Monster, by Naoki Urasawa
                   Outline and Character Guide

[Copyrighted Nov. 16, 1995.  Feel free to circulate this file,
 but permission is NOT granted to magazines or newsletters for
 reprinting, without prior approval by the author.  You know the
 gig.  -- Curtis H. Hoffmann]


   Naoki Urasawa is best known to western fans as the creator of
_Yawara_, and artist on _Pineapple Army_ and _Master Keaton_.
More recently, he has been working concurrently on _Happy_ and
_Monster_.  _Happy_ continues to drag on, with Umino having to
withstand greater and greater difficulties as she tries to win
the Cinderella Tennis match.
   Now, if you are tired of all the pain Umino is suffering, and
are expecting a more upbeat story in _Monster_, keep looking.  A
brief story outline follows the character guide.

                       _Monster_ Characters

(Note: All of the German names have been rendered in katakana.
       This makes it very difficult to translate them back into
       their original German spellings.  I have tried to be
       accurate, but it isn't easy.)


   Kenzo Tenma: A young, up and coming Japanese neurosurgeon
        posted to Aisler hospital, in West Germany.  Tenma is
        single, but starts out the story by dating Eva.  He is
        naive, and believes that a doctor's first concern is to
        his patients.  Medium height.  Plain Japanese features.

   Dr. Heinneman: President of Aisler Hospital, and father of
        Eva.  Heinneman is a big, bulky German with thick bushy
        eyebrows, a big paunch, and glasses.  Heinneman is a
        very money-conscious, arrogant man who knows that a
        doctor's first concern is to the image of Aisler
        hospital.

   Eva Heinneman: A very attractive young woman, Eva starts out
        by dating Tenma. But, when things go bad, she dumps him
        and immediately begins dating a Dr. Nordon.  Eva is
        strictly a "material girl."

   Dr. Becker: A friendly, fat, middle-aged German that works on
        the same floor as Tenma.  Becker understands the way the
        hospital operates, and he tries to do his job in spite of
        that. Becker is closest to being a friend to Tenma.

   Yosef and Anna Reibert: Twin brother and sister, about age
        10.  They are adopted by a middle-aged West German
        couple.  A few days later, the Reibert's are attacked by
        an unknown gunman -- the adoptive parents are both
        killed, Yosef gets a bullet to the brain, and Anna goes
        into shock.  Tenma saves Yosef -- which is what causes
        all of the other problems.

   Weisbach: A detective with the local German police.  Weisbach
        is first brought in to investigate the Reibert killings,
        but he gets further involved when Dr. Heinneman is murdered.
        Weisbach is a typical fat, balding German cop.

   Superintendent Renge: An evil-looking man, thin, balding,
        sharp-featured.  Renge works in the BKA, and he enters
        Tenma's life when Dr. Heinneman is buried.  Renge thinks
        that there are East German spies involved in the Reibert
        family, and he suspects Tenma of killing Heinneman.
        Renge views his brain as being kind of a floppy disk, and
        he moves his fingers as if he's typing in data during his
        interviews.  Renge has a photographic memory, and is an
        above-average investigator.


                        The Story in Brief

   It is 1986.  Dr. Tenma has it all.  He just finished a tricky
brain operation that saved the life of a world-famous opera
singer.  In return, the president of Aisler Hospital is giving
Tenma his daughter Eva to marry, and is planning on naming Tenma
to a new department being added to the hospital.  Eva is in love
with Tenma, and life looks perfect.
   However, two children that have just been adopted by West
German parents are brought into the hospital -- Anna is in
shock, and Yosef has a bullet lodged in his brain that will
certainly kill him.  Tenma is the only neurosurgeon that can save
the boy.  Unfortunately, the Mayor of Dusseldorf has suffered a
seizure, and he's being flown in to the hospital.  Heinneman
orders Tenma to join the team to save the Mayor.  Tenma refuses,
suffering from flashbacks of a poor woman screaming at him to
bring her husband back to life (Tenma wasn't assigned to work on
the nobody, and the guy died in surgery.)  Tenma decides that
normal people have the right to live, too, and he ignores
Heinneman's orders -- instead, he operates on Yosef.  Meanwhile,
Anna keeps whispering "Kill him."
   Yosef lives, but the Mayor dies.  As punishment for ignoring
the reputation of the hospital, Tenma loses all of his benefits,
Eva starts dating Norden, and Boyer, one of the doctors that had
operated on the Mayor, is named as head of the new department
instead of Tenma.  Tenma goes into a black funk, and starts on a
drinking binge.
   Meanwhile, Heinneman has decided to turn Yosef and Anna into a
publicity stunt that will improve the hospital's image as a place
where the unfortunate lower classes can receive top care.  Tenma
is replaced as Anna and Yosef's doctor, and Boyer takes over.
Boyer's first act is to bring Anna and Yosef together so that he
can take pictures to give to the press.  Yosef wakes up, holds
his hand out to his sister, and starts crying.  Anna screams in
terror and passes out.
   One of the mistakes Heinneman makes is to take a package of
candy from Yosef's room, and share it with Boyer and Boyer's
boss.  Soon after, all three men die.  Tenma is rushed to the
hospital to help calm things down.  There, he discovers that Anna
and Yosef are both missing.
   At the funeral, Eva finally turns human, and crys her eyes out
over the death of her father.  Renge is introduced to Tenma;
while Renge suspects that Tenma has due cause to kill Heinneman
and Boyer, he has no evidence.  After a while, Eva apologizes to
Tenma for her behavior, and wants to start dating him again; this
time, Tenma turns her down.

   Time passes.

   It is now 1995.  Tenma had been named Chief Surgeon at Aisler
hospital, and everyone respects him.  Becker keeps trying to line
Tenma up with nice women to date, but Tenma is too concerned
about his work (Becker thinks that if he were chief surgeon, he'd
have 5 or 6 lovers on the side by now.)
   Renge is investigating the murders of a gang of killers.
Adolf Yonkers is one of the gang, and is currently the only one
still living.  Adolf, however, is fleeing for his life, and he
runs in front of a car.  Renge learns of this, and Adolf is
ordered to undergo super-human surgery to save his life.  So,
Tenma is brought in, and Adolf is saved.  He is coherent enough
to be interrogated, but when asked who it was that asked the gang
to kill certain people, Yonkers starts screaming.
   Eventually, Yonkers tries to run from the hospital, but is
caught by Yosef in an abandonded building.  Tenma follows Adolf,
and watches as Yosef shoots the man in the head.  Yosef is now a
tall, very pretty blond teenager, wearing a turtleneck sweater
and overcoat.  Yosef is the "Monster" of this book, and he
discloses to Tenma that it was Yosef who had killed Heinneman,
and the Reiberts.  Afterwards, Yosef just walks away, while
Tenma is just coming to grips with the horror that he had
unleashed on the world.

   In book 2, Tenma meets up with Anna, and must save her from
Yosef.  Along the way, more bodies crop up, and Tenma is marked
as a murderer, and is now wanted by the police.  From here on,
the story becomes a copy of a certain old American TV drama...