Coming to this adaptation of Urasawa’s manga after having read some of it, it struck me as being really faithful. However that faithful quality had a downside, it’s also really slow.
It’s one of these shows that works perfectly fine as a television programme, but whose merits as a cartoon are harder to see. Luckily for it and countless other shows, a lot of viewers aren’t really interested whether the medium is being used to its fullest and just want to be told a story. Which Monster does very well, unfortunately Urasawa tells the story much better on the page because he’s in control and can use his medium to the fullest.
Let’s not be silly though, even with its flaws, it is still miles better than most of what I’ve written about in these decade overview posts so far, and certainly one of the 2004’s better shows due to the source material alone.