What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

I'm about 330 pages in. The next chapter is 13: House of Sorrow.

Monster is a nerve-wracking suspense. I don't expect to be horrified like I was with Homunculus, but Monster is uncomfortable in its own way. Once I learned it was inspired by the American TV show The Fugitive, from 1963, everything clicked. Dr. Tenma is going to become a fugitive, that much I figured. Stories about wrongly accused people really get on my nerves. It enrages me even more that Tenma makes no effort whatsoever to avoid incriminating himself. It's like he wants to become a fugitive! Sure, he is the ultimate Boy Scout, but he is also a genius neurosurgeon. I understand his specialty is not criminology, but it would make sense for him to show at least some intelligence and a sense of auto-preservation. Maybe that is intentional, to intensify the suspense. Naoki Urasawa wrote the character as idealistic, naive, and a dreamer. It is still weird how dumb he is. I hope he eventually becomes less of a doofus.

I like this manga, but it is not relaxing at all. I am used to that level of suspense in 2 hour chunks, like a film by Hitchcock. So I think I will make pauses along the way to look at something lighter.

The show follows Akiyuki, a boy who, during an attack on the island he lives on, is implanted with a "Hiruko," which turns him into a Xam'd, a type of Humanform—that is, a big monster. These terms are used throughout the show, as if the viewer knows what they are already, which I like. I don't want a lecture on Humanforms or beat kayaks or airships, I can just kinda look at how they work in the story and figure it out myself.

The show also follows Nakiyami, a mysterious girl who has some connection with the Xam'd and Humanforms, who recognizes Akiyuki as a Xam'd and takes him aboard the airship she lives on so she can help him cope with his new life. The show also follows Haru and Furuichi, Akiyuki's friends who join the military after said attack. There are a multitude of other people the show follows, but it would be tedious to list them all off, and these four are the most important characters.

Xam'd is strange. A lot of people have compared it to Eureka Seven, but being that I haven't seen that yet, it gave me strong Last Exile vibes. That is to say, it's my kind of strange. It helps that Bones cannot make a show that isn't beautiful. Part of why I'm surprised that so many of the discussions I've read are a decade and a half old is because the show looks like it came out six years ago, not sixteen.