PLAYER INFO Name: Pan Contact: PM Are you over 18?: Yep
CHARACTER INFO Character Name: Kenzo Tenma Canon: Monster (Naoki Urasawa) Canon Point: Episode 73, after he completes Johan's surgery
Appearance:
Tenma’s appearance is easily the least interesting thing about him. An unassuming man, he’s neither too tall nor too short, neither ugly nor especially handsome, plainly dressed, with those around him defaulting to describing him as "Asian," his race being the one trait that sets him apart in the European setting.
Age: 40
Setting:
Monster is set in the tail end of the Cold War, spanning the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall and the resulting German reunification (1986 to 1998, to be precise). It couldn't have been set anywhere else, when its main themes include optimism in the nature of mankind in the wake of terrible crimes against humanity and the nature of remembering the past while looking into the future, all under the long shadow of repressive regimes and the hatred bred by ideological, racial and cultural divisions. Belying its title, the universe has little in the way of myths or the supernatural. It's our world, with Urasawa dedicating feverish attention to every detail for historical accuracy. The series follows the main characters as they travel through the country and across the border to the Czech Republic.
Tenma is meant to stand as an archetype. As antithesis to the titular monster Johan, Tenma heals where Johan murders, he stands for hope where Johan stands for despair, and he relates to the people he meets along his journey where Johan seeks the perfect suicide by erasing everyone who ever knew him.
Most of all, where Johan stands for death, Tenma stands for life, not only in the biological sense of hearts beating and lungs pumping air but also the philosophical: sitting on the grass on a sunny day, the company of friends, the taste of delicious Weisswurst and learning how to fly kites — all the tiny things that constitute a worthwhile existence. His message to his patients is constant: I gave you another chance, so make it count. Where Johan leaves behind a trail of dead bodies, in his wake Tenma leaves reconciliation between a child and the man who killed her mother, forgiveness from parents whose son strayed, and newfound gladness for what remains of life for thieves and murderers alike. Time and again, the series shows how evil is banal, a slow chipping away at one's conscience, a little stumble and a long fall. It is a dead fish flowing along the river of small acts of selfishness and callousness, excuses like I'm just doing my job and everybody does it. Tenma is a rejection of this, a swimming up the river, evidence for how virtue arrives not in one grand sweep of the hand, but in accumulations, a careful maintenance of mundane trivialities that build up to a meaningful life, a healthy relationship, and purposeful work.
That's not to say it comes naturally to him. Genius is a common refrain heard from those around him, an empty praise that misses the fearful attention, diligence and discipline he applies not only to his work but also to his life. Tenma is a man committed to morality for its own sake, who invests himself wholly and deliberately to it beyond what is reasonable, the kind of paragon who makes others uneasy. He has his traditionally heroic moments, like when he takes a detour from his personal agenda to save the Turkish district from arson or when he does his utmost to save a detective who wanted to try him for murder, and the decisive turn, when he saved Johan's life a second time. But where other heroes go home to their ordinary lives after these tests of character, he keeps on, knowing that there are crises everywhere, all the time, and to stay his hand in peaceful Düsseldorf is no less evil than standing in front of a dying child in another part of the world. He plans and executes his good deeds in cold blood. He is called stoic and ascetic for it, a man who carries the weight of the world's injustices upon his shoulders, yet someone in total harmony with himself. It is this that grants him certitude and immovable courage, as when he kept preternatural calm with a gun to his temple while forcing a terrorist to admit his guilt, or when he called for Dieter to leave his abuser who had his shotgun pointed at the boy's head. Like Johan, he knows how to tease out a person's weaknesses, but where Johan fans the flames, Tenma starves it of power by refusing to submit to fear, hatred or cynicism.
What he lacks is a merciful blindness that lets others shut their minds to what is unbearable, opening himself up to unlimited and often crushing responsibility. The standard to which he holds himself — a degree of detachment from his own interests to care for absolute strangers, and indifference to a life of comfort and security — can seem inhumanly lofty, separating him from others. That is to say he has always been an outsider, prone to bouts of loneliness, never quite fitting in with the Japanese culture he was born to or the German society he chose. He is caring yet distant, loving in a way that is universal and dispersed. He exhibits kindness and a generosity of spirit attested by anyone who encounters him, earning him furious loyalty among his patients and colleagues alike, but he lacks friends. Nowhere is this more obvious than when he reunites with his peer, Rudi Gillen, who spent the last decade fearing that Tenma would tattle after he saw him cheating on an exam. When Rudi tells him this, he lies, an attempt to bring himself down to earth, and says he was cheating too, all to then say: we can call ourselves friends now, can't we? He lives true to his principle that all lives, without exception, are equal, and is predictable in his denials of his exceptionalism. But in a sick twist of fate, it is Johan who identifies with him on being equally unable to shut their eyes to the inherent injustice and cruelty present in the world, the rotten core of it all. So it was no great feat for Johan to give him a little nudge out the door to condemn him to a life on the run, to be forced to hide and give away his name, to be invisible, to belong to no one and nothing, and so, to see the so-called scene of the doomsday: that place of utter loneliness.
One of the central questions posed by the series is: who is the monster? Johan's answer is that it is himself and everyone, because evil is everpresent and almighty with every human heart harboring the capacity to be monstrous, and he would have Tenma kill him to prove his belief that even the very best is just as despicable. And for nearly the entire series, Tenma seems to play into his hand. Here's the thing to understand: his journey is neither about vengeance (that would be Nina's) nor is it about proving his innocence, as he tells anyone who asks. He discards years of his life to hunt down Johan because he believes himself culpable for every murder Johan commits, because it was him who brought the child back to life only to imbue him with his hatred for those who mistreated him, because it is only right to sever one's limb to keep oneself from sinking deeper into darkness. Here's the other thing to understand: Tenma wasn't spared from the irreversibility of murder by the strokes of luck that caused him to miss chance after chance to execute his plan and kill Johan for good. That's besides the point, because he has already made his choice a hundred times over through his smallest deeds. That is, the choice not to believe in monsters but to believe that every human can become anything, good or bad, and that people are equal in more than just death, but also in feeling exiled and alone, in fearing failure and death, in hungering for joy and seeking forgiveness, and in life.
In the end, Tenma learns what he has always known: that there are no monsters, only monstrous acts.
Canon Abilities/Skills:
Tenma is a celebrated neurosurgeon often praised for the impeccability of his work. That same precision is seen in his skill with guns, earning him top marks from his ex-Mossad trainer, who testified to his extreme concentration. He's fluent in Japanese and German, with some proficiency in English. He used to play the guitar, well enough to consider a career in music, with Al Green's Let's Stay Together being his go-to tune. He cooks a decent nikujaga stew, but is a horrendous dancer.
ON STATION 72 Symbiote Specialization: Rho Symbiote Ability:
Subconscious manipulation.INCEPTION!!! He can venture into the mind of non-Hosts, from tardigrades to highly sentient aliens, to probe its content or implant thoughts and memories. The ability will remain a blunt instrument at best, capable only of grasping a fraction of anyone's subconsciousness and tossing an idea into the vast mental ocean with the tiny hope of it ever catching. On the bright side, he leaves no trace and his victims won't notice the intrusion.
STAGE I. He can get a rough sense of a non-Host mind, similar to getting a taste of its approximate flavor and general leanings rather than any specific thought. In doing so, he would absorb whatever he gathers and have to make extra effort to differentiate what's his and what's not. He can only do this on one target about every other day, and the exercise would cause him to be confused for hours after.
STAGE 2. He can probe a non-Host mind as above and implant a single crude idea. This idea is at most a simple static image, a short sentence, a few seconds of sound or a 1-2 word command (say, "eat" or "turn left"). Whether the victim becomes aware of the idea, let alone follows it, depends on how closely it resembles its existing thoughts and biases. He can only do this on one target about every week, and the exercise would cause him to be confused for an entire day. Contamination by the mind he invades would be even more severe than in Stage 1.
STAGE 3. He can probe and implant crude ideas as above, as well as permanently excise a simple thought from a non-Host mind. At most, he can delete the memory of a static image, a short sentence (such as a name), a few seconds of sound or take the wind out of a straightforward urge, like the craving for ice cream. What he takes away can be returned to the non-Host, for example by someone telling them the name again, but the victim won't be able to recall it on their own. He can only do this on one target about every week, and the exercise would cause him to be confused for a few days. Contamination by the mind he invades would be even more severe than in Stage 2, and he would be unable to forget what he takes from other minds.
Inventory: A CZ 75 pistol, change of clothes, basic first aid items, rudimentary toiletries, all in a navy overnight satchel.
Five hours later, his nose had become so accustomed to the sharp scents of the operating room (iodine, burned hair, evaporating alcohol), that the smell of rain feels to him like a blanket of comfort. The edges of things are softened in the fog, shapes rendered vague and uncertain in the half light of dawn, that at first he mistakes the form as another shadow cast by the low-lying houses. He is tired, besides, his surroundings seem surreal to him after having reduced his world to a few inches of veins, arteries, nerves, the folds of the cortex looming as large in his mind as mountains.
Tenma thinks he would like to go hiking after this, Der weg der Sinne, the way he had always wanted to.
Just then the shadow shifts, grows large and dominates his view until he notes oil-slick scales and stained feathers a moment before instinct prompts him to duck behind a nearby pillar. The creature (das Monstrum, a voice in him says) barrels into the clinic to the sound of shrieks and broken glass, metal instruments clattering on the floor.
He finds he's breathing hard, heart thumping against his ears, and he has to tell himself that he's afraid, deathly afraid, and that this is real. He is here, this is happening. When the creature cuts short a scream, he says under his breath, "It's real."
"It's you they're looking for, you know." The man is speaking Japanese, of all languages.
The realization alarms rather than comforts, and in sheer irrationality, he tries to recall if he had spoken German just now, or Japanese, or if he had said anything at all. He pictures the doors of his mind closing in on himself, very tightly, to the point where light can only slip through in paper-thin rays to illuminate the single possible way. The trouble is he understands. He knows what the man (dark-haired, blue-eyed, white coat) means to say, that he could stop this carnage here and now if he stops hiding, that it is a matter of stepping into the room where the monster rages and giving himself in.
"Stay here," he says, stepping forward cloaked in the charade of heroism, until the man catches him by the arm and he feels glad for the interruption.
"Not like that," the man says. "You'd just die, and no one would be saved. I'll show you another way, yes?"
Tenma is tired, he has to tell himself this. He imagines the sharp scent of wild grass in the summer up the Rothaarsteig, the green all around, the peace. The lack of fear. But he is afraid, he reminds himself, and hasn't he done enough, when will it be enough? His mind is no meandering mountain road for him to wind and bend as he pleases, it is a straight and narrow path to an ending he is viscerally conscious of. There is no turning away.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
