The first time I watched a Japanese drama, it was the 74-episode long drama "Monster". As a person who has been in the three-dimensional world all the year round and has never watched a few cartoons in childhood, it seems to have opened the door to a new world. And I decided to watch a few more dramas with different themes. I am currently exploring, and I feel great. I am ready to write a few more comments if I have time and feelings (personal feelings). The following are all the questions and personal answers that have been summarized after the completion of the program.
1. What is the "Landscape of the End"? What is hell in John's eyes?
In "Monster", most of the people John manipulated claim to see "hell" in his eyes, and his "right-hand man" Roberto wants to see what John calls "the landscape of the end" before he dies , then what is John's "hell"? What is the "end scene"? I think the two are essentially the same and can be understood together.
What is hell? Is it the nine-level funnel in "The Divine Comedy", the temple of demons in "Paradise Lost", or the eighteen-level hell we are familiar with? Starting from "Monster", I feel that hell is by no means "lively" like the above, hell is nothing, nothing, hell is "the earth is so white that it's really clean", which is the saying in Sartre's "Confinement" It's an empty scene, and John's hell is even more extreme, that is, there is nothing but him, completely cut off all ties, cut off all love, wipe out all people, and achieve a complete "no one's land", and John is passionate about creating hell, about putting others and himself in hell, and he loves "the landscape of the end."
John has been achieving his goals, creating hell for others, and building his own along the way. He had already seen the scenery of the end, in the banquet hall of the Red Rose House (although it was narrated by his sister, but also became part of him by his constant self-brainwashing), in the 511 orphanage, in General Wolf's house Dizhong, in the flames of the Munich University library, in the small town of Hohenheim, in the initial suspicion of being abandoned and alone (although he may have made up for it by rejecting a loving explanation), he kept asking himself and others. Indoctrinate/prove the existence of his own hell, and encourage others to create a hell of absolute loneliness like him, which he fears to face his own is illusory. And for everyone, such an empty, absolutely lonely hell is terrifying. OP's last Pegasus is also in a wasteland-like hell, but he chose the opposite direction from John and kept walking out hell.
How important is the role of second memory in "Monster"?
Memory is a very mysterious thing, and an interesting entry point for understanding "Monster". We need to explore two questions. First, why does John take on his sister's memory? Some friends think that John loves his sister and wants to help her, but I have another opinion. I don't think John still has the ability to "love people". He took the initiative to take over his sister's memory and continuously strengthen it into his own memory, which is actually a mechanism of "self-rationalization". Forcibly interpret the memory. For example, in the end, he suspected that his mother left him because he could not distinguish between him and his sister in a hurry, not out of love. John has always preserved, transformed and strengthened the memory that was "beneficial" to him. In fact, in order to make excuses for his lack of emotion and desire to kill, the reason why he is dubbed "the strongest villain" is because he has no motivation and emotion, but he himself has to find an excuse for his behavior and rationalize himself. Doing "attribution after the fact" and gradually feeding the monster inside him, this is when memory comes in handy. This kind of behavior of John reminds me of another famous villain "The Joker". Whether in the movie "The Dark Knight" or "The Joker", Arthur's evil actions actually have a kind of pure evil to play with human beings, and he The tragic experience told, in fact, no one can tell the truth from the false, even if the suffering he experienced in "Joker" is shown, since he told it in a mental hospital, it is still doubtful. For John, when his sister told him that the "proud" "Red Rose House Massacre" was not his experience, his years of faith seemed to collapse, and he could not accept the "end scenery" that he cherished so much. "One of them was taken away like that.
The second question is why did Nina not remember the horrors of her childhood ? In Borges' novel "Funes, the Book of Memorables", the protagonist, Funes, suffers from a strange disease, that is, he can't forget anything, which makes him very miserable. Nina's path is the opposite. She is kind-hearted, and she doesn't need to rationalize her behavior with tragic memories like John, and she doesn't need to feed monsters. She needs to live happily and healthily, so she chooses to protect herself and take the initiative. Block that memory, as Dieter said, to create some happy memories, and like Eva, forget the emotional entanglement with Tianma, they all chose to actively forget, rather than entangled with painful memories to the end. People can move forward because they can take the initiative to unload some memories, otherwise they can only be swallowed up by memory like Funes. Only forgetting can create real memories and real people.
Three Horses and John: The Two Extremes of Good and Evil
Why does John have such a powerful delusional ability? John is empty and devoid of human emotions, he is like a container, able to let go of everyone's emotions, so the people he manipulates can feel the "empathy" that has never been experienced in other people because of the person in front of him. Feelings are your feelings, his position is your position, his way of thinking is your way of thinking, and his emotions are your emotions. Faced with the "orders" you give yourself, can you resist? No other normal person can fully understand another person, and retains himself more or less, but John does not, as a standard "societal king" (refer to the movie "This house was made by me" or the TV series " Spiritual Detective"), he is like a huge black hole, while sucking all other people into his body, he also drags other people into the abyss, truly becoming a person who "can be anyone", and at the same time he has become Inhuman "monsters".
Although John and Tianma are human beings in "Monster", the two have huge symbolic meanings. They will never be real people in reality. The two form a wonderful counterpoint. How much John is like the devil in Christianity, lurking among human beings, always deceiving people, leading people to sin, but rarely doing it himself, he has no name, he lives in legends, everyone has never seen but everyone is afraid, He is on a "nameless" secret journey, carrying out the task of creating "hell". And Tianma is like Jesus. He is hidden among human beings and bears a crime that does not belong to him. He also lives in the legend, "the Japanese who put out the fire in Turkey Street", the "black market Japanese doctor" and even "the fugitive" , he is also on the same "nameless" secret journey, carrying out the task of creating "heaven". They keep missing each other, as if one can never reach the other, but the two can perceive the existence of the other and can never defeat the other. The real confrontation between good and evil will appear before the opening of the first chapter." Apocalypse" will appear when it comes. "Absolute good" and "absolute evil" can never exist, because we are all human and cannot create such characters, so we can see that the main creator of "Monster" tried his best, but still let Tianma and John show A touch of humanity. But I still admire the creators. The contemporary era of declining classicism can still use courage and ability to create a character like Tianma who remains kind in the end. Let us see that pure goodness in addition to pure evil can also last forever. Tianma No "blackening" is simply the best ending.
Other characters who come and go either follow Pegasus or John, oscillating and choosing between the two extremes, like ordinary people like us, who can't achieve complete "good" or complete "evil", You can only approach one side. And absolute good and evil are like the opposition between God/Jesus and Satan, which does not exist in human beings, but the opposition between the two is like the wrestling between Pegasus and John that will last forever until the end of the world .
In "Monster", a little disappearing love and connection between people make people turn to "evil", and love and connection make people turn to "good", Eva, Dieter, Lenke, Greima Even Nina had struggled, but fortunately they fell to Pegasus in the end, they became human again, they chose to have the weakness that human beings should have, that is love, becoming John can be very powerful, but it also means turned into an inhuman "monster".
Four "Absolute Solitude" and Love
John's proud crime is killing everyone around someone who is connected to him, cutting them off from others like General Wolfe and the tycoon Hubert, and creating "absolute loneliness" for them. ", this series of murders seems to be a series of "rehearsals" that John is doing for his "suicide". First, he wants to see if he can put people into "absolute loneliness", and second, he wants to know if people How to react to being in a situation of "absolute loneliness". And while he was "practising his hands", he would also mock those people, while contemptuously appreciating their insignificance and fragility, while fantasizing about his power in "absolute loneliness". "Absolute loneliness" is what he experiences in the hell of his own creation, his self-rationalization of his "deficiency" of not feeling love for himself, not experiencing kindness. Whether it's hell, the landscape of the end, or his memory, it's all in the service of John's own "love incompetence", and he wants to isolate himself and others in hell without "love". In addition to creating an absolutely lonely hell, the reason why John keeps removing his traces is that he wants people to believe that "evil" is not caused by him, but exists in the first place, and he wants to make it worse. Many people believe that human nature is supposed to be like this, and more and more people are encouraged to take the initiative to create a hell of absolute loneliness. John is right, everyone must die, and human beings are equal in the face of death, but he cannot make decisions for others, he cannot decide lightly whether others should die, and he is not qualified to decide whether others should die alone.
The theme of "Monster" is actually very simple, that is, "love". People must not lack love. The reason why people are people is that people can taste "five spoons of sugar", otherwise they will only fall into hell and become monsters. "Monster" is a lot like the "reverse" "Sacred Rule of X", both have a soft-spoken "devil" that can deceive people, they will both listen to their victims tell their stories, and both will be able to convert the ordinary Ordinary people become murderers. But the difference is that the police officer Takabe who traced the "devil" Mamiya in "X Shengji" eventually became Mamiya after witnessing the "hell" of Mamiya, which shows that the evil in human nature is rooted in everyone's heart. , and as long as there are conditions, everyone may become a devil, and human nature may be inherently evil; while the doctor Tianma who traces the "devil" John in "Monster", after experiencing John's "hell", he refuses to become John and refuses to fulfill John's "hell" construction plan, everyone may become Jesus, and human nature may be inherently good. But no matter what human nature is like, I am afraid even Pegasus does not know, but we all know that we are not living in hell, because we still have love.
5 Is "Monster" procrastinating? Are you making a fool of yourself?
I do not think so. Because although there are many episodes, almost none of them are useless. Whether it is to shape the characters, advance the plot or create suspense, 74 episodes are not long, and even the last few episodes are a bit rushed. Besides, I admit that the ending is really not that "surprising". Most audiences (including me before) have a "rush to see the answer" attitude towards "suspense" type works, no matter what the process is, As long as the ending is high-energy, surprise is a good work, but "Monster" is not a suspenseful work in the strict sense. This can be seen from its size. It wants to tell every episode of the story in a down-to-earth manner. Pull out alone
"Abandoned Man? Chapters such as The Abandoned Woman, Thursday's Youth, Five Spoons of Sugar, and The Monster's Abyss can all make excellent short stories, and are amazing. So even if the ending of "Monster" is not very good, isn't the excellence of the first 73 episodes enough to make it a good work?
The narrative mode of "Monster" is a "one trunk, continuous flowering" mode, which is very common in British and American TV series. Take the popular American drama "Suspect Tracker" as an example, Li Si and Finch save people, so every episode has new characters appearing, each episode is a complete story, and the real main line of the story is that Li Si looks back on his past, Find out the truth about his own suspended animation and Finch's complicated relationship with the government. The former will end after almost every small story, while the latter will continue to peel off the cocoon, and the protagonists of some small stories will also have a relationship with the main line, such as Sister Gen. Therefore, the narrative mode of "Monster" can fully support the volume of 74 episodes. After all, if converted into a TV series, it is more than 30 episodes, which is almost two seasons of "The Suspect", and I rarely criticize "The Suspect". Procrastinating comments.
Taking a step back, the charm of "Monster" lies in its "mysteriousness". It provides an ambiguous story, which can be interpreted in many ways, and everyone has many interpretations for the theme, characters and plot. , for example, Henry James's "The Screw is Tightening". Although the work has only one unchangeable ending, the audience can have countless interpretations. The beauty brought by this ambiguity and ambiguity is more than clear valuable.
Why did Six Tianma never dare to shoot? Why save John in the end?
It is also mentioned above that Tianma symbolizes absolute goodness, and is a Jesus-like existence. It is his instinct to save people. Just as Jesus will forgive those who nailed him to the cross, if Tianma shoots, although it is in line with our audience's expectations. It is expected, but it will also cause the collapse of Tianma's character. In the process of watching film and television dramas, it is easy for us to bring ourselves in and look at problems from our own perspective, but in fact, whether the plot is reasonable is not judged by the audience, but by whether the plot conforms to the internal logic of the characters. Shooting is completely in line with his character and motivation, so there is nothing to blame.
In addition to being in line with Tianma's character, another important reason for choosing to rescue John again is that Tianma does not want to follow John's script, otherwise he will become an accomplice, a part of "absolute evil", and also became the object of John's manipulation. Why is John so obsessed with having Pegasus kill him? I once thought that John kept killing just to keep angering Pegasus, let him walk in hell, and destroy his humanity, and finally kill him. Killing "extreme evil" can only be accomplished by "extreme good", and once Such a balance of good and evil will also be broken, which is impossible, has God ever killed the devil? And John wanted to break the balance, but of course he couldn't.
Where did Seven John end up?
This is a completely open ending, which can be interpreted in many ways. Like some friends said, John thinks he is loved and finds his humanity, so he leaves traces, and then goes to Tianma, or even to the toilet went. But I also have my own thoughts, because even if John knew his mother's love, he was still denying the existence of love, because even if his mother chose to keep John in his memory, he was still doubting whether his mother was out of love for him, or whether Because out of love for his sister (he suspects his mother has confused him with his sister in a hurry).
So is John out of love and wants to get back his mother's love? Actually not, he just keeps denying love, he has neither love nor heart, so he can't think with human logic, and he won't be influenced by Tianma's love. I think this is a rather symbolic ending, that is, absolute evil cannot be influenced, and it will not be eliminated, and the confrontation between good and evil between John and Tianma will never end, and this scene can be real , or it can be Tianma's imagination. After experiencing "god communication" with John, he can't believe that John will stop here, and John will not disappear from the world, just as Tianma has experienced countless hardships and will not Die as easily.
8. What is a real monster?
Doubts and denials of love and connection between humans are the real monsters. As John said to Tenma in the finale, when his mother gave away his sister, the monster appeared, that was the beginning of the monster that inspired John, and he began to fear himself because he didn't love and couldn't love. Therefore, the monster is not the mother after all, not the Czechoslovak secret police, nor the East German government, but John himself. It’s just that these people and institutions are doing all kinds of acts against human nature. With the motive of "rationalization", it provides favorable evidence for the existence of the monster in John's body. These people and things that violate human nature have raised this monster bigger and bigger.
Why is Jiutianma so powerful? Why did the Japanese become "saviors"?
Because this is a manga drawn by a Japanese and an anime produced, it is centered on the Japanese. Just as Americans let American superheroes save the world in "The Avengers", we let the Chinese save the world in "The Wandering Earth".
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