That Monstrous Distance
Regular readers of this blog might remember that, some years ago I wrote a handful of articles for the John Paul II Institute’s Humanum Review.
The most recent of those articles was a review of the anime series Monster, a 74 episode adaptation of Naoki Urusawa’s manga of the same name. The series was a thriller where the protagonist, a Japanese surgeon named Kenzo Tenma who gives life saving surgery to a German boy named Johann, found in a murder scene with a bullet in his brain.
As a gesture of thanks to his saviour, Johann frames Tenma for murder years later.
What follows is Tenma’s quest to clear his name, and also to kill Johann who, now an adult, becomes the titular Monster. Johann is a strange couplet, capable of heartless brutality and, because of it, the object of adulation for scores of people across Germany and beyond. As the series progresses, we see the trail of destruction left behind by Johann, but we also come to witness the ways in which that very destruction garners the admiration of old communists, wannabe neo-nazis, and countless others. So enthralling is his persona that, even in the course of chasing him down with the aim of killing him, he threatens to make Tenma in his image.
In my Humanum Review essay, I spoke about the way in which Johann embodies the qualities of a Monster. On an etymological level, Johann is a monster - a monstrum - insofar as he is the subject of a monere, an act of warning. On a sociological level, he is a monster insofar as he has no communal ties (which are precisely the very thing that prevents Tenma from following the path taken by Johann).
It was not until I rewatched the series that I picked up on another reason that seemed to tie the first two together.
In episode 12, Tenma’s search for Johann took him to an infamous orphanage named 511 Kinderheim, which conducted experiments on the orphans, often centered around turning the children, including Johann, into Nietzschean ubermenschen. In his research into the fate of 511 Kinderheim, Tenma learns of the role Johann played in turning the orphanage into a decisive war of all against all, with 50 staff and children all engaged in pitched battles which culminate in the destruction of the institution and everyone in it.
Everyone, that is, except Johann who, as recounted by one of his army of admirers, calmly sat on a chair on the top of a staircase and simply observed the killing and burning unfold far beneath him. In describing Johann’s role in formenting this conflict and subsequently keeping a cool distance from it, the admirer mentions that Johan was someone who:
…was born to stand at the very top of the world…he was beyond human, a monster from the beginning…
While my last essay hinted that it was intimacy with a communion of persons that protected Tenma from becoming a second Johann, what I failed to mention was its inverse. Namely, that it was distance that formed the basis on which monsters are made. To warn - monere - implies that there is still a distance from the object of the warning. At the same time, it was Johann’s pattern of staying distant that makes him the object of such adulation from those who have no idea who he is, which in turn makes him into the monster capable of such great acts of destruction.
Strangely, while rewatching Monster has made me aware of a new side to Johann’s monstrosity, it also highlighted the crucial link between intimacy on the one hand our salvation on the other. It also brought home how our salvation by a personal God at once brings into sharper relief both his transcendence as well as his intimacy with his creatures.
Support Awkward Asian Theologian on Patreon, and help make a change to the theological web.
