Finished Monster (no spoilers).

I finished watching Monster on Sci-Fi yesterday and I have to say that was one of the more satisfying conclusions I’ve seen recently. It remained faithful to the rest of the show while still wrapping what needed to be wrapped up and leaving just enough room to spark discussion. To be honest, after a while I kinda forgotten what had happened in certain parts. It became too intricate-- almost to the point where Urasawa seemed to be adding more dimensions and stretching out the story just for the fun of it.

I’ve heard the Monster manga is going out of print and I saw that my local Borders had the rest of what I needed to complete my collection. But I decided not to pick any of it up because I realized that I much prefer the anime over the manga, which Viz hasn't released past box set 1. Urasawa might be very good at what he does, but he has some tendencies that get quite tiresome after a while. Every revelation has to be super important and these have to be accompanied by close-ups of character's faces that he telegraphs from a mile away. He can get rather preachy too and his characters start to resemble each other after a while (thanks in part that he designs so many of them). But I find these flaws much easier to forgive in the anime. Aside from the elements of sound, the overall visual design and execution of the anime is superb for such a long running show. The animation and background art quality are remarkably consistent for its 74 episode run. There's a really solid staff with people like former Ghibli animator Hiroyuki Morita, Hiroshi Shimizu, Yoshiaki Tsubata, and Kunihiko Hamada, among others.

For the last stretch of episodes, the one that stood out for me was episode 71. This episode was written by Masahiro Hayashi, directed by Ryousuke Nakamura, with Junichi Takaoka as the animation director. While the realistic style of animation for Monster is consistent, you can tell right from the very first scene that they were aiming a bit higher on this episode. A slightly higher frame rate that leads to richer movement easily makes this episode stand out, even among the climax that spans across 6 episodes. My favorite scene here is when Lunge enters the hotel lobby with his rifle and the scene that occurs. Really nice timing and framing.

If you live in the US, then you can watch all of Monster on Hulu, or you can buy it all off of iTunes.... And none of these options are what I want. Viz needs to actually release the rest of this show on DVD, even if it's one cheap, slimpack DVD collection.