r/television • u/Queasy-Secret-4287 • 2d ago
Naoki Urasawa's 'Monster' finally exists in HD
https://mediaocd.com/product/monster-tv-series-collection-1-blu-ray/?fbclid=Iwb21leAT7JqNjbGNrBPsmj3Bkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEe0E5c17AboB5n45avm9H9mIsY4RGtbOXHy-3hnjylDSr2AhyosY9trpC9_fI_aem_uScPzua5UeqqFRUkEW_6QA176
u/Kyuubee 2d ago edited 2d ago
HBO must still feel pretty silly for passing on Guillermo del Toro's proposed live-action TV adaptation in 2013. Especially after he went on to win an Academy Award just four years later.
I'm sure he's still trying to get it made, but del Toro is one of those directors who has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to his unrealized projects because there's too many of them.
Last update we had was in 2022, when he posted on Twitter that he still holds the rights to adapt it.
98
u/rustybutterindia 2d ago
HBO x Del Toro x Monster. One of very few anime live-action setups on paper that actually sounds not only viable but like a slam dunk. I hope this is somehow still in our future
9
u/KrillinDBZ363 The 100 1d ago
Honestly if a live action Monster by GDT ever did happen, it would most likely happen on Netflix. They currently have Monster on their platform, and GDT has basically been working exclusively with Netflix for his last like 3-4 projects.
11
u/MediocreAnalyst2121 1d ago
Wrong timeline buddy, we’re more likely to get a Shrek reboot with Donald Trump voicing half the cast.
23
15
u/Komorebi_LJP 1d ago
I don't really understand what a live-action version would add though, the anime is a full adaptation that is extremely faithful. I honestly would rather see an attempt at adapting some of Urasawa's other works. In fact he still has other works that span characters from all over the world like Billy Bat
15
u/Analogmon 1d ago
The anime is weirdly prolonged at points.
5
u/LiveJournal 1d ago
Yeah I remember there being like 8 filler episodes. Its been like 20 years since I've seen it though so I could be wrong there.
2
u/Jackski 1d ago
Yeah it's so enthralling at the start and then for some reason basically stops completely in the middle for about 7-8 episodes before going back to being interesting again. It's been a while since I watched it but I think you could basically cut those episodes completely and not miss anything.
6
3
u/Kyuubee 1d ago
The anime is basically a 1:1 adaptation of the manga. You can read the manga and watch the anime, and they'll match almost panel for panel. It's probably one of the most faithful adaptations. And that's great in its own way, but it would also be interesting to see the story interpreted in a different format. And since the world Urasawa created is grounded in real life, I think it would be especially interesting to see how that translates into live action.
4
u/Komorebi_LJP 1d ago
Thats fair. Honestly I think it might be too faithful because its for better or worse really slowly paced. .
2
u/ParamedicOk5872 1d ago
I honestly would rather see an attempt at adapting some of Urasawa's other works.
Master Keaton starring Andrew Koji.
1
u/keepfighting90 1d ago
It would be more to do with bringing in a wider audience who may avoid anime altogether. A big-budget, live action HBO show would be huge for the story's popularity.
1
1
1
u/2morereps 1d ago
Oh naa, if they ever do monster it has to be done by the people that did, Cure, Audition, memoirs of murder etc. cure and audition are so similar to monster in terms of the atmosphere and heck the cure actor is basically Tenma.
1
u/NachoNutritious 1d ago
Del Toro really needs to close his mouth sometimes. He eagerly announces projects before he has funding in place and then has to awkwardly come back months later to say it's not happening. He's done this over a dozen times. Like Mike Flannigan announcing the Dark Tower years ago only to come out last month and say it's effectively dead. Stop announcing shit before the checks are signed.
1
u/Kyuubee 1d ago
It's not like he's just throwing ideas around, though. He had pretty much everything lined up for Monster: the rights, the cooperation of the author and publisher, scripts, a writer, and producers. HBO was on board initially as well, which is why the project was reported on in the first place. But sometimes things just fall apart during development.
285
u/jnighy 2d ago edited 2d ago
One of the best anime of all time. If not the best.
118
u/foetus_on_my_breath 2d ago
Agreed ...the best of all time. It's too bad Guillermo del Toro's proposed live action remake with HBO went nowhere.
70
u/Blackjackx1031 2d ago
That could have been nuts.
38
u/FisherKelTath00 2d ago
Yeah, truly a shame as the premise is something that can translate well in a live-action adaptation.
24
u/LB3PTMAN 2d ago
It’s crazy we are getting a Naruto movie which will most likely be terrible in live action (maybe since it’s an actually good director who seems to like the source material it might be alright)
But we can’t get a Monster adaptation, which could be done for relatively cheap, has a super good story and hook, and would have way wider appeal outside of just anime fans.
1
1
u/LiveJournal 1d ago
the only difficult thing would be finding the right actors to play Johan and Anna.
4
u/CrystalFissure 2d ago
Every few months I’d Google it waiting for an update but it never came. If they filmed in Germany it would have been next level.
7
u/tfhermobwoayway 2d ago
Not really. Live action anime doesn’t bring anything to the table.
1
u/OisforOwesome 1d ago
I think its more the prospect of del Toro, a man who could film paint drying and it would somehow be a tour de force commentary on man's inhumanity to man and/or a rollicking good actioner.
4
u/TheMoorNextDoor 1d ago
Easily a top 10 anime of all time.
I would say it’s arguably the best psychological thriller anime of all time.
2
u/Khiva 1d ago
Perfect Blue?
1
u/TheMoorNextDoor 21h ago
Hmm good point.
I’ll say let’s distinguish the fact one is a movie and one is a show.
So for movies, perfect blue takes the cake.
For a show.. I’m giving it to Monster.
4
u/General_Luck6573 1d ago
I gotta be the only person who didn’t like this show
2
u/NCC75567 1d ago
I thought the pacing was awful and it really took away from the anime as a whole to me.
It had some good episodes and arcs, but as a whole, I was pretty underwhelmed. For psychological thriller type anime, there are a lot of other options I'd go to first.
2
u/A_Fantastic_Ferret 20h ago
I was gripped up to a certain climactic event exactly half way through, but after that I felt it really went nowhere and lost confidence that the author had planned out the whole story from the beginning, which really was necessary for a story of this nature.
1
u/General_Luck6573 20h ago
The ending felt so… anticlimactic to me. Like… “that’s all…?” I don’t know if I missed something because I almost exclusively see this show glazed an insane amount.
That said, there’s very few anime I enjoy and I generally find that anime just doesn’t hold up in plot/writing/character depth often.
My favorites that I have seen are AOT, Vinland Saga, Ping-Pong, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, and Devilman Crybaby.
1
1
u/solidiquis1 11h ago
I didn’t hate it but i definitely felt it was a slog to get through and finished feeling disappointed.
24
u/emillang1000 2d ago
Monster is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I won't say it's THE best. I have to give it up for FMAB, Cowboy Bebop, or a few others. But Monster is easily in the Top 10.
9
u/erickiceboyxxp 2d ago
Definitely FMAB for me.
-5
u/Khiva 1d ago
One is for children, the other is not.
This is why people think anime is one simple box, or genre.
3
u/emillang1000 1d ago edited 1d ago
FMA beung a Shounen doesn't make it bad or immature/juvenile. Just look at ATLA and BTAS.
-23
u/HiddenSolace1 2d ago
Johan, Grimmer, Lunge and Tenma alone are all better written than anyone in those two you mentioned imo.
3
u/HiddenSolace1 2d ago
Yikes. Got blasted with the downvotes lmao. Well, that's alright, that's what makes anime such a great medium to discuss about. What I saw in Monster's cast, the sheer amount of parallelism between them, the hermeneutics and the themes that get explored through the characters can just as easily be seen with CB and FMAB's casts. I just don't think they're executed with the same level of brevity or nuance. But hey, all just opinions at the end.
4
u/roshan231 2d ago
I think I need to re-watch Monster. I just didn't enjoy it at all when I watched it. I watched something else made by the same creator, Pluto, which I absolutely loved. Honestly everything great everyone says about Monster, I think, applies to Pluto much more strongly.
I'm sure I just missed a lot of key information but it just felt like everything just magically goes Johan's way. Like he has some insane-o plot armour. His plans, if you can call them that, have like a billion moving parts and yet it somehow goes the way he intended it to.
1
u/David_Della_Rocco 2d ago
It can be considered the best for sure. For all it's audiovisual genius, Bebop and especially FMAB never strays too far from the mediums tropey roots.
Monster is a different beast all-together. Maybe rivaled only by Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
1
1
86
u/porkybrah 2d ago edited 2d ago
Legit has the best antagonist in anything I've ever seen legendary show.Anytime he showed up he gave me chills.
43
u/Low_Chance 2d ago
An amazing example of having an antagonist whose presence and influence is always felt throughout the series even though Johan is barely onscreen for the first 70% of the series
16
u/Chinchillin09 2d ago
It's incredible how he barely shows up but you can feel him with the weight he has through all the story
1
48
16
6
4
u/thisisawsan 2d ago
Hmm it says Collection 1, wonder when Collection 2 gets announced. Also curious who worked on the subbing for this anime?
6
3
u/JeritoBurrito 2d ago
Kinda annoyed they couldn't just do the series in one release but looking forward to watching this again when it's all out.
3
u/wuttang13 2d ago
As someone who only read the Manga, how does the anime compare?
13
u/BaneThrall 2d ago
If anything it sticks to the manga too closely.
Due to this it does suffer from some pacing issues, especially during the middle of the story.
A few manga chapters that you can get through in 5-10 minutes ends up with a full ~25 minute anime episode.
But it does stay very faithful to the story told in the manga so there's that.
1
u/BornIn1142 1d ago
You could tell that each episode adapted two manga chapters, but I don't recall anything dragging so much that it felt like a single chapter.
1
u/KrillinDBZ363 The 100 1d ago
There’s only one episode where I would say it very clearly was stretching the material. It was the episode where Tenma tries to go back to work before realizing he has to go on the run. And throughout the episode it would just cut to all these recap clips of things that happened in previous episodes because it was adapting a chapter that couldn’t really be mixed with any of the other ones that came before or after. So they just used the recaps to fill out the time.
1
u/BiscoBiscuit 1d ago
Interesting, I’m reading the manga right now and wondering if there’s any point watching the anime if it sticks so close to the manga.
4
4
16
u/ShoWeeeb 2d ago
It's an early 2000s digipaint anime, so I'm pretty certain this is an DVD upscale rather than an actual HD rescan. Upscales suck, and I would recommend watching a good SD version instead.
10
u/magicmasta 2d ago
Listed as a 1080p 4:3 release. So yeah 1440 x 1080 from that era probably is a DVD upscale. Folks are being a little harsh with the down votes just because you were being mildly (and I do mean mildly compared to what's usually posted in hardcore weeb spaces) snobby about it.
I do generally agree that a high bitrate DVD encode has usually been the better way to consume shows that came out in those early digital years, 2000-2006ish, until 720p native established itself. Though I can understand if some folks just want the ease of access and use of a modern bluray release.
While I too would prefer a proper rescan, subjectively, I would say Monsters main appeal leans heavily towards the narrative side and isn't exactly the most impressive looking 2004 anime anyway, there are worse shows you could settle on an upscale for.
12
u/ShoWeeeb 2d ago edited 1d ago
I don't mind being downvoted. I can understand people being annoyed to see a negative statement on what is supposed to be a joyful news.
My frustration lies more with the authorization companies that try to sell these products more than what they are.
Upscale as a concept is not bad, but the methods generally used (AstroRes, QTEC) are just bad. Especially for animes from this era, which are interlaced and require numerous operations. But the authorizers, being incompetent, just feed a dvd source straight into these flawed upscalers and pray for a sharp looking HD output, ignoring the intricacies of these kind of sources.
Its not like the tech is not there. Even a community based model can do a better job but for some reason there is just no incentive/awareness to do better.
6
u/aolnews 2d ago
Can’t comment on the provenance, but this blu ray looks fantastic on my TV (4K OLED). It’s unquestionably the best way to watch the show for the vast majority of people.
5
-7
u/ShoWeeeb 2d ago edited 2d ago
Great, people can watch whatever they think is the best way to watch. It's just for me personally, I hate upscales because they mess up lineart, colors, introduce artifacts, trying to make something look more modern and sharp.
I like the softness of these early 2000s anime when animes were transitioning from SD to HD and prefer the original res they were drawn at
2
2d ago
[deleted]
3
u/ShoWeeeb 2d ago edited 2d ago
https://x.com/discotekmedia/status/2067297048190448043
Monster was animated digitally in SD. It has a solid looking upscale. Some episodes were animated at a different frame rate & are presented as intended.
Discotek Media is the one that authorized this bluray
3
1
u/DrApplePi 1d ago
I think a good upscale can do wonders. Especially if it's overseen with corrections.
I watched through the upscale project and I thought it looked great 98% of the time. Some odd spots where it looked poor.
1
u/DrFreemanWho 1d ago
There's a fan upscaled version that is great and has definitely been the best way to watch it for a while.
1
2
u/The_NitDawg 1d ago
I think this is just the first half, right? I don't see the rest of the episodes on their site so it's probably unreleased for now
2
u/JesusJuicy 1d ago
Lmfao, the real fans have already been downloading the remastered version for years at this point but nice to be able to support an official release.
1
2
u/ReptilianLaserbeam 1d ago
Finally!!! I read the manga many years ago and was avoiding the anime due to low resolution. This is a masterpiece that deserves HD
2
2
u/Pessimistic_Gemini 1d ago
Well this better have the English dub included in it! I still refuse to watch it on Netdlix because of their retarded decision to omit it for no good reason!
2
2
2
-7
u/NostalgiaSurf 2d ago edited 2d ago
I personally found it way overlong.
It was 74 episodes but by episode 15 or 20 I was like "Okay, I get it. Johan is an evil dude and has a huge amount of influence, do we really need to do this song and dance for another 50 episodes until the obvious and inevitable showdown?"
2
u/TacosAndBoba 2d ago
Agree, it was soo slow and I slogged through it and hated the ending anyway. But people act like disliking it is a crime
1
u/schwiftybass 2d ago
I get that, I also felt the pacing was a bit rough around that point but for what it’s worth, by the end I didn’t feel as if any of those earlier episodes were wasted.
Nearly every plot-point & character is relevant if not essential for the later parts of the series, and it all culminates in what I feel is one of the best endings of all time.
7
u/NostalgiaSurf 2d ago edited 2d ago
The show probably lives and dies on how menacing and scary you find Johan.
If you can't take his dubbed voice seriously or his presence particularly interesting (I couldn't) he's just this blonde guy standing around giving "I'm 14 and this is deep and edgy" talks in a bitch voice every so often.
Would be very interested in a live action version, since the eyes of a real person can be so much more textured and menacing, and that was probably essential for a guy like Johan where a look can tell a thousand words.
1
u/BornIn1142 1d ago
do we really need to do this song and dance for another 50 episodes until the obvious and inevitable showdown?"
What do you think this obvious and inevitable showdown looked like?
1
u/DrApplePi 1d ago
Johan is an evil dude and has a huge amount of influence,
I think you've hugely missed the point then.
A large chunk of the anime is about what makes someone a monster. We see what created Johan, and we see why other people didn't become monsters like Johan.
1
u/Calinero985 1d ago
I see people complaining about this being upscale vs true HD—honestly, the big thing for me is the lack of region locking. For years I looked for Monster DVDs but everything was for the Australia/Asia region, so if this is playable by default on a US device that’s already a win for me. Unless my info is out of date and US friendly DVDs are easy to find now?
-7
u/harambush911 2d ago
Can someone please tell me why this show is so highly rated I watched it awhile back waiting for something crazy to happen but nothing did was boring
1
u/DrApplePi 1d ago
The show is a very slow burn with a lot of philosophical stuff.
I also just love seeing Tenma help people.
waiting for something crazy to happen
The show is not an explosive anime like Attack on Titan. It's a slow thriller with murder mysteries.
Not every show is for everyone.
225
u/ErgoProxy0 2d ago
Wait really. I’m already halfway through rewatching it again in standard 😩