Monster ep.39

February 18, 2005 | 1 Comments

There seems to be a lot of exciting episodes coming up this week. There's the continuation of the Reo arc in Gakuen Alice and the shocking new development in Mai Hime. Then there is this particular episode of Monster, which serves as a nice epilogue to all of the events that have happened in the last 10+ episodes of the series. While the majority of the mysteries are not solved yet at the moment, more and more people are now aware of Johan's existence. That in itself is progress in my opinion, especially since Johan has tried his best to ensure that not many people know about his existence. It makes me wonder how many of them will survive at the end of this series.

The episode begins with the fire incident survivor watching a newsreel about the incident. One of the survivor in the news details how a Japanese man helped them getting out of the building and yet no one can find him now. Meanwhile, Runge is seen inspecting the remains of the burned building to find some clues about Tenma. Despite what his assistant suggests, Runge believes that a human always leave a trace of his existence in one form of another. Runge then goes to the hospital with the intention to interview Schuwald but ends up talking to Karl instead. Much to his disappointment, Karl doesn't know anything about Tenma. Instead, Karl asks Runge to find the whereabouts of his friend, Johan.

Upon hearing this, Runge finally starts to realise that maybe Johan does exist after all. Because of this, Runge decides to inspect Johan's apartment but it seems the apartment has not been occupied for a while. Runge admits that this is the first time he comes to a room that has little to no sign of a person's existence. The scene then cuts to Lotte sitting next to Nina's hospital bed. Nina tells her friend that a Japanese doctor was the one who helped her to get out of the building. This surprises Lotte since apparently, Nina was the last person to leave the building. At the same time, Runge goes back to the hospital to find out if Schuwald has seen Tenma. Schuwald, however, does not seem to know Tenma either.

Having said that, Runge notices that Schuwald becomes extremely shaken at the mere mentioned of Johan. But out of courtesy for the old man, Runge stops the interview and decides to find out information from other survivors. It doesn't take long before he finds out that Nina Fortner is one of the people who are saved from the fire. Unfortunately for Runge, Nina has left the hospital and taken a refuge at Dr.Reichwen's place. While staying at the place, Nina and Dieter get to talk to each other and it's obvious that both of them miss Tenma a lot. Back at the hospital, Schuwald asks his son, Karl, to rely a message to a man who's waiting in Dresden. The old man also asks his son to live with him once he returns from Dresden.

At the same time, Nina undergoes a regression hypnosis under Dr.Gillen's supervision. During the hypnosis, it appears that Nina is extremely disturbed by some of the things that she saw in the past. The hypnosis also leads her into uttering the words 'Three Frogs'. Unfortunately, Nina can't seem to understand the significance of the words so Dr.Reichwen ask Dr.Gillen to postpone the hypnosis. The group then going out to have dinner together and to discuss their plan. However, when Nina tries to sleep that night, she suddenly awakes and remembers the significance of 'Three Frogs'. Because of this, she decides to secretly leave Dr.Reichwen's house the next morning to do her own investigation.

Just when she's about to leave, however, Dieter also comes out of the gate, insisting on going with Nina to find Tenma. Despite trying to convince Dieter otherwise, Dieter ends up following Nina around. As a result, Nina has no choice but to take Dieter with her on the journey. Meanwhile in Dresden, Karl finds out that the man that his father wants him to give the message to is actually Tenma. Apparently back when the library got burned down, Tenma was the one who saved Schuwald so Schuwald tells him to safely wait in Dresden because he'll send someone to give Tenma some information about Johan. Upon receiving the message, Tenma is surprised to find out that apparently Johan and Nina's mother is still alive.

Impression:

It's good to see Runge finally decides to investigate Johan after all of these times. It's strange, however, that he decides to do this after hearing Johan's name from Karl. It's true that since Karl doesn't recognise Tenma's photograph, then it's very likely that the Johan Liebert that Karl knows is not Tenma. However, Dr.Reichwen and Dr.Gillen have mentioned this fact so many times to him. So I find it aggravating that Runge simply ignored their statements and went on his own merry way to 'solve' the murder. The two doctors are supposed to be professional doctors in their respective fields so Runge should have known that they have nothing to gain from lying to a BKA agent or to the police just to save Tenma.

Apart from this, I find it nice to see a 'family theme' presented in this episode. Nina and Dieter, for example, obviously miss their father figure, Tenma, while Karl and Schuwald finally make amends with each other. It's interesting to note that in some ways, all of these 'connections' were made possible because Tenma somehow crossed path with these people. If it wasn't for Tenma, Dr.Reichwen and Dr.Gillen may never work with one another like they are now. Dieter will probably still suffer abuse in the hands of his ex-foster father and never gets to enjoy life with Dr.Reichwen and the others. Even peripheral characters such as Lotte is inevitably drawn into the circle. While this connection may appear all too easy and probably a tad unrealistic, I have to say that I can't help but liking this part of the story.

© memento 2003