I decided to give Monster a try after finishing Samurai Champloo and re- watching Cowboy Bebop. I was looking for something as awesome as those two and chose Monster because the reviews were good and the rating was even higher than for the two Watanabe animes I just mentioned. In short, this show is crap. As another reviewer mentioned, the first 20 or so episodes are interesting and set up a good premise for the show, and as the viewer you start to become attached to Tenma's character. But after that, it's all downhill. The show becomes SUPER repetitive and ham-fisted. You will see the exact same scene over and over and over again. They leave nothing to the imagination and seem to assume that the viewer is an idiot who can figure out nothing from context clues. They also have many episodes introducing the stories of all of these minor characters who are not interesting, and seem to just be prolonging the series just for the heck of it. It is also irritating that the whole premise of the show is that Tenma must kill Johan, and he even trains himself extensively to do so, but then when he has the chance to kill him he can never follow through. And they try so hard to make the twin's story dramatic and complex that I still don't understand why Johan was killing all of these people. The ending is ridiculous; Johan is saved and escapes again. Are you telling me Tenma is a neurosurgeon, but he isn't smart enough to realize that Johan could escape just like the first time? I could go on and on. The show is a total disappointment. The only reason I even finished it is because I had invested so much of my time in the first 30-something episodes.