurt yet); the end of the letter really bothers Nina given that it seems that Tenma has now totally resolved to kill Johan, regardless of what the price may be; she decides that it’s now time to recall what it is that she needs to remember in order to save Tenma from what he’s about to do. Oh, and Eva hasn’t come back to Munich yet even though Tenma said to expect her.
The next part is Nina’s hypnosis session with Dr. Gillen. So, Nina remembers some various details about her mom (who seems to have been in the anti-government movement at one point) and dad (he’s dead). At one point, their mother ran away to three frogs and hid (which then proves that she did indeed run away from Poppe). Oh yes, Dr. Gilllen is assuming at this point that the reason why they hid at three frogs has something to do with Nina’s mom being in the anti-government movement, which isn’t the case when we learn the truth, later.
But, one day, Johan was caught (well, Nina was caught, but she still thinks that it was Johan). Oh yes! There’s one scene in particular where Nina is now recalling the truth of the past. While she refuses to identify who she is in her trance after recalling it, she makes note of the fact that she was indeed the one who said the words “I’m home.”
Anyway, it’s only after all this that Nina recalls that the rose mansion was her experience. But at this point, she’s under the impression that what she went through was all Capek’s doing.
Oh yeah, 5 points if you didn’t scream when Nina suddenly grabbed Dr. Gillen by the neck.
The next episode has to do with Capek’s childhood friend, Milan. Oh yeah, the scene where Tenma runs away from the cops was cool (although, they were there staking out the place to look after Capek given that there’s evidence that implies that someone may be after his life).
Back in 1969 is the first time when Capek, who managed to get a good position in the government, met Poppe; Poppe left a huge impression on Capek in that Capek was able to believe in the future again (he was sorely disappointed at how everything outside of Czechoslovakia was; just like Czechoslovakia, there was “nothing” out there.).
During 1989, before the collapse of the Czechoslovakian government, Capek ran away and it was with Milan’s help that he was able to come to Frankfurt. And it’s in Frankfurt where Poppe’s books had their first application outside of Czechoslovakia; Capek was holding book-reading sessions similar to the ones at the rose mansion and it was screwing up the kids around Frankfurt pretty badly; one of the victims of this was Milan’s son (which is why he wants revenge on Capek). During the uproar, Capek disappeared one day only to come back to Frankfurt and screw it up again (which started by eliminating the Turkish quarter or anything having to do with foreigners. It would seem that Capek was able to command favor with right-wingers, such as The Baby, because he was willing to do stuff like this).
Okay, going back a little, let’s recall when the rose mansion massacre happened: it happened during 1981. So, why is it that even though everyone having to do with the experiment was killed, Capek was left alive? My interpretation is that Capek must’ve been close to Poppe (he was in awe of the guy) and I think that Poppe didn’t want to kill him, so he had Capek go somewhere while the massacre was happening and Poppe disappeared afterwards (hoping that Capek would get the message). Here’s the problem: Capek thinks that the whole massacre thing was actually a PART of the experiment/program and it would seem that Capek’s motivation all these years was to complete this program (which he assumed would gain him a lot of power, since controlling someone like Johan would be awesome). Also, I’m assuming that Capek is under the impression that it was Johan who was sent to the rose mansion, since he wasn’t aware of Poppe’s true motivation in killing everyone (which was to SAVE the twins).
Anyway, at the end of the thing, Milan fails his attempt at that convention thing that Capek was attending (since police were around the area… I mean, a lot of important people are here, so of course there’s gonna be some cops). Capek was really surprised to learn that the person who tried to kill him was Milan; this plays a role later in Capek’s paranoia, so take note of it.
I sort of feel bad over the fact that Milan wasn’t able to let go of his hatred; he had started a new family, but now he’s dead and that’s where the tragedy of it all is. Afterwards, Tenma makes sure that the cycle of hatred stops there and is able to convince the members of Milan’s new family to not pursue revenge and to just live life peacefully, because in the end, Milan probably wouldn’t want them to continue what he had started.
Okay, I had already gone over the significance of the serial murderers that Johan used to cover up Christoph’s scandals earlier, so we’ll skip that (… thank god).
Episode 64 is the episode where The Baby gets owned by some stripper that was working under Christoph’s orders (probably not too hard to look for someone that would want to get revenge on The Baby). The Baby was suspecting Christoph and Johan of doing things behind the organization’s back, so Christoph did away with him.
Later on, after word of The Baby’s death gets out, Capek is now all paranoid and gets some of The Baby’s men to protect him. He drops the ball on the way to his villa though given that he didn’t trust The Baby’s men either; he killed that guy in the car even though he was only going for the lighter in his jacket. At this point, Capek was beginning to read into The Baby’s suspicions earlier; this whole thing might actually be Johan’s doing and that Capek was no longer in control of everything. I’m pretty sure that he was beginning to think that Milan’s assassination attempt earlier was Johan’s doing as well. When he finally makes it to the Villa, the men aren’t there (ironically enough, they were busy getting Nina in order to protect him).
It seems that Johan has been waiting for him.
I like the scene where Johan was reminiscing about how the people at the mansion were drinking wine as well; it freaks Capek out given that he thinks he just consumed poisonous whine, but of course, Johan’s just screwing with him. Oh yes, because of Johan’s remark, I think Capek was able to deduce how all those people at the rose mansion were killed (given that he thinks that Johan watched the whole thing); it’s not like anyone outside would know about this.
According to Johan, everything is going as plan. But, whose plan are we talking about here?
Anyway, Capek tries to play the “we’ve got your sister” card, but it doesn’t work (obviously). Johan, in the calmest manner possible, is wondering what the hell kind of being he is. He’s also wondering where the monster he thought was inside of him is: where is Franz Bonaparta?
Okay, it’s totally coming together now.
Capek doesn’t necessarily know the answer, so he just tells him where Capek’s son is instead.
End of Part 15!
===========
Okay, it's the home strech... I'll probably be done by today or tomorrow...
hooray
Part 16!
The next episode starts out with The Baby’s men pinpointing Nina’s location… it would seem that Johan somehow fed the info to them (probably through someone else) given that he needed some time alone with Capek to get some clues about Franz Bonaparta out of him. Anyway, the men who come to get Nina get owned, but Nina comes willingly anyway since she wants to meet this Capek person.
On Tenma’s side of things, he’s now following Christoph (who is now headed to Johan’s apartment). It seems like they (Johan and Christoph) set up a meeting with each other after Johan was done with whatever it is that he was going to do with his sister (Johan told Christoph where he was meeting his sister at, it seems). As for what Johan was going to do with his sister, he was probably going to drop the bomb about his rose mansion experience on her as a means to hopefully explain what the hell his motivation has been all these years. At this point, Johan wants his sister back and he’s sure that he can get her to understand now that the time is right; all potential dangers are now gone and all questions have been answered as well. But as we all know: the bomb sort of exploded in Johan’s face (more on that later).
Back to Christoph: while waiting patiently in the apartment for Johan, Eva shows up; she’s been staking out the place for 2 weeks, and it’s suspicious that Johan never came home, so she shakes Christoph down for the info (given that he seems to be here at Johan’s flat for a reason).
On Nina’s end of things, she finally makes it to Capek’s villa; she has the sudden urge to kill his ass when she sees him (given that she still thinks that Capek is behind everything), but she is able to fight it and settles down so that Capek can give up some answers. It’s nice to see that Capek is now the sum-equivalent of wet noodles given that he’s now aware of the fact that he doesn’t have control over anything and that this was Johan’s show from the start; he asks Nina to kill him, but then this is pretty much what tells Nina that Johan was here recently: Nina wants to go and see her brother, so she asks Capek to take her to him (and he does know where he is, which was the plan from the start). Upon closer observation, it would seem that Capek wanted Nina to kill him since this would at least re-affirm to himself that he was in control; very nice.
Going back to Johan’s apartment: Eva is now regretting having ever leading Christoph to “the devil” given that Martin probably would’ve still been alive had she not done that; Christoph takes one in the ear for Martin (yay). Take note of the fact that it is during this sequence that makes the only mention of the Sievernich financial group in the entire series; this is pretty much where I based a lot of my theories, although, Eva and “the organization” are under the impression that Ernest Sievernich (Christoph’s dad) is dead, but, my interpretation is that Ernest in only playing dead (as I’ve explained earlier). So, Eva makes her inquiry and is surprised to learn of the fact that Christoph and Johan have actually known each other since they were kids back at 511 Kinderheim (but of course, she doesn’t really know the significance of Kinderheim).
So, long story short, Johan let Christoph survive the Kinderheim massacre since Johan was going to use him in a plan. What plan is that? World domination, of course! Christoph even says that “a politician’s face is his life;” It doesn’t get any clearer than that. I think that Johan picked Christoph for the plan given that Christoph was actually smart enough to resist leaving his hiding place regardless of hunger or whatever other outside factor that would’ve made him want to go out there only to get killed; taking that into consideration, it was a good choice.
So, after some nifty action scene, Tenma makes his way in (he was following Christoph after all) and saves the day; he’s a pretty good shot.
In the car, Nina and Capek are having a talk: Capek is wondering why Nina doesn’t just do him in already given that there’s probably so much hatred in Nina’s heart at this point. She contemplates killing him again, but is stopped in her tracks when she inquires about as to what she and Johan are.
To Nina’s surprise, Capek has only heard of how they were created; he’s not the mastermind here.
Okay, since I already went over how the twins were created, I can skip that as well (yay).
Nina now knows that it was actually a person named Franz Bonaparta that was behind the entire thing.
At this point, Capek has a sudden recollection of Anna’s words to Poppe; now it all makes sense to Capek: Johan is here to deliver the wrath of god onto Franz Bonaparta. After all these years, it would seem that the words of that woman are now finally going to be realized. Who would’ve thought? Who would have thought?
Back to Christoph, he’s still pretty damn hesitant to reveal Johan’s location; again, this is why Christoph was hired on. He resisted leaving his hiding place, so he can probably resist this too. Although, Christoph changes his mind when Tenma decides to let him live even though Christoph hasn’t revealed Johan’s location yet: Tenma’s one hell of a doctor who’s always putting people’s lives first before his own interests, that’s why Christoph told him (well, Johan does want to see Tenma, but I guess it only hit Christoph this far in).
I really liked the scene where Tenma left a message for Eva; Tenma apologizes even though he has nothing to apologize for. Given that Eva has always been wanting for Tenma to repent over what he did, when she finally gets it, she realizes that she never deserved it in the first place. That was such a beautiful moment of realization right there and now Eva’s character has been fully developed: excellent stuff from the Master (Urasawa).
Anyway, next up is the reunion of brother and sister.
Since I explained the incident at three frogs where they ran during the fire and the one about how Johan killed their first set of foster parents, I can skip that too (yes!).
Johan, all ready to tell his story asks if his sister is going to shoot him like she did last time; oh, she’s ready all right, it totally ends here. But, Johan is still wondering what “the end” really is; he’s seen it so many times that it’s hard to tell. Anyway, it will finally all end the moment Nina shoots Johan and eliminates him from this world, but before then, she needs to know what the hell is it that he saw that turned him into a monster; can it possibly be worse than what Nina saw that day?
Take note of the fact that Johan was narrating how he was the one to come home to three frogs after escaping from the rose mansion; Nina isn’t really on the same wavelength and is probably assuming that he’s talking about something else (the thing that turned him into a monster).
I went over the rose mansion story already, so I guess I can skip that too (wow, I’m getting lazy).
Take note of the fact that Johan says that 42 people were killed that day at the rose mansion. There seems to be 2 ways of looking at this:
-Johan wasn’t the one there, so maybe he got the figure wrong.
The problem with this theory is that it said 46 people on the news, so Johan would’ve known that something was up by then.
-After 42 people died, who do you think buried the bodies and sealed the room?
4 people would seem efficient enough. So, I’ll stick with this assumption of Bonaparta having 4 people cover up his mess. After finishing the job, Bonaparta does away with them too and tosses the remaining 4 corpses in with the rest; makes sense.
While people have heard of the incident (Capek and Wolfe know about it), no one really knows what the actual intention was or how the whole thing was carried out; for the most part, it’s a total secret.
Okay, back to the story.
Nina is in shock of the story, but not because of its gruesome content.
Oh damn, it seems that Nina telling Johan all about her experience has confused Johan and he’s been under the impression that it was his experience ever since that day.
The monster was awoken that day that Nina told Johan of her experiences. If she hadn’t told him about this, Johan wouldn’t have pursued “the dragon” given that he wouldn’t have known of “the dragon’s” powers and what would happen when he “eats” you.
This is the reason why I don’t think that the monster was created by anyone. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to physically manipulate events in order to create someone like Johan and that the only likely explanation is that he was born into this world, a monster, but asleep waiting to be awoken; had this been anyone else, it probably wouldn’t have worked out like how it did here (Nina didn’t turn into a monster after all, even though it was her experience). Also, Anna probably saw Johan’s potential early on and that’s the reason why she lost control during that moment she tried to give one of the twins up; she was betting on the fact that maybe Johan would be able to give her the satisfaction of getting revenge on Poppe (but again, she made the wrong choice, but it didn’t matter in the end given that it all came back to Johan anyway).
One question remains though: how was Nina able to prove that the rose mansion was indeed her experience? Simple. She described Johan’s face during that time back at three frogs when Nina told him the story; Johan had a face that looked like he was crying and smiling at the same time.
Johan was smiling because of his interest in fear, but Johan was crying as well given that his poor sister had to go through all of that.
Nina is in anguish over the whole thing and thinks about killing herself given that it’s all her fault; Tenma makes it in time and convinces her that no matter what, regardless of what horrible thing she thinks she may have done, she should stay alive and that one day “we’ll definitely get to the place where we need to go;” live so that you can learn to accept your mistakes and move on and get to that place where you need to go (wherever it is). Also, since Nina actually contemplated killing herself, god knows what is going on in Johan’s head at this very moment.
Capek, before getting capped by The Baby’s men, tells Tenma and Nina about where it is that Johan may have went; he’s off to kill Franz Bonaparta, but as of now, Johan only knows where Bonaparta’s son, Lipski, is (which is a good place to start if you want to find Bonaparta).
Before Capek goes, he contemplates two things:
-It seems that Nina had completely forgotten about the significance Franz Bonaparta’s existence and that Johan remembered it long before she did.
-Capek is wondering what it is that Poppe was trying to create when he did the experiment over at the rose mansion; Capek still doesn’t seem to get the message, it seems.
The final scene of this episode sees Johan paying a certain man a visit. Hey! It’s Ernest Sievernich (Christoph’s dad). So, why do I think it’s him? Let’s list the reasons:
-He’s living in complete solitude (which pushes the “I’m faking death” scenario)
-He talks about a “plan” and I think that there was really only one major “plan” in the series; get rid of Schuwald’s financial group, take over the organization, get into politics, change the world. Sounds like one hell of a plan, so it’s no wonder why Sievernich is a little miffed that Johan’s calling it quits all of a sudden.
-The fact that he says he raised a lot of money implies that he’s rich; what better way to raise money than a financial group?
-Talking about money, when Johan first comes out to his private sanctuary, he’s wondering if Johan needs anything… I mean, “who are you going to kill next and what do you need to do it?” says a lot.
During the conversation, when Sievernich asks him as to who the next target is, Johan points to his forehead (that’s pretty straightforward… and he’s not smiling this time either). Also, Johan says that he has finally awoken from the dream, that dream being his sister’s experience at the rose mansion; it wasn’t his experience and was only a dream, nothing more.
Like the end of my long-ass analysis, the true final scene for Johan is now in view.
Man, I can’t believe that I’m almost done.
End of Part 16!
Part 17!
And so it’s off to Ruhenheim!
Lunge is able to make it here mainly because of that postcard he borrowed from Lipski that had a painting of Ruhenheim on it. Lipski actually got that postcard from his dad a while back, but he never bothered looking into it (he kept it, at least).
So, now, it seems that Franz Bonaparta, the man of the rose mansion, is now living out his life as Klaus Poppe, the man of the Versteck Hotel.
When Lunge finally makes it out to the hotel, a point of interest is probably the old couple that’s staying there; they’re with Johan, in fact, the old man was writing post cards to him that had information on the town on it (the conversation switches over to grandsons mainly because Lunge recalls that he has one now, but has never really spoken to him).
Oh yeah, going back a little: when Grimmer stepped into town, he heard that same gunshot that Lunge heard earlier as well; it was probably the gunshot that killed that cat over at Poppe’s house on the hill.
Back at the hotel, there’s this old lady, Mrs. Hillman, looking for her dog; she’s a little scared given that she thinks that he might’ve been shot (because she also heard a gunshot). Since Grimmer (under an alias) gets to the hotel around the same time and overhears the lady’s cries, he decides to go and search for it given that he’ll be outside investigating anyway; Lunge decides to go and search for the dog as well.
One of first people Grimmer meets is the guy who gets killed first later on: Konrad. And afterwards, Grimmer makes a stop to where Roberto will be at later on, the Bergbach Hotel.
Later on, Lunge and Grimmer come across each other only to learn that neither has figured out where the dog is; they continue in their search.
Lunge comes across Wim’s home life with his alcoholic dad; there was a nice scene where Poppe shows up and helps Wim, who was thrown out of the house, out.
Back to Grimmer, he meets up with that chick, who works at the sausage stand, that hangs out with Roberto later; it is here that Grimmer figures out where the dog is, because this sausage stand girl walked Mrs. Hillman’s dog once when she was sick (Grimmer looks for where the dog might’ve buried his bone).
She’s really bored of Ruhenheim, so that pretty much explains why she’s hanging out with Roberto later on.
Oh and since the cop Lunge asked to look around earlier was being a smart-ass, he reported back to Lunge about how the damn dog was missing and how a car had an engine backfire; great work detective dips***.
I like the scene where Grimmer finally finds the dog and Lunge is able to meet up with him as well. It seems that they used different clues to get to the same place to find the dog, much like how they used different clues to find out that something was probably going to happen over here in Ruhenheim.
Oh yeah, Lunge knows Grimmer mainly because Lunge was looking into Suk’s case a while back and that there was a man with Grimmer’s description in it.
Take note of the paranoid old couple that won the lottery; it was fun to watch.
Anyway, they were really starting to suspect that people in Ruhenheim knew that they won the lottery (people don’t know and it’s only in their heads). One specific moment that the old lady recalls is using Konrad’s birthday to pick the numbers; If Konrad reads the paper, he might try to collect on the money (which is what the old couple thinks), so they go out looking for him. Oh yeah, take note that the husband bought some guns.
Back to Wim, he’s over at Poppe’s house on the hill since his douche bag acquaintances claimed to have hidden his bike there (it was somewhere else and they were just playing a trick on him). Wim is a little scared when some people are roaming around in the house, but he soon finds out that it’s actually just the guests from the hotel, Grimmer and Lunge.
While there at Poppe’s house, the trio comes across a bunch of incomplete drawings of twins; Lunge is suddenly reminded of when he was still handling Tenma’s case and how there was a pair of 10-year-old twins connected to the whole thing, but they disappeared.
Okay, now it seems that whoever’s here to start the massacre is already working on it. Konrad is shot while screwing around with his cowberries; I’ll just say it was Roberto, but it could be one of his men, I’m not sure. Either way, the result is the same.
Before anything starts, I like how Lunge cites a story about how a single gun eliminated an entire town; it makes sense to do this given what’s about to happen. It happened in Zweifelstadt adround 1958. I did try to do a search over at google, but the only words that I could understand was “Zweifelstadt” and “1958;” in the end, whether or not this is a true story, I wouldn’t know.
Back in town, Wim is getting beaten up by those stupid kids again. Not only that, they take his money too (my god). After they leave him, that old couple from the Versteck hotel walks up to Wim and gives him a gun.
Then there’s the lottery couple. They’re still worried about how if Konrad blabbed about the lottery win to everyone, so the husband decides to go and search for him in order to ask about it. If Konrad didn’t tell anyone about it, good, but then they’d have to possibly negotiate a payoff (according to the husband). They were getting paranoid as hell over the lottery ticket, so when they came across Konrad’s corpse, they weren’t sure of what to do (the old lady even thought that it was her husband that killed him); now they’re not sure as to whether or not Konrad told people about the lottery thing (but he probably didn’t know about it to begin with). Sure, they’re overreacting, but when you think about it, 20 million Deutsche Marks is a lot of money (the wife was even thinking that Konrad would be greedy enough to shake them down for too much money).
So, they’re not sure what to do with the body and decide to hide it as opposed to telling the cops (dumb move, only made everything worse).
Back in town, Grimmer has a nice little chat with the sausage stand girl; it seems that her dreams of finally getting out of Ruhenheim has come true! A nice man from the outside world has finally approached her. Oh, but it’s Roberto, so there’s nothing nice about that.
And here we are back with Wim’s drunk dad. He’s a little pissed off that he can’t get a drink and he’s also agitated at how everyone in town looks at him (the old lady who won the lottery was actually looking at him because they thought that he found out about their wins, great). Then that weird couple Johan’s manipulating comes up again and gives the guy a gun and they also tell him that Wim has taken one too.
Hey! I think I’ve seen those guns in Master Keaton before!
So, another gunshot went off and Mrs. Hillman’s dog stopped barking; someone finally shut it up.
In the next scene, it would seem that Tenma is in Prague (again) and he comes across Franz Bonaparta’s son, Lipski. He’s able to do this without the hassle of investigating mainly because Nina knows who he is. As for Johan, I’ll just assume that he took another route to find out where Bonaparta is (the shortest route possible given that Johan’s running out of time). I’ll go over it later, but Lunge and Grimmer also used different routes to conclude that Bonaparta was in Ruhenheim, so there are a lot of ways that Johan could’ve figured out where he was, but it just so happens that he didn’t go through Lipski as Tenma and Lunge are the only people that have passed through him.
Oh yes, it would seem that Tenma was able to piece together a profile of Bonaparta thanks to the help of the STB and General Wolfe’s men.
Back at the hospital, Nina told Tenma about what it is that Johan would be trying to do when he got to Bonaparta; Johan is essentially going to recreate the massacre at the mansion, though, surprisingly enough, it coincides with that world without names that Johan usually only showed to people that saved his life, but when it comes down to it the real “land of the end” is only apparent to Johan when he finds out everything (more on this later) and that in the end, Tenma is the only person who actually sees it.
So, it’s starting to rain and it seems that Prague is actually quite close to this Ruhenheim place (or close enough that when it rains there, it’s also raining in Prague, who knows?). The problem now is that Ruhenheim is essentially a desert island when there’s a storm since no trains or transportation makes a normal pass because of how hard it is to travel there; that can’t be good.
Okay, in the next scene is how Tenma finds his way to Ruhenheim; he visits this guy who’s really into Poppe’s book art. The last book is probably the point of interest here given that as the content of Poppe’s books improved, the art just got worse; this is the case with Poppe’s last book (that was published limitedly) “Das Ruhenheim” which stands for “a peaceful home” but is also the name of a place (Tenma didn’t know this… he actually had to look at a German map to figure it out). Since Tenma heard about the description of Poppe’s family’s hometown (through Lipski), Tenma concluded that Poppe was probably going to be there in Ruhenheim, which is a town in the mountains.
Oh, I did a google maps thing and it seems that Prague (where Tenma is) and Munich (where Nina and Dr. Gillen are, at Dr. Reichwein’s house) are fairly close to Southern Germany, but I don’t know. I can’t seem to understand how to use or read the damn map; good thing they did all that research for us, because it seems like a real pain.
Oh, let’s go over the story of “Das Ruhenheim,” written under the alias “Helmuth Voss,” for a moment. Take note that it was published in 1989.
Okay, so there’s this thief (Poppe) who escapes to this town in the mountains one day (Ruhenheim). He has a scheme to make some money off of the townspeople (he’s thinking of trying to continue his experiments even after all this time), but after interacting with the people of the town, he forgets how to steal.
This pretty much coincides with Capek’s visit to Germany; since Poppe had already isolated himself, he had no idea of what Capek was up to (not that he would’ve done anything about it anyway. Poppe was just sitting in Ruhenheim waiting for his punishment to be delivered).
Back at Ruhenheim, the cops are having a hard time finding Konrad (since he’s dead). Also, someone was shot at the bar last night, and if he dies, it’ll be the first murder the town has ever had (on record); the police guy’s checking in at the hotel and telling his story given that it’s raining too hard outside. A neat little scene is probably where Lunge tells the old couple that it seems like the husband in the wheelchair has been walking outside in the rain because of the mud on his shoes. Lunge tries to make a phone call, but the lines aren’t working; now it really is a desert island.
So, the cop guy leaves only to be shot while helping out this guy on the road whose car is broken.
The next episode starts out with Wim being bullied by the town kids, again; he’s contemplating whether or not he should use that gun that the old couple gave him. Also, Wim’s dad goes to the local bar only to be denied given that they don’t want to serve a guy who takes money from his kid. When we get back to Wim, the kids that always bully him are dead. Not that I feel sorry for them given that the viewer’s only exposure to these brat kids is in a negative light, so you can’t help but feel like it was justified had Wim actually killed them. The detail in the scene was quite nice: when Grimmer gets there, he checks to see if the gun was fired or not.
As for the cops, they finally found Konrad’s body, but Roberto was there waiting for them to show up; he takes their guns while he’s at it. Roberto lets one guy live though so that he can walk back into town and talk about what’s happening and possibly start up a ruckus (people probably saw him crawl into the hotel, which wasn’t a cool sight to say the least); also, Poppe should be one of the last people standing, so he’d better get on his toes.
I really liked that one scene when Grimmer comes back with Wim to the hotel and how Grimmer explains that Poppe’s words of “you’re not trash” stuck out in Wim’s memory which helped him resist the urge to kill those boys; Poppe’s reaction was pretty heartfelt and he was even saying that Wim did a good job by not using the gun.
So, the cat is out of the bag now. There’s dead bodies everywhere and Lunge and Grimmer caught onto the fact that the old couple at the hotel may have had their hand in it; Grimmer even threatens the old man with The Magnificent Steiner. The reason why the old couple followed Johan was mainly because he looked like their grandson, so, the “grandson” that they were writing to a while back was indeed Johan.
It then hits Poppe that he is probably the actual target.
End of part 17!
Part 18!
So, Nina received an Email through Dr. Gillen from Johan saying that he’ll be waiting for her in Ruhenheim. After much discussion (3 days), Dr. Gillen and Dr. Reichwein decided that it’d be better to show the message to Nina. Nina had already explained the concept of a “perfect suicide” (which is essentially a recreation of the rose mansion massacre plus killing yourself) and that it would seem that if they don’t stop Johan, a lot of innocent people will die. Given all that Nina has been through, of course they’d spend a lot of time debating whether or not to tell her about it; they were right, because the moment she hears about it, she immediately wants to head out to Ruhenheim (which is now a battlefield).
Okay, so the next scene explains how Grimmer and Lunge found their way to Poppe here in Ruhenheim.
Lunge was able to come out here when he started investigating the evidence found in Tenma’s “imagination;” Lunge started this around that time he took a vacation in Prague and was looking into Schuwald’s secretary’s book. Going forward from that a little, Lunge was able to pinpoint Poppe’s location more accurately by pretending to be Poppe: Lunge concluded that Poppe would go back to his heart’s homeland, right here in Ruhenheim, during that time Lunge visited Lipski over in Prague.
For years, Lunge had always followed the “objective” data that was in his the computer in his head, but this case was an exception, it seems; he followed Tenma’s “imagination” in the end in order to get to the truth. In fact, when he finally meets Poppe, it’s as if a fictional character has come to life.
Hey, that was pretty neat.
As for Grimmer, he looked over a list of people that ran away from Czechoslovakia and it would seem that Poppe’s name was on it. And when the Berlin wall fell, he came to Ruhenheim; Grimmer concluded that because of his movements, Poppe was most likely trying to avoid people like Grimmer given that Kinderheim’s experiments were probably based on the original concepts that Poppe came up with, decades ago.
So, back in Munich, Dr. Reichwein and Dr. Gillen are allowing Nina to head out to Ruhenheim, but on 2 conditions:
-She can’t have her gun (you don’t need a gun when you’re trying to talk someone out of killing himself)
-She has to go with Dr. Gillen (just in case)
She agrees and it’s time to go! But before then, everyone who knows Johan needs to hide just in case since Johan may try to eliminate all of his memories of everything while he’s at it (because he wants to just forget that all of that stuff ever happened, which is not surprising). In contrast, even after all the BS that Nina’s been through, she never wants to forget any of her memories given that the happy ones might disappear too; even after all that Johan has done, Nina doesn’t want to forget those memories of him either. In the end, Johan is her brother and she still loves him.
Back to the Versteck hotel, Lunge is having recollections of the past; the first time he heard the name “Johan” was over 10 years ago. Given everything that’s happened, Grimmer is wondering if Lunge is now willing to admit that he made the wrong deductions given that he’s been following evidence that leads to Tenma being guilty (which he is not); Lunge is still a little hesitant to acknowledge that he’s wrong, but as of now, this “Johan” person is still just a fictional character to Lunge no matter how he goes about it.
But then comes the next question: how can a real person become a fictional character?
All the person has to do is to erase everyone that knows him and his past (sort of like what Johan has been doing over the last few years) and in the end, it’ll be just like the conclusion in Poppe’s book where Johan is the last person standing; this is the only possible way Lunge can rationalize that this “Johan” character is real and how it is that Lunge’s been confounded over the last decade. Lunge’s conclusion isn’t too far from the truth given that Johan used to think he was a character in the story, but the problem here now is the ending of the book which is becoming reality.
Grimmer is able to figure out what Johan is doing given that he thinks that he’d do what Johan would do had Grimmer been in the same situation as Johan; “You stole my name and my past and turned me into a fictional character, so let’s just end it all here and disappear together.”
But in the end, Lunge and Grimmer are still a little off as to why Johan is doing all this in the first place (which makes sense given that they aren’t Johan, but still… that’s some great detective work and because of that, they were able to see the massacre coming).
After Lunge and Grimmer do their thing, Poppe comes out with the real reason he’s been hiding out here in Ruhenheim: it would seem that all Poppe was doing out here was waiting for his day of retribution to arrive. That’s a big “hell no” to Grimmer given that he wants to expose the truth behind all the things that Poppe did in the past. Also, there’s no way that Grimmer would let Poppe die and get off so easily; Grimmer makes it a point to protect his ass until all of this is over.
After that exchange, Lunge asks the scared old couple in the corner where it is that Johan’s hiding; they say that they don’t know, so Lunge is able to conclude that there’s someone controlling everything (Roberto!); a gun at this point is pretty useful since the old couple gives Roberto’s location up pretty fast (it’s over at Hotel Bergbach).
Oh, and the old couple that won the lottery make it into the scene as well! And they have some guns (luckily)! Everyone that’s able takes one and it’s time to kick some ass! Lunge is headed out to Roberto’s location and Grimmer is on hotel guard duty. The final showdown is now approaching, but before then, Lunge makes an offer to buy Grimmer a beer after everything is done; humans are supposed to enjoy a good beer, after all.
Tenma’s in town too (he came all the way here from Prague) and he’s helping out whoever he can to escape from the death-hole that is now Ruhenheim.
On his way to the hotel, he meets up with that sausage stand chick who was hanging out with Roberto; she tells Lunge which room Roberto is hiding in.
Shortly after is the face-to-face with Tenma. This scene is neat because of two things:
-Lunge’s “journey of the imagination” is now over and that everything that happens next is reality; with Tenma’s appearance, the once imaginary trails and threads that were followed have now become real. The vacation is now over and it’s time to go back to work as a BKA inspector. Etc.
To summarize, Lunge isn’t chasing Tenma’s imagination anymore given that the actual person is here; Lunge’s now after a man named Roberto who’s being controlled by an enigma by the name of Johan.
-Lunge apologizes to Tenma and doesn’t try to make excuses, like a real man should.
Also on their way to town are Dr. Gillen and Nina. While in the car, Nina is having recollections of another memory, but it seems that Johan has already remembered it (and was able to conclude something as well) because of the various pictures of him and Nina that he was able to see over at Poppe’s house on the hill; Johan now has his final missing memory. I’ll explain this in a moment.
I guess the most impressive aspect about all this is that Urasawa was still able to throw in a lot of human drama even with everything going on. For example, there’s a scene where Tenma comes across a man whose wife was killed; Tenma was able to talk the man out of trying to get revenge because Tenma explained to him that the child’s mother gave her life so that the child could live. Take note that the sausage stand chick didn’t want to escape to the forest since she was too scared.
So, back at the hotel, Grimmer and the husband dude (Mr. Hennich… finally found his name) barricaded themselves downstairs and were looking after the front entrance, but it turns out that the people who were going to raid the place where actually shooting from across the building; they totally killed the old couple that was tied-up upstairs. Oh yes, that was such a beautifully animated sequence.
Anyway, given the new scenario, Grimmer decides that it would be better to hide downstairs in a basement; Poppe is still thinking that this will all end if he steps out and gets killed, but Grimmer won’t allow him to get his wish. When Grimmer makes a little description of his “super powers,” Poppe recalls an experiment like that and is surprised to see someone as old as Grimmer given that the subjects that underwent what he went through would usually killed themselves.
Outside, Grimmer is trying to negotiate with whoever it is that’s following Johan around, but before anything else could be said, that sausage stand chick wanders in (because she probably remembered Tenma saying that Hotel Versteck was a safe place) and gets shot.
Please take note of how she was shot. From the looks of things, someone in the Versteck building shot her.
Some of the people Tenma save run into Dr. Gillen and Nina; the man in the group directs them to Hotel Versteck. Also, Dr. Gillen gives the man his car so that he can go and get help.
Wow, is it just me or does Grimmer have one of the best death scenes ever? I really like the part where he thinks that the emotions he once lost where just like a bunch of letters that where mailed long ago, but only made their way to him today: it’s simple, yet powerful. And of course, there’s the famous last line where Grimmer describes what the end of The Magnificent Steiner probably was.
Okay, so what proof is there that Grimmer really did do all those things and not The Magnificent Steiner?
Well, he said that he killed those men because of rage, so that pretty much sums it up. If he hadn’t felt that, he still wouldn’t be able to understand his emotions in the end; it’s all pretty straightforward, which is why it was so powerful. Before Grimmer went, he gives the love-letter novel Lunge found in the rose mansion to Tenma and tells Tenma to go and help Lunge over at Hotel Bergbach. Grimmer also introduces Tenma to Franz Bonaparta.
So, next episode is the totally awesome fight between Lunge and Roberto. Awesome.
But before that, back at Hotel Versteck, Tenma read through Poppe’s novel and Poppe explained how he fell in love with the mother of the twins and how he suddenly realized what it is that he’s doing; he killed everyone involved to set the mother and her twins free.
Okay, back to Hotel Bergbach, Lunge was able to get the upper hand and he’s trying to get Roberto to spill the beans about Johan and why is it that Roberto is following him this far in; Lunge is distracted when Roberto starts commenting on how another man has taken Lunge’s place in his family and how his grandson calls someone else grandpa now. There’s also some other details, like how Lunge got owned on that one case where he read too far into it (the one with that secretary guy).
So, we all know Roberto’s history and how he’s connected to Johan, so I can skip that.
I also already went over Poppe’s visit to the twins, so I can skip that too.
Anyway, Poppe knew what happened over at the Lieberts and what was behind it, but he couldn’t come out with it because he just wanted to run away from it all. The point of interest here is probably the part where Poppe talks about how he would always try to draw the twins, enveloped in happiness and warmth, but this wasn’t possible given that it wasn’t reality; they’ve had it hard, and he knows it, that’s why he could never draw an idealized image of the twins (hence all the incomplete pictures, that Johan came across, at his house). It was simply impossible with what Poppe knew.
Before the end of Lunge and Roberto’s fight, Roberto goes on about how he could easily kill Tenma, but he can’t. This is because Tenma is allowed to see “the land of the end” and that he should be the last person standing to “die all alone and without a name.” Roberto isn’t exactly on the same wavelength as Johan at this point, it seems, given that “the land of the end” has now changed a little bit (I’ll go over it later). In any case, Roberto not only followed Johan because of the mug thing, but because he wants to see “the land of the end” too.
Back at Hotel Versteck, Wim and the Hennich couple meet up with Nina and Dr. Gillen. Wim is able to recognize Nina because of her resemblance to the incomplete drawings over at Poppe’s house; Wim directs them to the place and it is there where Nina will finally recall her last few remaining missing memories.
Okay, I thought that the last scenes at the end of episode 72 were some of the hardest scenes to understand in the series; it took me a while to realize that Nina was actually acting out as Johan, herself and her mother (although, Dr. Gillen caught on pretty fast). Not only that, it took forever to structure it logically in my head.
Okay, so let’s go over it first.
The sequence starts out at the day that Nina came back from the rose mansion. She tells Johan the story, I don’t know how long she did this (or where the figure of 42 people dying went… so I’ll just assume that it came out somewhere and we don’t see it), but it seems that at one point, Johan asked her where their mother was.
Then, fast-forwarding a bit, there’s a scene where the twins are with their mother again; it seems that Johan is apologizing over not being able to kill Franz Bonaparta while Johan thought he was there over at the rose mansion; because of Johan’s apology, Anna then thinks that it was Johan who was sent to the rose mansion. Anyway, the conversation shifts and their mother tells them that they have to live on their own now.
Going back a little, when Johan came into this room with all the incomplete drawings, he recalled the above memory, especially the part where he was crying after his mother said that him and his sister had to live on their own. When he remembered that scene of him crying, he also remembered that when him and Nina left their mom, he cooked up a plan to escape from Poppe and that, one day, he’d come back to get revenge for his mother since he failed the first time (at least, he thought that he failed the first time). The problem with recalling this at the same time as seeing these drawings is that it suddenly hits Johan that what he’d been trying to do was actually quite meaningless given that it seems that Franz Bonaparta was actually trying to save the twins and their mother; not only that, but it wasn’t his experience to begin with, so he needlessly dragged his sister into everything.
With all that in mind, there was no turning back now. Whatever was left of Johan’s reason for living had suddenly disappeared into the abyss during that moment he simultaneously recalled the past and discovered the truth.
At the end of Nina’s recollection, she says that Johan was probably crying in this room like how he was crying back then.
Also, she comes to the conclusion that this all wouldn’t have continued if she hadn’t shot Johan that night; had she forgiven him, it would’ve all stopped.
Why would it have stopped? Well, for starters, let’s assume that Nina recalls everything, rose mansion and Franz Bonaparta included. She didn’t go to a place like Kinderheim, after all. So, with that in mind, had she forgiven Johan and asked him to explain himself, Nina would’ve been able to explain to Johan the fact that Franz Bonaparta wasn’t actually a monster inside of Johan (remember, Johan is confused about everything because of his trip to Kinderheim). Nina would’ve also been able to explain everything else, but since she shot Johan and went catatonic, she forgot everything and it was all dragged out into this terrible, horrible, mess; as to whether or not the revenge scheme would’ve stopped, I’m not sure given that Nina suppressed that one memory. But, she probably would’ve talked Johan out of it anyway (or maybe she would’ve suddenly remembered that suppressed memory).
While it might be too late, Nina still thinks that she might be able to stop Johan from killing himself.
While running to the scene where Johan might be at, Nina recalls one final memory: Franz Bonaparta actually saved her and it seems that she left this part out of the story that she told Johan; it didn’t matter though given the fact that Johan was able to understand the significance of the incomplete drawings of him and his sister. He knows that he screwed up.
Going back a little… when Franz Bonaparta told her to forget what she saw, it seems that the only thing she really forgot was his words.
“You are both beautiful jewels, that’s why you cannot become monsters.”
After all, she was able to tell Johan about the rose mansion massacre when she got back and that if Johan actually knew about this, he probably wouldn’t have cooked up a revenge scheme back then (or to the very least, there wouldn’t be a need to run from “the dragon”).
Back to Tenma and Poppe… Wim shows up and tells them about how a person who went up to that house on the hill was looking for Tenma earlier and that this person looked a lot like one of the twins from the drawings found there; it’s Nina.
Poppe is glad to know that she has such a wonderful name now, but this is all cut pretty short when Johan makes his way in.
Before Tenma can do his thing, Poppe interrupts him (with a gun-butt to the head) and tells Johan that it’s now time for them to die together. But this is interrupted when Roberto kills him; Johan isn’t exactly too happy to see Poppe go especially since he understands the truth now.
Roberto wants to see “the land of the end,” but he can’t since it’s for Tenma’s eyes only.
A neat thing that Johan points out here is that the reason why he was revived into this world is because Tenma thought that all life was equal. But, Tenma should know by now that the only time when everyone is equal is in death; no matter who you are, even if you’re a monster, it’s all the same when you’re dead.
Okay, so, what is this “land of the end?” It’s simple. It all ends when Dr. Tenma shoots Johan. Since Dr. Tenma saved Johan’s life, he was the chosen one to see “the end,” the “true end.” To further describe it, we see a more physical interpretation of it when Tenma looks into Johan’s eyes (which is why I don’t think that the final scene in the series was Tenma’s imagination): it’s a world where only Johan and Tenma exist and that Tenma is about to eliminate Johan from that world; when that happens, Tenma will be the last person standing in that world and there will be no one left to call Tenma by his name.
Before Tenma can move any further, Nina gets there and is able to delay him a bit longer; long enough to tell Johan that she forgives him and that even if he killed everyone on this earth and it was only the two of them left, she’d still forgive him.
The problem now is that Johan is too deep in it all; he CAN’T go back anymore. It’s pretty much impossible for Johan to continue on living with the thought of everything that he’s done and all the mistakes that he’s made. I mean, who could?
As a last resort, Johan pulls out his ace-in-the-hole: if Tenma won’t shoot him, then he’ll force Tenma to shoot him; Johan takes out a gun and holds Wim hostage.
Before Tenma has the opportunity to take his shot at Johan, he’s is interrupted by Wim’s dad who shoots first; he shot because he saw a seven-headed monster with horns trying to kill his son (and this is actually the story he tells the cops later on).
Thank god, it’s finally over.
So, the cops make it in, but they’re pretty late given that the vast majority of everyone in town is dead. The cops are trying to make sense of the whole thing, but they just don’t get it (even after Dr. Gillen tries to explain it to them); fortunately, Lunge is still alive and counts as a cop who can make a credible statement.
I like the part where Mr. Hennich and his wife come out, but then he finds out that he dropped the lottery ticket somewhere; Ms. Hennich stops him before he goes out to search for it since it doesn’t matter anymore and that simply being alive is the real prize here. Something like this really shows you the value of living a simple and humble life and that true happiness doesn’t necessarily come in the form of money; just being alive is what counts.
And finally, they get to Tenma and Nina; Tenma’s a wanted man, so they’re totally going to bust him now. Before that happens though, Lunge has the men commandeer Tenma since he’s the only man capable of saving Johan’s life (and as an inspector, he needs Johan to explain in court why the hell did all this happen… if Johan is lost, then everyone is pretty screwed). Oh yeah, I thought that it was pretty interesting that Lunge was able to identify Johan even though it was his first time laying eyes on the guy.
Here’s the hard part: should Tenma revive the monster again, or not?
Nina wants Johan to live to be forgiven, so she convinces Tenma to do it because she knows that Tenma was never wrong to have brought the monster back to life and that it won’t be wrong to do it again.
End of Part 18!
Man… sorry if this one might be a little weird here and there given that I’m too exhausted to read over the entire installment over again… but yeah, I think it turned out okay.
I thought I was gonna be done today, but it seems like I’m not… anyway, tomorrow (later today after I get some sleep) will be the final installment of DKL’s comprehensive Monster analysis, complete with a brief overview of the last episode and some after thoughts.
…
Thank god I’m done. And thanks to everyone that followed me this far in, it’s been a real blast.
The Final Installment of DKL’s Comprehensive Monster Analysis!
So, a lot of time has passed during that day in Ruhenheim. Everyone seems to be coming along now. Tenma has been cleared of the charges against him. Eva has quit drinking and now works as an interior designer. Lunge is now on speaking terms with his daughter (although only through Email) and is teaching at a police academy. Vardeman was able to clear Grimmer and probably Suk too of their charges. Dieter is happily attending school and it seems like he’s on the soccer team. And Nina is about to finish college (there’s a great scene with her and her professor here).
A point of interest here is probably Otto Heckel, since it seems that Tenma hired him out to find out the location of the mother of the twins a while back; he’s sort of disappointed that Tenma is traveling around the world as a doctor, but isn’t making money out of it.
Over in Southern France, it would seem that Tenma was regularly visiting the mother in some church sanctuary place, but it is only today that she feels like talking about the past. She goes over how she could never forgive a man like Poppe and that, one day, the twins growing inside of her would surely punish that man, even if she were to die before it happened; this is why she actually even let one of twins go that day.
It seems like she still doesn’t know the whole story given that she wasn’t sure if the twins were still alive or not. Also, it seems that she still thinks that the one she let go of was Johan (while she doesn’t know of the whole story, she probably heard about the serial murders that went on), but, like I said, in the end, it didn’t matter given the fact that the experience of the rose mansion went back to Johan anyway. In fact, upon further recollection, I think that it’s worse that Johan didn’t go to the rose mansion since, if it was him, he would’ve known of the truth behind Poppe’s reasons for doing what he did and all this stuff wouldn’t have happened.
So, Tenma makes his way back to Munich for a visit and he thinks that, while he’s there, he might as well pay a visit to Johan as well since he has some kind words for him from his mother.
Johan has been sleeping ever since that day he was shot; look at how his hair has now completely grown back and given all the above, it seems like it could’ve been a real long time since Ruhenheim. Anyway, Tenma paid a visit so that he could tell Johan about how his mother loves him very much and that she even told Tenma Johan’s real name.
A brief moment passes and Tenma suddenly sees that Johan is wide-awake (and the look on Tenma’s face is priceless).
Since Tenma told him about this stuff about his mother, Johan wanted to ask Tenma a question about something. When Tenma looked into Johan’s eyes, Tenma, like during that time he saw “the land of the end,” was able to see the images in Johan’s eyes clearly:
Back then, a monster appeared before Johan; this happened during that moment when Anna saw Poppe and had the sudden desire to get revenge on him for what he did to the man she was in love with (and everything else). What’s bothering Johan about this moment is that, even though his mom says that she loves him and even though she says that she gave him a name, Johan isn’t so sure given that he can’t tell if his mother was trying to save him from being awakened as a monster or that the reason why Nina was sent off to the rose mansion was because Anna couldn’t tell him and Nina apart. This is why Johan wasn’t sure if he even had a real name or not in the end, because if he did, Anna might’ve been able to tell him and Nina apart during that one moment back at three frogs.
To put it bluntly: if Anna really did give Johan a name back then, then why is it that she wasn’t able to tell them apart?
Okay, so, not only does this help leave something for the viewer to contemplate (on many levels), but this scene also reveals the final mysteries of the series that literally explains EVERYTHING (in the context of my theories); we knew that Franz Bonaparta was one monster, but thanks to this little piece of info that Johan reveals to us, we figure out who the second monster in Johan’s version of “a monster without a name” is and why it is that Johan was using that story in the first place; everything else just falls into place after that. A lot of information suddenly becomes available just because of that one short scene: impressive, to say the least.
Before I go, this question needs to be asked: did Johan escape or not?
By my theories: yes. In fact, I’m still convinced that that one moment Johan and Tenma had with each other was definitely real, but then, because of the horror Tenma experienced during that one moment, he nodded off and assumed that it was just his imagination afterwards, but it wasn’t. The thing is: Tenma (and the viewers) was only able to see the past in glorious detail when Tenma looked into Johan’s eyes.
So yeah, Johan totally jumped the police hospital, which wouldn’t be that hard since everyone thinks that he’s still in a coma. Lastly, I’m working under the assumption that Johan probably woke up from his sleep that moment that Tenma told him that stuff about his mother.
As for what Johan’s doing now? Who knows? That’s pretty much up for the viewer to decide.
Many thanks to the people who made it this far and have followed me on my month-long journey of investigation, typing and thinking. Like I said, it was a real blast!
Going back a little, was I concrete with my ideas? Was I clear on what was up to viewer interpretation (in the world of my theories)? Did you learn something new? And from those new things learnt, were you able to come up with brand new theories about the series?
Was it fun?
SO, with that said, the analysis is officially over!
aquapermanence
08-05-2006, 10:13 AM
Having now finally been able to finish reading it, a resounding yes on all counts. This summary and analysis was not only fun, but helped me remember many of the feelings I had while watching this show, captivated, week after week, for almost 2 years straight. Not only does Monster need to be licensed, it would be a crown jewel in any R1 company's catalog.
Thank you for writing all this. It was a real treat.
Cool, awesome, thanks!
Actually, I did come up with a linear narrative of the thing (given that I stopped doing it after I had to follow the series again)
... it's essentially a summary of the flow of Johan's motivation... I'll just look through it and I'll post it later
OH and if anyone noticed any inconsistencies here and there, you'll have to pardon me given that it took me a while to actually figure out that Anna was the name of the mother of the twins, so all of my ideas changed up
But yeah, the summary will be up later or so when I finally flesh it out a little more
But yes, thanks for reading through!
aquapermanence
08-05-2006, 04:13 PM
[ QUOTE ]
DKL said:
Actually, I did come up with a linear narrative of the thing (given that I stopped doing it after I had to follow the series again)
... it's essentially a summary of the flow of Johan's motivation... I'll just look through it and I'll post it later
[/ QUOTE ]
A full-blown Monster timeline would make an excellent resource for fans trying to fit the pieces into the big picture. I imagine a site like ANN would be willing to host it, so long as the graphic looked nice.
Actually, this whole thing was posted on ANN's board... but yeah, I created this with the intention of:
-Discussing the story
-Understanding the story (had to get it down on paper to make it work)
It would be nice to host somewhere, but editing is pretty much impossible, so it's only good for board material
Oh yeah! I do have a timeline kinda thing (well, without the time, but everything is ordered correctly)... but let me just read through it again to see if I can straighten it out...
but it'll probably be up by tonight
Johan’s super-cool motivation thingy
Given the fact that this whole analysis of mine spanned dozens of pages, I decided that it would be a good idea to just pinpoint the most important aspect of the series, the flow of Johan’s motivation, and structure it in linear order (given that I wasn’t analyzing chronologically anymore by the time I started forgetting stuff).
Anyway, this is also gonna be done because I may have been inconsistent here and there (since I was writing this analysis “on-the-fly,” so that I could post it in sections and not bombard everyone with one big piece of crap). For the most part, what I post here is my true current interpretation and that anything here will most likely supercede any of the stuff I may have said in my analysis (but there aren’t too many major changes).
Yeah, it’s just one on-going analysis that changes as I think it out again and again.
Okay… umm… the evidence is pretty much in the analysis itself, so I’ll just go over the raw details in order to keep things short… although, if people need to be reminded of where I got this and that, feel free to ask… it’s discussion after all.
Let’s begin (this still might be long, but it’ll definitely be straightforward):
-Shortly after the twins were born, Anna was able to escape and move into three frogs
-After Margot Langer went missing, Schuwald paid Anna a visit in Prague and discussed Margot Langer in front of Johan and Nina; Johan took some mental notes.
-One day, Bonaparta and his organization figured out where Anna and the twins were and proceeded to abduct them
-During that moment that Anna saw Bonaparta again, she had the desire to get her revenge and willingly gave one of the twins up; it was during this moment that Johan first saw a “world without names.”
Johan is under the impression that whoever is sent to the mansion should kill Bonaparta when he or she has the chance.
What Johan doesn’t know is that he’s the one that Anna really wants to send in.
-Nina is sent to the rose mansion and Anna is sent… somewhere; Johan is left at home with a copy of Bonaparta’s book, which he reads while waiting for his mom to come back.
-After Nina comes back from the mansion, she tells Johan of the experience (sans the part where Bonaparta saved her); based on my theories, I’ll just say that Johan was already thinking that the rose mansion was his experience by the time Nina told him about it.
Johan now thinks that he has had a horrible experience, the kind of experience that turns you into a monster. Also, Johan now thinks that it was his job to kill Bonaparta.
Anyway, since Johan thinks he was the one sent in and since he thinks that it was his experience, Johan is under the impression that him and Nina had the same chance of being sent to that place when Anna had to make a choice between the twins, but it just so happens that he was sent in.
-When the twins meet up with their mother again, Johan has a moment where he apologizes to Anna for not killing Bonaparta while he thought he was at the rose mansion; during that moment when Anna asked the twins to live on their own, Johan cooked up a plan to escape and eventually come back to kill Bonaparta.
Since he thinks he screwed up, he thinks that he should be the one to fix it.
Take note that it was just like a “world where only Johan, Nina and Anna existed” right after the rose mansion thing; this was somewhat similar to “a world without names” in a sense that in a world without names, it feels like no one actually exists.
Bottom-line: it feels like you’re alone when you don’t exist.
-After Johan killed everyone that him and Nina associated with, the twins find themselves at the border where Wolfe picks them up; Wolfe gives Johan the name “Johan.”
-Before Wolfe knew it, Johan had killed a lot of the people that were close to him; these abilities of Johan’s motivated Wolfe to stick Johan in Kinderheim given that the country (East Germany) is in need of hope.
Oh and Johan left Wolfe alive so that he could see the world that Johan has seen; this is usually only available to people that have saved Johan’s life, like Dr. Tenma.
-During Johan’s stay in Kinderheim, he started taking those weird classes that were making him forget things. So, in order to keep track of his memories, he came up with an idea (since Wolfe named him “Johan”): why not associate my life story with the story of “A Monster without a Name?”
The characters and symbols are as follows:
Story = Real Life
A fairytale country = Prague
The castle = The Rose Mansion
The part of the story where the monster ate people at the castle = The incident where Bonaparta killed people in the rose mansion
Johan = Johan and Nina (since they’re twins, they can be one character)
Monster that went into the town to eat people = Franz Bonaparta
Monster that didn’t find a name = Anna
Monster eating his other half at the end of the story = Bonaparta will “eat” Anna
But, it could be the other way around given that Johan intends to kill Bonaparta on the basis that Anna wants her revenge.
== On a side note: since the 2 monsters in the story didn’t have names, Johan named them==
This is all really important given that the associations will change later on when Nina is named “Anna”
-Before Johan was adopted by the Lieberts, he made it so that they would take in his Sister too… who just happened to be named Anna at the time.
-Some time later, before he left, Johan gets all but 2 people to kill each other in Kinderheim; it was because of this that Johan made a prediction that everyone in the world would eventually kill each other and that he should make preparations to ensure him and his sister’s survival. This is essentially where Christoph, his “apprentice,” jumps onboard.
Take note that it was probably Johan who told Christoph the story of how the world would end (which Christoph later discussed with Martin).
ALSO, it seems like you’re “alone” when everyone is dead… take note of this, since this is probably what Johan wants to show Tenma later, even if Johan doesn’t really remember anything before Kinderheim.
ALSO, maybe because of the classes, Johan has already forgotten that he originally set out to kill a man named Franz Bonaparta. He also forgot about his mom given that his sister was now named Anna.
Anyway, the whole story association thing really only worked on Johan remembering someone named “Anna,” but it just so happened to be that this was Nina’s name at the time.
Oh, and Johan does remember the actual story of “A Monster Without a Name,” but who symbolized what pretty much disappeared (for the most part).
-After successfully defecting to the West, Johan was now living it easy with his sister waiting till he’s old enough to start executing his plans.
-It’s pretty peaceful until that one night when Bonaparta pays the twins a visit.
OKAY, this is important because Bonaparta’s visit is what essentially started Johan’s confusion.
Remember the old structure of the story and which characters were associated with which? Well, it changed that night that Johan vaguely felt Bonaparta’s presence in the room.
So, it sort of looks like this now:
Since Johan now thinks that Bonaparta was a monster inside of him, he suddenly starts making these connections to the story, which was ultimately different from how he did it at the start:
TAKE 2!
Story = Real Life
A fairytale country = East Germany
The castle = Kinderheim
The part of the story where the monster ate people at the castle = The incident where Johan had people kill each other in Kinderheim
Johan = Johan
Monster that went into the town to eat people = The monster that’s inside of Johan
Monster that didn’t find a name = Nina (who was named Anna at the time)
Monster eating his other half at the end of the story = what will happen to Nina if Johan gets too close to her
====
-Since Johan thinks a monster is inside of him, he wants Nina to run away from him given that he doesn’t want the monster inside of him to get her; he gets her to shoot him in the head.
Take note that Johan is probably thinking that the classes really screwed him up to the point where he’s paranoid about something weird happening if he stays close to his sister; like I’ve said before, while Johan does think that there’s a monster inside of him, all the murdering and manipulation he does is all him, but as he does it, he fears that the “monster” inside of him will get bigger.
-Tenma saves Johan’s life; Johan is very grateful and even kills the three hospital dudes to say thanks.
-Since Johan witnessed these “monsters” at the hospital that tried to exploit him and his sister, he thought that it would be better to distance himself from Nina, but still have a little control over where she would be.
-Johan calculated that it would take the time until he was 20 to properly set everything up in which he could get Nina to start moving around to get away from people that might want to try to control him.
-After leaving Nina with the Fortners, Johan started roaming about; it was only until he was old enough to live on his own that he started working on his “let’s turn Christoph into a politician” plan.
A quick overview of the elements in “the plan:”
*Use connections in the underworld bank (which eventually lead Johan back to Christoph, through the Sievernich group who was probably laundering money through Johan for god knows what)
*Start working on a plan to take over one of the Sievernich group’s largest competitors, the Schuwald financial group.
-So, when Nina and Johan turned 20, Johan came back to motivate her into pursuing his shadow; Tenma was manipulated into doing the same. And since Tenma saved Johan’s life, Johan would leave him alive too so that Johan could eventually show Tenma what he was showing to Wolfe. But for now, Johan is mainly trying to show Tenma what he saw at Kinderheim (and this works given that when Tenma investigates Hartmann, one of the survivors, Tenma learns of the horrific incidents that went on there and the truth behind the Kinderheim massacre).
-Since Johan was working on a plan to get close to Schuwald, he needed to erase traces of his past; this is why he started killing all of his former foster parents given that they might have too much info about him… they were his foster parents after all.
The thing that was bugging Johan about all the killing though is that he feared that he was making the “monster” inside of him grow as he killed more people; this means that he can’t get close to his sister regardless of how much he would like to, because something bad might happen if he does.
-So, some stuff happens and Johan sets his plan in motion.
-Midway, however, Johan comes across an actual copy of “A Monster Without a Name;” he suddenly remembers what it was like at the Czechoslovakian border and recalls that there was most likely something even darker before that; there was a darkness in which Johan doesn’t exist (and at the end of this darkness is actually that one moment back at three frogs where Anna wasn’t able to tell Johan and Nina apart).
Johan changes up his plans a little bit and wants to discover what that deeper darkness is… but, he makes changes so that Sievernich will be satisfied and think that Johan is still working towards the “turn Christoph into a politician” plan.
Err… the change is that instead of taking over Schuwald’s group, why not cripple it? It’s essentially the same thing from a competitive point of view.
-Out there in Prague, Johan is doing his investigations and comes across the fact that someone may have a hypnosis session of his on tape; he works towards getting a hold of that tape.
-After listening to the tape, Johan has Roberto try to find some clues as to where the rose mansion is; he also has Roberto setup Eva for the organization so that she can point Johan out for them.
As for the contents on tape?
*Johan, while reading the book, was waiting for Anna to come back to three frogs.
*Johan is describing the time after he came back from the rose mansion and how it was just like “me and Anna were the last people in the whole world”
*Since he said that, he eventually made the transition into discussing “A Monster Without a Name”
Okay, here’s the implied content on tape:
*He talked about how a lot of people were dead at a place called “the rose mansion”
*He remembers naming the 2 monsters in the story: Anna and Franz Bonarta.
*Anna is his mother
*Franz Bonaparta is “the man of the rose mansion”
*Johan talks about where his mother might be (her location) since he actually said that she was still alive somewhere.
Anyway, to conclude: after listening to his tape, Johan gets Roberto to look for clues that lead to the rose mansion and Johan also wants to meet up with Capek given that Johan remembers meeting him before (as a kid).
Anyway, this Capek person might have information as to who this Bonaparta person is (But Johan seems to think that Bonaparta is still a monster inside of him).
-After Roberto tells Johan where the rose mansion is, Johan pays a visit and suddenly remembers a lot of things. He remembers when he was sent to the rose mansion before (he thinks it was his experience). And more importantly, he is now sure of the fact that Franz Bonaparta is an actual person.
Also, Johan finally remembered how he originally structured the story upon realizing that Franz Bonaparta was an actual person. What I’m saying is that it looks like this again:
Story = Real Life
A fairytale country = Prague
The castle = The Rose Mansion
The part of the story where the monster ate people at the castle = The incident where Bonaparta killed people in the rose mansion
Johan = Johan and Nina (since they’re twins, they can be one character)
Monster that went into the town to eat people = Franz Bonaparta
Monster that didn’t find a name = Anna
Monster eating his other half at the end of the story = Johan is supposed to kill Bonaparta for Anna
========
ESSENTIALLY, Johan remembers pretty much everything, with the exception of the memory switch and that one time where he was crying when him and his sister had to leave Anna; he doesn’t remember the time when he came up with this revenge scheme.
At this point, Johan is also wondering what the hell kind of being he is (he asks Capek what kind of being he is when they have their face to face later on).
Uh… and Johan thinks that the rose mansion incident turned him into who he is today: a monster.
Also, at this point, Johan seems to think that the reason why he was sent to the rose mansion is that his mother couldn’t tell him and his sister apart: there was no bias and it just so happens that Johan was the one who was picked for her revenge scheme.
It looks like this for Johan: whoever was sent to the mansion was supposed to become a monster and eventually kill Bonaparta.
-Johan burns down the mansion so that he can buy time and prevent Nina from following him too early (since Johan is now seeking out Bonaparta through Capek and the organization)
-After much manipulation, Johan is able to meet Capek, who tells Johan that Bonaparta’s son is in Prague; information of which Johan somehow uses to find his way to Ruhenheim… how this is done? I don’t know. And if I explained it before, I probably forgot.
-Afterwards, Johan finally meets up with Nina with the intent of taking her with him to go and kill Bonaparta, but then he learns of the fact that he confused his sister’s experience with his own.
The problem here is that Johan suddenly realizes that he started killing people even though it was only based on an experience that wasn’t even his own; so, after doing away with Bonaparta, Johan intends to kill himself as well given that what he himself put his sister through is unforgivable (to a point where she can’t even bring herself to kill him).
Johan also now knows that he wasn’t created and has been a monster from the start (this is a revelation Johan only sees now); while his sister did awaken him, Johan never actually TRULY experienced anything horrifying enough to turn him into the monster that he has always been until this day.
There’s no real rational reason as to why Johan has all these abilities and he sees the truth now: he’s a genuine monster and there’s a possibility that there was a bias during that time when Anna sent one of the twins to the mansion; since he’s a monster, it’s very possible that Johan was the one that Anna really wanted to send to the rose mansion; since he’s a monster, it’s very possible that Johan was the “unwanted child.”
Going back…
But still, Johan feels the need to purge Bonaparta from this world given that what Bonaparta did to his sister is also unforgivable and that Johan might as well follow through with his mom’s will before he offs himself.
-Before setting off, Johan ends his ties with Sievernich
-Some more stuff happens and Johan is able to find Bonaparta; he sets up Ruhenheim for ruin in the process.
-After finally making it into town to complete his plan, one final memory, and a subsequent revelation, comes to Johan during that moment when he sees Bonaparta’s unfinished drawings of him and his twin sister.
Johan now remembers that he originally set out to do this after he felt that he disappointed his mom:
“The reason why I even started this was because I thought that I was the one sent to the mansion. And because I thought I was the one who was sent, I was under the impression that it was my job to complete the task given to us. But the problem now is that the task itself is meaningless, which in turn means that starting this whole journey was meaningless.”
Bottom-line: there’s no turning back now even if Nina somehow found it in her to forgive him for all this.
-Johan is able to show Tenma the land of the end that Roberto talked about. But this is cut short when Wim’s dad shoots Johan.
Umm… the “land of the end” is essentially “a world without names.”
-During that moment in the hospital where Tenma tells Johan that he had a name, Johan comes to and tells Tenma that he’s not sure (or more precisely, he doesn’t want to be sure) given that his mom couldn’t tell him and Nina apart during that moment at three frogs; this is the true “world without names” that Johan saw a long time ago and it comes full circle when Johan is finally able to show Tenma this.
=====
Afterthoughts:
While I did discuss this before, I need to go over it again…
While it can be said that maybe Anna could’ve sent either kid to the rose mansion, the reason why Johan isn’t so clear on the answer (after realizing that he was probably a monster from the start) is that she couldn’t make a clear choice.
Given that she couldn’t make a clear choice, Johan is not sure if Anna was saving him or trying to send him in (but made a mistake and accidentally let Nina go).
What I’m saying is: had Anna actually been able to tell the twins apart (with a name), she could’ve just said “take Child A” and the answer as to whether or not Johan was the original intention would be clear-cut.
As for me… I’m still thinking that she wanted to send Johan in given that she was actually DECIDING on which one to send in, but in a way where it seemed like she intended to send a specific one in.
And… well, Johan didn’t really experience anything horrible from the start, but managed to turn into a monster anyway; Anna must’ve seen this potential of his before and it overwhelmed her during that moment when she saw Boanparta again.
I guess the reason why the answer isn’t as clear as it should be to Johan is that he’s scared of the truth. But deep down, he probably knows what the answer is and can only take sanctuary in the fact that he might be wrong given that during that one moment, him and his sister didn’t have any names.
Back to the present: that moment that Tenma told Johan that his mom gave him a name scared Johan given that, if he did have a name during that time back then, the answer that Johan didn’t want to know would be clear.
Uh… Johan would rather not exist and be ignorant of Anna’s true intentions than to exist and be completely sure that he was the one that Anna really wanted to let go of.
But, now that Johan knows that he had a name once, he now knows that the only reason why Anna didn’t use it back then was that she didn’t want Johan to know that he was the one she wanted to send to the rose mansion.
In hindsight, I think the reason why Johan wanted to show this “world without names” so badly to the people that saved his life was because of this “positive” aspect of it that he subconsciously remembered while he was convincing himself that he was turned into a monster; in Johan’s mind, a world where you don’t exist is not such a bad world when compared to the world that he was running away from: that being a world where you were an “unwanted child.”
To conclude: essentially, the reason why Johan convinced himself that he was the one sent to the mansion was probably an elaborate fabrication to further him away from the truth that his mom probably wanted to let go of him during that one moment back at three frogs.
Before Johan actually figured out that he wasn’t sent to the mansion, he was quite sure that him and Nina had an equal chance of being turned into a monster, hence having an equal chance of being let go of. But it was downhill right after he found out the truth and that it’s possible that he was a monster from the start because there was no real rational reason as to why he was the person he is today, meaning that it’s very likely that he was the one that Anna wanted to let go of back then.
====
It’s another day and another interpretation. Who knows where I’ll go next when I read through the manga?
(which is essentially the same as the anime, but you know what I mean… it’s sitting through the same story again and, of course, something new tends to come out)
But for now, it’s good to know that I managed to link everything together, so, to the very least, I have something to start with should something new come up (although it’s quite a pain to re-think everything when something does).
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