Seven years. That’s how long it took URASAWA Naoki to complete what is considered by many today as his greatest work: Monster. A breathtaking hide-and-seek game in which the roles of cat and mouse are constantly interchanged. An investigation with gigantic ramifications, drawn over four thousand pages, during which one always wonders how the author managed to remain so coherent.

Monster is known for its gradual rise in power. Not really exciting in its first volumes, the scenario reveals an extremely vast universe. The story works in arcs, sometimes moving more than a hundred pages away from its main characters. The quantity of protagonists in the manga is impressive, but the mastery of the staging allows the reader to never lose the thread and to quickly weave the links.

The fact that there is a real protagonist, TENMA Kenzo, allows the reader to identify with it. His character really evolves, you can feel him growing older and more mature. All the other characters are also very elaborate: they have their own real motivations, and few actions seem far-fetched. Everything is so coherent that it is sometimes quite impressive.

Especially since URASAWA’s attention to detail doesn’t stop at the script. If the graphics are still a bit shaky at the beginning, they soon find their marks and the whole thing becomes homogeneous and very clean. The precise architecture is reminiscent of the serious documentation work of the author, who is said to have made several trips to Germany and Eastern Europe.

This only reinforces even more the oppressive atmosphere of the plot, which gradually becomes more complex, while at the same time clarifying certain points in detail. The manga literally grabs its reader in a suspenseful, incredibly catchy scenario. A must of the manga genre, without a doubt.