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mayoxx · 3 years

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Hi!

Why do you think that in Monster doesn't want to reveal the real names of the twins even in the end and and leaving us with that question unsolved? Is there any meaning or reason behind this?

At the end, when Tenma goes to see the mother, she tells him that even though Bonaparta forbade her to give the children names, she did and tells Tenma but still the serie doesn't want to reveal us to the viewers,and appears that Nina and Johan know their name,but they forgete it(I mean,they maybe know because when Guillen hypnotizes her,she said "I will not say my name".I think that it's curious that Nina said to Johan when they were in the Germany-Czech fronteir,"say my name" or when she had go to Three Frogs with Dieter and she remember that Johan calls her no as Nina or Anna )

Right in the same scene in which she tells them the names of her children, we see Nina hurried to see that her thesis is excellent and that she graduated from a lawyer. The funny thing is that the professor calls her "Fraudline Nina Fortner"(Is that her real name?)

Nina's last scene is her excited to find out that Tenma returned and apparently, she overcame her traumas.

In the case of Johan, Tenma goes to visit him still in a coma and reveals that his mother loves him and that he knows what his name is (perhaps, who he really is) to wake up and tell him that his mother was the one who decided which child to given. My curiosity here is because Johan says it in the dream and not in reality? Is it something that Urusawa wanted to tell us but obviously there is a hidden message?

Thanks you for read it.

Hello anon!

The twins’ names are not revealed simply because they are not important. In short, what matters to the story is not what their names are, but that they do not have them. They are nameless monsters, after all.

In Monster the twins’ names are symbolically relevant for multiple reasons.

First of all, I am not sure of the source, but I read some time ago that Nina, Anna and Johan are pretty common names. So, Urasawa chose those names specifically for this. There is nothing special about them. They are names many children are given, just like the twins could have been like many other children if they were given the chance. And, of course, this also means that many other children could have turned out like the twins if they had been through the same traumatic experiences.

Secondly, a mother that does not give a name to her kids is a mother that fails:

This is why Johan’s doubt is so painful. Other than Vera sacrificing one of her kids, Johan is not even sure she knew who was who. A child’s identity is rooted in how their parent reacts to them. However, Viera could not even differentiate between her kids, so they end up confusing their dentities and memories with each other.

That said, Viera was clearly in a very broken psychological state by the time and it is not that she did not want to be a proper mother for her twins:

She had come up with names, but could not give them to the kids. However, by the end she remembers them and so Tenma is able to tell the twins and to convey that deep down their mother loves them.

Thirdly, names are symbolic of identities and personhood, so the twins lacking them is about them lacking both. This is why they define who they are through each other. This is also why they both are deep down scared to be nothing, but monsters. It is just that Johan embraces this fear, while Nina refuses to face it.

This leads us to the scenes you mention in your ask.

I could not find the one when Dieter and Nina go to the Three Frogs, I am sorry. I reread the chapters, but saw no mention of Johan calling Nina by name. If anything, we are shown in other scenes that Johan mostly calls her Anna.

When it comes to the scene at the border, I think that it actually shows the twins do not know their names:

Nina is begging Johan to call her by her name because once again a name is a symbol of who you are. They are no-ones, they are nameless children left behind by their mother and are exhausted and scared. However, they desperately want to be more. They want to be people and not to feel alone. This is why Nina asks her brother to call out for her, so that she can feel someone truly knows her and so that she truly exists. However, Johan can’t do it because they were not even given names.

Let’s highlight the twins’ scene parallels Wolf’s death scene in the same chapter:

A name is a proof of existence. It is the proof someone knows you and so that even if you are going in the land of the nameless (death, nothingness) a part of you keeps on living with the people who love you.

The twins are desperately looking for this because they were negated it.

Finally, there is this scene:

Nina here is not talking about her name, but about who she is.

As we know from future chapters, here Nina has just remembered that she is the one that went to the Red Roses Mansion. This is what she really does not want to say.

Notice that she actually offers an indirect answer... she repeats “I’m home. I’m home”.

This is foreshadowing. Nina has convinced herself she is the one who said “Welcome back”. However, this is false. She is the one who got caught and not Johan. However, Nina does not want to admit it. She does not want to admit it for several reasons. First of all, there is the pain of being the “unwanted one”, which is something addressed at the very end of the story. Then there is the fear and shame of being a monster:

These panels make it very clear. Nina here is remembering what happened at the Red Roses Mansion and she associates it to the picture of the nameless Monster swallowing people. She is scared that the monster inside her is going to gulp her down destroying her very frail sense of self.

So she clings to the idea Johan is the one who was brought to the Mansion:

And here is why:

Nina is scared that she could have become the monster, if she had been the one brought to the mansion. The tragic irony is of course that she indeed was the one who saw all those people die. However, this did not turn her into a monster, but her inability to accept this horror ends up turning Johan in the monster he is (of course this is tragic and none of the twins’ fault tbh).

So, Nina and Johan are defined by the opposite way they relate to “that memory”:

That memory is probably the one of their mother’s choice.

Nina refuses it. She builds an identity that is negates everything that memory represents.

Johan embraces it. He builds a self identity that is everything that memory is about.

Nina refuses herself. Johan embraces her to the point that he becomes her or... to better say... he becomes a twisted version of her:

This is why symbolically he dresses as Nina while he is on his personal journey to retrieve “his memories”.

This is ironically because, even if Johan embodies nichilism, he is deep down scared of nothingness:

The monster inside Johan is not another personality, like Nina mistakenly believes initially. It is just the emptiness he feels.

By the end, however, Nina remembers everything. Johan has instead to accept that he is not his sister and is finally stopped because of two people (Nina and Tenma) aknowledging who he is:

Anyway, in the end, as you say, we are shown what happened to both Nina and Johan.

Nina is finishing her studies. her last scene is an inversion and parallel to her introduction. She is once again late, like in the beginning. However, at the start of the story she says she wants to be a prosecutor, so she wants to have criminals condemned. In the end, she has changed her mind and wants to instead become a lawyer, so that she can save people’s lives. This is because she has changed her mind about death penalty and Johan’s himself. She has chosen to forgive him and in this way she can finally forgive and accept herself. She is called Nina Fortner by her professor (Fraudlin means something like Miss, I think) because this is who she is. She does not need her true name because she is already Nina Fortner for all the people who love her.

Johan’s last scene is instead ambiguous and I have discussed it here:

I would like to highlight that this scene in itself is ambiguous. Is Tenma dreaming? Or is Johan truly talking with him? It is not clear, but in the first case we can say Tenma has finally understood the truth behind the mystery Johan is, while in the second case we have Johan finally opening up about what hurt him the most.

In both Nina and Tenma’s cases, it is important that their understanding of Johan is radicated in their understanding of themselves. Nina is Johan’s sister and so she must understand him as a sister, she must untie and solve all the ambiguities and misunderstanding of their relationship and uncover the past they share. Tenma is the doctor who saved Johan’s life and clearly Johan has laced on him as to a father figure, even if in a twisted way. Because of this, it makes sense that in the end he is the one who realizes how much his mother’s choice has affected Johan.

In other words, Johan is a mirror of both Nina and Tenma and his elusive nature is what keeps the story together thematically. The story asks what a monster is and if the answer were simple the story would not be so captivating.

In the end both Tenma and Nina “defeat” the devil, but they do so not by killing him, but by refusing his nihilistic logic. They have managed to free themselves from the devil’s constant tempation. Even if the life of the man with big eyes is difficult the only hope lies in fighting against evilness and injustice through a correct behaviour. If one leaves that path they will only suffer and lose themselves.

This is also why the final image is so powerful:

Johan disappears once again and we, as readers, can only hope he will use the second chance he was given in a positive way and not to start another cycle. That said, this is something we can’t be completely sure of as we can’t be sure of evilness completely disappearing from the world. What we can be sure of is that it is necessary to resist it.

Is the mystery behind Johan finally solved? Or is it just a rationalization Tenma does in his head to explain him? Will Johan stop being a monster and start to finally be his own person?

I think the narrative implies that yes, this is the truth behind Johan and that yes, he will live as a normal person. However, the ending is open and this is why it is so powerful.

This is also why we are not revealed Johan’s name and why we are not told what he will do. All in all, this is the story of a “monster”. What will happen to the person inside the monster is not the story’s concern.

Thank you for the ask!

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