Product Description

In an ideal world where man and robots coexist, someone or something has destroyed the powerful Swiss robot Mont Blanc. Elsewhere a key figure in a robot rights group is murdered. The two incidents appear to be unrelated...except for one very conspicuous clue - the bodies of both victims have been fashioned into some sort of bizarre collage complete with makeshift horns placed by the victims' heads. Interpol assigns robot detective Gesicht to this most strange and complex case - and he eventually discovers that he too, as one of the seven great robots of the world, is one of the targets.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111167 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

About the Author
Naoki Urasawa has been a highly recognized and successful manga artist for more than twenty years. Creator of popular series such as 20th Century Boys and Yawara, Urasawa has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the first Japanese Media Art Festival Manga Award of Excellence, the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award in 1999, and the 46th Shogakukan Manga Award. Naoki Urasawa's Monster has thrilled and entertained well over 25 million readers in Japan.

Customer Reviews

New to manga? Start here.
Taking an early Astro Boy story by the great Osamu Tezuka, writer-artist Naoki Urasawa reimagines it in a way that echoes Alan Moore's reinvention of Marvelman/Miracleman back in the 1980's.

The premise is the same as the original -a near-future world where humanity is assisted by robots that look like robots and also robots which are indistinguishable from human beings: Gesicht, our detective hero hunting what may or may not be a killer robot, is one of the latter. Stylistically, Urasawa draws in a distinctively low-key realistic manner as opposed to the wild cartoonish manner of Tezuka's original. Neither is Urasawa the writer in any hurry to rush his story, rather it is told sedately, lingering over character, drawing out and focussing in on emotional details which resonate with the reader and it isn't until the end of this first volume that we, and our somber hero Gesicht, finally meet the protagonist of the original story.

This is an extremely impressive opening to this series and if succeeding volumes match it then I'll certainly be around until the end.

I would also recommend this, because of its clear, accessible and unfussy style, as an excellent start for anyone who hasn't tried manga before, though it isn't suitable for, and neither is it aimed at, children.

Robots can't play the piano...
Another reviewer has beaten me to pointing out that this has an Alan Moore feel to it. Based on an Astroboy story about a robot sent to kill the seven most powerful robots on Earth, Pluto proves to be more than that.

Urasawa takes the opportunity, as all science fiction writers must, to use the robots to look at what it means to be human. The events of the original story take place off-camera or at a distance, never moving away from the close and personal stories being told.

Gesicht is a depressed main character not out of place in a Moore story or a Philip K. Dick tale (there are distinct hints of Do Androids Dream and Blade Runner in the narrative too). A robot and a detective searching for the killer of Mont Blanc, he is married to another robot in a touchingly normal relationship.

There may be more to the mystery though. Not just robots are being killed, humans are too, and the deaths appear linked.

References to a Central Asian war seems to have something to do with the story too.

The story is very well written and Urasawa knows how to use panels to convey emotion. All the hype this series has gotten seems to be well-deserved.

Anyone who likes a bit of cyberpunk and well-drawn characters is in for a treat.