Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Very Entertaining	Customer Rating:
Great Art, Superb story, I got hooked from the begining; and I will sure read em all.

a brilliant thriller

Customer Rating:

I'll keep this one short - you need to buy this to see how easy it is for a master to pull you in without even introducing characters or a plot! It's an incredible page-turner, even backwards and in black and white. Reader beware: there are only 4 or 5 volumes of the 18 or so available right now! If you start this you will be in for the long haul. If you get really addicted you can always torrent some fan subs of the extremely faithful anime production.

Monster

Customer Rating:

Unbelievable! You will be engrossed in the world created by Naoki Urasawa. The story is superb and the character development couldn't be more detailed. The pychoanalysis of each player is unmatched in other manga. You can't get better than this. The content is intelligent and accurate. The author did his homework on psychology, neurology, surgical procedures and the history of Germany around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's impressive. Not much on Japanese culture but that's also interesting. You have a Japanese protagonist and you have German culture. Morality and how far you can push someone until they loose their humanity is explored. The antagonist is facinating. In some novels he doesn't even make an appearance yet you feel his presence throght the elaborate descriptions of his character from the mouth of others. Nicely done. The action is non-stop, especially in volume four. The violence is very real and it will get to you. But you won't loose hope because the main character is so amazing.

EXCELLENT

Customer Rating:

I've read both volume 1 and 2 of Urasawa's Monster and find it excellent. Even if you are not a fan of manga, and you find a little odd reading "backwards", these books worth it. Urasawa's art is (and is not, at the same time) the typical japanese manga art. Is good, clear and well paced. The story is interesting, intriguing and, even if you have the main elements of the story known from almost the beginning of volume 2, your "need" to go on and read the story, and to see how it develops until the end (and what will be the end) is great. An the "need" turns on to be more important while you turn the pages. I don't know exactly how many volumes it will take to get to the end, but you can count on me to faithfully be there to read it. And I think if you give it a try you will surely be there too.

Maybe You Have to Be Older ...

Customer Rating:

I'm extremely fond of MONSTER (from the anime) ... but does it occur to NO ONE that it's really only a very clever paraphrase of THE FUGITIVE? (THE FUGITIVE was, in turn, a present-day gloss on LES MISERABLES, but at least series creator Roy Huggins admitted so right up front.) Maybe one has to be old enough to remember the 1960s TV series to make the connection, but it's not a casual one ... Check it out: The main character [Dr. Tenma/Dr. Kimble] is framed for (a) murder(s) he did not commit by an enigmatic villain [the one-armed man/Johan] and suddenly finds himself a fugitive. He travels hither and yon in pursuit of the bad guy, with a relentless, obsessive cop [Inspector Morse/Detective Lunge] on his trail. Elements of conspiracy and cover up from the genres of cold war thriller and psychological suspense are blended in, to be sure, adding layers and variations -- but it is THE FUGITIVE all the same. And I'd be flabbergasted if Urasawa Naoki (the creator of the source manga) didn't use the series or the Harrison Ford movie as conscious inspiration.