While last year they walked away with The Otaku’s Study Australian Anime Release of the Year Award 2013 with a more mainstream anime title (Tiger & Bunny), Siren Visual have mainly set themselves apart from the competition by licensing titles that are more niche and at times unavailable for purchase in other markets (Dennou Coil, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Welcome to Irabu’s Office). But as a company who don’t usually send press releases around and instead opt to promote their acquisitions directly through social media channels – you know something big is brewing when they make a formal announcement of an acquisition and describe it during an end of year interview as not only a title that they have been after for many years, but one that has broken earlier pre-order records (Source).
This title is Monster… a 74-episode 2004 anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s original 18-volume masterpiece that while being more niche than most titles has seemingly gained a strong rapport with anime fans over the years. This acquisition is off the back of an upcoming HBO live-action adaptation (Game of Thrones etc) that has been recently announced, and while initially localized, dubbed and released in North America, is currently only being published in the Australian and New Zealand markets across five collections from this month.
While I do like to try out a variety of different genres, it takes a very strong franchise to tempt me to watch it IF it is longer than 26-episodes and unfortunately several series such as Golgo 13, Naruto, Bleach have failed to meet the mark. While I am not going to prematurely give it my praise in this respect, Monster is one of those series that looks like it will be able to continue satisfying my requirements until the end.
Monster follows a highly acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr. Kenzo Tenma who works at a leading German hospital and is being groomed to become its next chief of surgery. Due to events that arise which lead him to question the value of a human life, he opts to operate on and eventually save the life of a young wounded boy named John Liebert instead of operating on the city mayor (A major donor to the hospital who passes away). After losing his employers respect, wife-to-be and any prospect of any promotion because of this decision, the head of the hospital and two other staff members are found murdered which result in Dr. Tenma being promoted to Chief of Surgery.
Nine years later a series of subsequent murders leads Dr. Tenma to uncover that his former patient John Liebert was responsible for them – but a detective and the police force suspect that he is involved somehow. From there… I will let you find out!
While the quality can shift between the episodes, the experience continues to provide both interesting and more importantly satisfying storylines that encouraged me to go straight into the next episode and didn’t trouble itself with pointless filler episodes at least so far. What’s more, given many series that focus on an initial hospital setting seem to focus on comedy (Scrubs) or Drama (Grey’s Anatomy), it was refreshing to see that they worked with the mystery thriller genre for a change and didn’t let the fact that Tenma is a medical doctor hinder the experience, but instead used his role effectively for the storyline.
I haven’t read the original Naoki Urasawa manga series and don’t plan on doing so at least until the final anime collection is released in a couple of months time. However, it is quite a shame that Siren Visual didn’t decide to release this in more expensive half-season collections as I don’t think this is a series you can just pop in the DVD player and watch without going back to the earlier episodes and still be able to fully appreciate the storyline (Especially if you are like me and watch so many series each month). However so far the first fifteen episodes are a sign of good things to come, and I look forward to seeing a lot more in the near future.
The visuals of Monster are nothing fancy, but do the job consistently well with solid animation, environments and character designs which don’t dip in quality as the episodes progress. To point out an error on their DVD cover however, Siren Visual’s release is in 4:3 aspect ratio and not the listed 16:9 ratio that almost all new anime series have been produced in. The visuals and audio also dropped out to a blank screen for a split second a couple of moments across the episodes, something that you don’t usually expect to see in anime series less than ten years old.
The music quality across the episodes were solid, however lacked a defining opening and ending sequence that don’t really encourage you to watch them all the way through the first time let alone during subsequent episodes. However irrespective of if you enjoy Japanese or English dubs, you have reasonably strong voice casts either way. Commissioned by Viz Media, the English dub features strong talent like Liam O’Brien as Kenzo Tenma, Keith Silverstein as Johan Liebert, Karen Strassman as Nina Fortner and one of my personal favorite female VA’s Tara Platt as Eva Heinemann among many others.
As an anime publisher with a number of exclusives under their belt, Siren Visual either provide the most awesome Australian-exclusive on-disc extra content (Dennou Coil) or provide very little / nothing. Unfortunately in this case it is the latter, with no bonus content over all three discs – even content that could have been present in the original North American release.
Nevertheless with this series in tow, Siren Visual have kicked themselves off in 2014 to a strong start and have a promising next couple of months as subsequent parts are released into the Australian market. Let’s just hope it continues to be as strong a performance and doesn’t fall into the trap several long-term anime series find themselves falling into in terms of plot progression and quality. Monster may not appeal to those who like the more mainstream anime series, but in terms of being a mystery thriller, the series provided an enticing storyline in its early episodes that will hopefully continue when Part 2 releases on the 19th February 2014.
