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On the finale of "Monster" and other stories...
Couple weeks ago I finished the anime series "Monster", all 74 eps thereof. This is BTW a series that's *highly* recommended. Most series just attempt to do things with your heart or your mind. Or your adrenalin. Or occasionally (in the case of those series with scantily-clad people in them) your groin.
"Monster" does pull the occasional heartstring, but frankly that's simply done on its way of doing bizarre things on your *soul*.
One point concerning how the end of the series was handled struck me for both its similarity and differences with a common theme in endings of other movies/series/books/stories in general. Huge spoilers necessarily follow, so please do *not* read further if you plan to watch this series. (Also discussion of the ends of Lord of the Rings, Starwars, Batman Begins, and Hunchback of Notre Dame)
On falls and convenient accidents in general
The common theme is this: The way that, in a bazillion different stories, after the good protagonist has the villain in his mercy, it's not the protagonist but rather someone/something else that ends up putting the villain out of his (and our) misery, thus eradicating the threat but allowing the goodly protagonists to keep their hands clean.
One of the most famous examples is Luke refusing to kill the Emperor, and Darth Vader doing the world a favour. Morally speaking, this is ofcourse also one of the most contradictory, hypocritical examples of the theme: The possibility of Luke killing the Emperor to save his friends (and possibly thousands of other people fighting at that moment against the empire) is depicted as a damning act that would condemn Luke to the Dark side. On the other hand, Darth Vader killing the Emperor to save his son alone is seen as a redemptive act that *saves* Vader from the Dark Side. Um, what?
So yeah, we're talking moral confusion of the first order here. Similar moral confusion seems to me to exist in (e.g.) "Batman Begins" where Batman leaves the archvillain to die in the train they were fighting one saying something to the point of "I promised never to take lives. That doesn't mean I have to save yours." ... but if there's a moral difference between the two, I can't see it -- atleast not in the cases where both are equally in a person's power. Ofcourse the whole movie struggled with the fine line of the difference between vigilantism and protecting the innocent, and how far one is allowed to go, so one could also argue that the moral ambiguity in the end of Batman Begins is intentional on the part of the moviemakers. One *could* argue that. I'm not sure I buy it. It felt more like an attempt at cleverness with words rather than any sort of actual moral depth.
Besides the above two rather morally inept variations above, there exist some slightly more competent variations of the same theme. In the end of "Lord of the Rnigs" when Wormtongue kills Saruman (and is subsequently shot to death by the hobbits) after both their lives have been spared by Frodo -- that may be a rather tidy resolution of their stories, but atleast it's character-driven: and it's never implied that Wormtongue earns any sort of "redemption" because of it. The very opposite. As for Frodo's mercy, it is likewise not a last-minute addition from far-left field but flows from his ever-increasing rejection of violence and punishment throughout the story, to the point that he refuses to draw a sword and reluctant to even wear one. Even in a battle considered just, the task Frodo assigns himself is ensuring that nobody hurts the people that surrender.
Going back to the "largely inept" variations of the theme, we have the numerous "falls from a height" deaths in Disney animated features, some of which I'd give more credit than others. The only one with an element I sorta liked is the fall of Judge Frollo in "the Hunchback of Notre Dame" -- for the mere religious Providence-aspect of it where the church building itself turns against Frollo. After all his "God is on my side" babble by Frollo, it is shown that "eh, perhaps NOT". That one I found rather neat.
Too bad such falls have been such a common trope in Disney flicks (Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast", Clayton in "Tarzan", etc) that the power of any such scene must be inevitably diminished. The ineptness in here is not moral, it simply lies on the deus-ex-machina nature of the accident in question.
On "Monster" in particular
It took me a while to understand why I did NOT dislike the resolution near the ending of Monster. After all it seemed to fall into the theme of "someone else gets rid of the bad guy, so that the protagonist keeps his hands clean".
Then I thought about it some more.
And the bottomline of my feelings is this: The poor guy deserved the moral rescue. He deserved Providence swooping down and lifting some small part of his moral burden. If there's one guy in the whole set of fictional universes ever created that deserved such an intervention, that *has* to be Dr. Tenma.
And the fundamental reason why he deserved it, is because he never expected it for himself or based his hopes on it. That's also the fundamental difference between "Monster"'s handling of the trope and all the numerous examples I listed above. In other series/movies we have the protagonists seeking to preserve their own consciences (their own souls, if you will) and the universe obliging them. In "Monster" we have both Dr. Tenma and Nina Fortner each trying to preserve the *other* person's soul -- which leads to such bitterly amusing scenes throughout the series such as each of them frantically urging the other not to shoot Johan, not to become a murderer for Johan's sake -- and at the same time, even as they're saying that, they each lift their own guns and they try to shoot that guy dead.
Not because they want to, but for sheer moral duty's sake. And throughout the series the theme repeats: Dr. Tenma urging a number of people away from violence, hate, destructiveness, away from vengeance and yet at the end he still says: "And yet I must kill that man". Knowing how much it would cost him, psyche-wise, is the very reason that he doesn't want other people to pay the cost he's prepared to pay. One fraction of a second later and he would have pulled the trigger. Universe intervened and another pulled it for him. The outcome doesn't change. He never shirked from what he felt he had to do. But the blood ended up on another's hands.
If Karma is the universe doing to you what you do to others, then the universe tried to preserve Tenma's innocence, as he himself had repeatedly tried to preserve the innocence of others. In a story that portrays a largely rabidly cruel universe for 72 episodes, I can tolerate the existence of some Mercy in the 73rd.
...especially when it's not really *that* merciful.
That's the *second* great element of that final confrontation -- the second reason that it's a GREAT scene. The moral obligation, the moral burden, not only doesn't lessen but actually manages in a bizarre way to increase. For Tenma can't allow that tool of Providence to become a killer either -- same as with all the other people he urged away from such actions throughout the series. And so he lifts himself up and goes to work to once again save the life of the monster he had pursued to kill for most of the series. Full circle. Providence may have spared him the shooting but it has once again burdened Tenma with a monster's salvation, the burden he carried from the start.
The series doesn't judge. Pull the trigger, don't pull the trigger, spare the monster or let it die. Tenma saving Johan is at the end less of a choice and more of an inevitable outcome of who Tenma is: Nina knows he's going to do it before he moves a muscle indicating it. Even Lunge knows he's gonna do it. Wise or unwise, we know he's gonna do it. Nina tries to comfort Tenma saying it's not wrong, but we know that's just an opinion. If Johan awakes from the comma, if he turns to killing again, Tenma will be again after him, we know, burdened again with knowledge of the people dead because of the spared monster.
All in all -- a great culmination. A great finale. A great series.
"Monster" does pull the occasional heartstring, but frankly that's simply done on its way of doing bizarre things on your *soul*.
One point concerning how the end of the series was handled struck me for both its similarity and differences with a common theme in endings of other movies/series/books/stories in general. Huge spoilers necessarily follow, so please do *not* read further if you plan to watch this series. (Also discussion of the ends of Lord of the Rings, Starwars, Batman Begins, and Hunchback of Notre Dame)
On falls and convenient accidents in general
The common theme is this: The way that, in a bazillion different stories, after the good protagonist has the villain in his mercy, it's not the protagonist but rather someone/something else that ends up putting the villain out of his (and our) misery, thus eradicating the threat but allowing the goodly protagonists to keep their hands clean.
One of the most famous examples is Luke refusing to kill the Emperor, and Darth Vader doing the world a favour. Morally speaking, this is ofcourse also one of the most contradictory, hypocritical examples of the theme: The possibility of Luke killing the Emperor to save his friends (and possibly thousands of other people fighting at that moment against the empire) is depicted as a damning act that would condemn Luke to the Dark side. On the other hand, Darth Vader killing the Emperor to save his son alone is seen as a redemptive act that *saves* Vader from the Dark Side. Um, what?
So yeah, we're talking moral confusion of the first order here. Similar moral confusion seems to me to exist in (e.g.) "Batman Begins" where Batman leaves the archvillain to die in the train they were fighting one saying something to the point of "I promised never to take lives. That doesn't mean I have to save yours." ... but if there's a moral difference between the two, I can't see it -- atleast not in the cases where both are equally in a person's power. Ofcourse the whole movie struggled with the fine line of the difference between vigilantism and protecting the innocent, and how far one is allowed to go, so one could also argue that the moral ambiguity in the end of Batman Begins is intentional on the part of the moviemakers. One *could* argue that. I'm not sure I buy it. It felt more like an attempt at cleverness with words rather than any sort of actual moral depth.
Besides the above two rather morally inept variations above, there exist some slightly more competent variations of the same theme. In the end of "Lord of the Rnigs" when Wormtongue kills Saruman (and is subsequently shot to death by the hobbits) after both their lives have been spared by Frodo -- that may be a rather tidy resolution of their stories, but atleast it's character-driven: and it's never implied that Wormtongue earns any sort of "redemption" because of it. The very opposite. As for Frodo's mercy, it is likewise not a last-minute addition from far-left field but flows from his ever-increasing rejection of violence and punishment throughout the story, to the point that he refuses to draw a sword and reluctant to even wear one. Even in a battle considered just, the task Frodo assigns himself is ensuring that nobody hurts the people that surrender.
Going back to the "largely inept" variations of the theme, we have the numerous "falls from a height" deaths in Disney animated features, some of which I'd give more credit than others. The only one with an element I sorta liked is the fall of Judge Frollo in "the Hunchback of Notre Dame" -- for the mere religious Providence-aspect of it where the church building itself turns against Frollo. After all his "God is on my side" babble by Frollo, it is shown that "eh, perhaps NOT". That one I found rather neat.
Too bad such falls have been such a common trope in Disney flicks (Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast", Clayton in "Tarzan", etc) that the power of any such scene must be inevitably diminished. The ineptness in here is not moral, it simply lies on the deus-ex-machina nature of the accident in question.
On "Monster" in particular
It took me a while to understand why I did NOT dislike the resolution near the ending of Monster. After all it seemed to fall into the theme of "someone else gets rid of the bad guy, so that the protagonist keeps his hands clean".
Then I thought about it some more.
And the bottomline of my feelings is this: The poor guy deserved the moral rescue. He deserved Providence swooping down and lifting some small part of his moral burden. If there's one guy in the whole set of fictional universes ever created that deserved such an intervention, that *has* to be Dr. Tenma.
And the fundamental reason why he deserved it, is because he never expected it for himself or based his hopes on it. That's also the fundamental difference between "Monster"'s handling of the trope and all the numerous examples I listed above. In other series/movies we have the protagonists seeking to preserve their own consciences (their own souls, if you will) and the universe obliging them. In "Monster" we have both Dr. Tenma and Nina Fortner each trying to preserve the *other* person's soul -- which leads to such bitterly amusing scenes throughout the series such as each of them frantically urging the other not to shoot Johan, not to become a murderer for Johan's sake -- and at the same time, even as they're saying that, they each lift their own guns and they try to shoot that guy dead.
Not because they want to, but for sheer moral duty's sake. And throughout the series the theme repeats: Dr. Tenma urging a number of people away from violence, hate, destructiveness, away from vengeance and yet at the end he still says: "And yet I must kill that man". Knowing how much it would cost him, psyche-wise, is the very reason that he doesn't want other people to pay the cost he's prepared to pay. One fraction of a second later and he would have pulled the trigger. Universe intervened and another pulled it for him. The outcome doesn't change. He never shirked from what he felt he had to do. But the blood ended up on another's hands.
If Karma is the universe doing to you what you do to others, then the universe tried to preserve Tenma's innocence, as he himself had repeatedly tried to preserve the innocence of others. In a story that portrays a largely rabidly cruel universe for 72 episodes, I can tolerate the existence of some Mercy in the 73rd.
...especially when it's not really *that* merciful.
That's the *second* great element of that final confrontation -- the second reason that it's a GREAT scene. The moral obligation, the moral burden, not only doesn't lessen but actually manages in a bizarre way to increase. For Tenma can't allow that tool of Providence to become a killer either -- same as with all the other people he urged away from such actions throughout the series. And so he lifts himself up and goes to work to once again save the life of the monster he had pursued to kill for most of the series. Full circle. Providence may have spared him the shooting but it has once again burdened Tenma with a monster's salvation, the burden he carried from the start.
The series doesn't judge. Pull the trigger, don't pull the trigger, spare the monster or let it die. Tenma saving Johan is at the end less of a choice and more of an inevitable outcome of who Tenma is: Nina knows he's going to do it before he moves a muscle indicating it. Even Lunge knows he's gonna do it. Wise or unwise, we know he's gonna do it. Nina tries to comfort Tenma saying it's not wrong, but we know that's just an opinion. If Johan awakes from the comma, if he turns to killing again, Tenma will be again after him, we know, burdened again with knowledge of the people dead because of the spared monster.
All in all -- a great culmination. A great finale. A great series.