Naoki Urasawa's Monster

Is, not even exaggerating, the best manga I've ever read, and I'm only on Volume 5. There's eighteen total, an anime, and a live-action movie in the works.

The manga tells the story of a Japanese doctor, Kenzo Tenma, who gets wrapped up in the politics of working in the hospital. When the mayor needs surgery performed on him, Tenma is asked by the hospital director to abandon the surgery he was scheduled to do on a little boy in order to get the hospital more recognition for saving the mayor. Sick and tired of politics being more important to the director than actually saving lives, Tenma risks his job and promotions to perform surgery on little Johan Liebert, instead of the mayor.

However, years later, Johan is grown up, and has become a serial killer. Tenma realizes that, in a cruel twist of fate, his choosing Johan over the mayor was the wrong choice after all. If he had chosen the mayor instead of Johan, than he could have saved the lives of dozens of people. When Johan kills several people and frames Tenma for the crime, the doctor becomes a fugitive, making it his mission to hunt down and kill the monster that he feels he created.

Reasons this manga rocks my socks off:

It's set in Germany instead of Japan, which is really refreshing. Even in the Japanese version, the notes that Johan writes Tenma are in German and translated at the bottom of the page.

Not everyone is pretty! A sad trend in manga that I've noticed is that almost all of the characters are depicted as looking cute, beautiful, or handsome, some of them even looking exactly like each other, except with different hair. In 'Monster', most of the characters are actually ugly, or, at least, not gorgeous. A few of them are, of course, because in real life, some people ARE pretty, but the majority of them have different face shapes, different sized noses, wrinkles, and it almost makes the art look more realistic. It certainly makes the story more believable.

The story is absolutely amazing. It's the perfect mystery and crime drama, in that the mysteries and murders are all really well planned out, and it's impossible to predict what happens. It reminds me a little bit of Death Note, in the whole 'Good VS Evil' mindset, with Tenma representing all that is good, and Johan representing evil and bad things. Also, I think that making the detectives and Tenma more imperfect-looking and Johan really handsome is kind of symbolic, although I could be wrong. Like how sometimes the bad, immoral way seems like the easier and more appealing path. This might be me overthinking it, however. XD

Everything people normally complain about in manga has been eliminated. Mary-sues? None. Big eyes? Nope. Cliches? Can't see any. Everyone gorgeous? Nope. This is a manga that I think even people who HATE manga would like.

Anyway, I absolutely, positively encourage anyone and everyone who likes manga to read this.