List of Monster characters
The manga series Monster features a cast of characters created by Naoki Urasawa. The story revolves around Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese surgeon living in Germany whose life enters turmoil after getting himself involved with Johan Liebert, one of his former patients who is revealed to be a dangerous psychopath.Main characters
Kenzo Tenma
Kenzo Tenma is a Japanese neurosurgeon working at Eisler Memorial Hospital in Düsseldorf. Little is known of Tenma's childhood apart from his father and brother also being doctors and that his family ties grew weaker when he left Japan for Germany. He is a humanitarian who cares about the lives of others, and his kindness influences those he meets. His surgical skills earn him the position of chief neurosurgeon. He is engaged to [|Eva Heinemann], daughter of the hospital's Director Heinemann. When a young boy with a bullet wound arrives in 1986, Tenma is about to operate when Chief of Surgery Dr. Oppenheim and Director Heinemann tell him to work on the mayor, who came in later instead. After a crisis of conscience, Tenma saves the life of the young boy who came in first while the mayor dies. At a banquet, Tenma asks for forgiveness from Director Heinemann who forgives him while blacklisting him and appointing Dr. Boyer the new chief neurosurgeon. Eva also ends their engagement. Weeks later, Tenma gets word from the police that Director Heinemann, Dr. Oppenheim and Dr. Boyer have been mysteriously killed. The chairman of the board appoints Tenma Chief of Surgery and Eva tries to reconcile, but Tenma ignores her.
Nine years later, Tenma learns that the doctors' murders were committed by the boy he saved when the now-grown boy, Johan Liebert, commits another right in front of him. Johan is also the mastermind of the serial murders of middle-aged couples throughout Germany. Plagued by guilt, he resolves to find Johan and end the life of this "monster" he feels responsible for creating, while evading Inspector Lunge, who suspects Tenma of the murders. In his quest to kill Johan, Tenma nearly succeeds several times only to have him slip away until their final confrontation in Ruhenheim. When Johan wants Tenma to kill him, he threatens [|Wim Knaup] when the child's drunk father mistakes Johan for a monster and shoots him. After Johan is flown to a hospital in a helicopter, Tenma treats him and is cleared of all charges. He later joins Doctors Without Borders, visits Johan's mother, and visits the comatose Johan in a police hospital.Johan Liebert
Johan Liebert is the older twin son of the Lieberts, whose father Michael was an East German trade advisor who defected to the West. He is the titular "monster" and the main antagonist of the series. The mystery of his past is the focus of the plot. He is called a monster, the next Adolf Hitler and the devil himself. Johan Liebert was shot in the head as a child when his parents were killed in their home, but saved from death by Dr. Tenma. He claims to love his twin sister Anna, and has some loyalty to her. Johan has spent parts of his life in different places under different names. He possesses charisma and intelligence but is also cunning, manipulative and deceitful; while he is seemingly kind, compassionate and loving to children, he is actually cold, cruel and fundamentally incapable of empathy. He uses his talents to manipulate and corrupt others, often with no apparent end than to cause suffering and destruction. His goal is to kill everyone that knows of his existence. He identifies with other killers, discovering their secrets. After causing the death of [|Peter Čapek], he orchestrates the Ruhenheim Massacre and has his final encounter with Tenma. When Johan threatens Wim to get Tenma to shoot him, Johan is shot by Wim's drunken father, Herbert. He is flown to a hospital in a helicopter, with the bullet wound treated by Tenma. Comatose, he is visited by Tenma in a police hospital. The final page shows his bed empty, ambiguously suggesting that Johan has escaped the hospital.Reception
Johan frequently appears on lists of the best villains in anime, manga, and fiction. Johan placed first in Paste's list of the "20 of the Greatest Villains in Anime", with Toussaint Egan saying that "despite all that he was able to accomplish over the course of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster — manipulating over fifty people to kill one another through suggestion alone, framing the man who saved his life for murder, operating a massive money laundering operation at the heart of Germany, and coordinating a shadow network of killers to do his bidding— Johan has no special abilities to speak of, save for intelligence. No magical notebook capable of killing anyone whose name is written in its pages, no unholy totem gifting him with the blessing of divine fate, nothing. He is a human being, no more and no less, and that is precisely what makes him so terrifying."Nina Fortner
Anna Liebert is Johan's twin sister, the only physically unharmed survivor of the night her parents were killed and her brother was shot in what appeared to be a botched burglary. After she and Johan disappeared, she was adopted by the Fortner family from Heidelberg where she was named Nina Fortner. Nina is a sweet, kind, loving, hardworking and intelligent young woman. She seemed to have a happy life as a law student at Heidelberg University and a practitioner of aikido, but discovers there are parts of her past she does not remember. At first, she had amnesia due to the psychological trauma of the attack. She lives in peace until Johan contacts her on their 20th birthday and has the Fortners killed. She then pursues Johan, with different methods and for a different reason than Tenma does. While Nina does not share her brother's psychosis, they have similar fears linked to their past. While Nina is primarily a pacifist, she will threaten someone if she feels it necessary or to protect others. During a hypnosis session with Dr. Gillen, her personality changes and she attacks him. When she fully regains her memories, it is revealed that she was the twin taken by [|Franz Bonaparta] to his Red Rose Mansion, when he committed mass murder. Bonaparta then told her to forget what she saw and to run away and not "become monsters." She is also the one who shot Johan in the head at his own urging, after he killed the Lieberts. She is present at the Ruhenheim Massacre, where she tells her brother that she forgives him and tries to dissuade Tenma from shooting Johan. At the end of the series, Nina is graduating from college and plans to attend law school.Inspector Lunge
Heinrich Lunge is a BKA detective assigned to the murder case at Eisler Memorial Hospital. Lunge initially thinks Johan was imagined by Tenma as an excuse, but progresses to the belief Tenma suffers a split personality; with Tenma trying to force "Johan" to reveal himself. He seems devoid of emotion, which allows him to commit himself to every case on which he works. His devotion to his work comes at the expense of his personal life; during the series, his wife and pregnant daughter leave him. What he loves most is his job; Lunge missed a chance to meet his grandson for the first time to see Tenma's friends from Japan instead. He expresses some regret; during his fight with [|Roberto] he seems angry to hear Roberto say how happy his wife was with another man, and his grandson saw that man as his grandfather. Lunge has an excellent memory, "entering data" into his mind by making typing gestures with his hands. His toughness drives a murder suspect to suicide, prompting his superiors to remove Lunge from all his cases. After the University of Munich fire, Lunge learns that Johan really exists. He then takes a "holiday" in Prague to track down Franz Bonaparta, author of a book which may reveal Johan's origins. Lunge ends up in Ruhenheim, meeting Grimmer and Tenma; apologizing to the latter for his mistakes, he heads off to a showdown with Roberto. Both are wounded in the shootout; Lunge survives, while Roberto dies of his wounds. While being carried away by a stretcher to the hospital, he blames Roberto for the Ruhenheim Massacre stating that Roberto was essentially responsible for what happened there. It is unknown why, but it is hinted that he does so to protect Tenma. After the Ruhenheim Massacre, Lunge visits Wolfgang Grimmer's grave along with [|Jan Suk] and [|Fritz Verdemann]. He tells them he is a professor at a police academy, and has rekindled his relationship with his daughter.Dieter
Dieter is a young boy Tenma encounters in his search for Johan. When Tenma first meets him, he is an orphan under the care of a man named Hartmann; Tenma later discovers that Dieter is physically and psychologically abused by Hartmann. Hartmann plans to make Dieter into another Johan by applying the same conditioning used in the 511 Kinderheim orphanage, but with no success. Dieter later becomes happier after being saved by Tenma from Hartmann's abuse. Dieter follows Tenma in his search for Johan to prevent Tenma from becoming a murderer because he is fond of him. He later teams up with Nina to help her find out more about her past and give her moral support when her traumatic memories resurface. Dieter seems to have absorbed some of Tenma's beliefs and optimism about life when he meets an injured young boy named Martin influenced by Johan to be more like the latter. The young boy recites what he heard Johan say about life, death and fear, and tries to tempt Dieter to walk along the ledge of a building with his eyes closed. Dieter refuses, saying he wants to live, to experience new things and see the faces of the people he loves; he repeats what he heard Tenma say: "Tomorrow will be better"-. Dieter helps Nina find out more about her past. By the end of the series he reunites with [|Otto Heckel], who tells Dieter to give information he dug up on where the mother of the Liebert twins is to Tenma.