(Note that I’ll use the name “Johan” here despite him using different names)

Preamble

The point of this post is to explore small feats that lack analysis or interpretation of methodology. Pretty simple feat, I doubt it’ll result in some massive upscale or anything.

This is really to prompt others to analyse Monster this way, as I hope to show how rewarding and fun this kind of analysis can be. It’s surprising how many small Easter eggs Urasawa left throughout the anime hinting at Johan’s method while not spelling it out. 

People generally already know how good Johan’s SI and influence building is. But it’s helpful to see a method to it.

Social integration feat with old war veteran

In episode 5 of the anime, we see Dr Tenma investigating Johan in Cologne, the city of one of the murdered couples. 

He asks the neighbours about the murders, but they’re closed off and reluctant to talk about it. Eventually, he’s led to an old war veteran, who invites him in for tea.The veteran tells Tenma that the boy (Johan, going by a different name) predicted Tenma would eventually come here. According to the old man, Johan told him that one day he would go visit his sister on her 20th birthday.

This is part of Johan’s broader plan of stringing Tenma along a predetermined path:

1. Johan kills Junkers

2. Tenma seeks out Johan

3. Tenma visits the cities of the murdered couples

4. Tenma is pointed toward Heidelberg by this old man

5. At Heidelberg, he’s framed for the Fortners’ murder

6. Tenma is on the run

7. Tenma becomes even more obsessed with stopping Johan, feeling responsible for bringing him back to life

After escaping the hospital as a child, Johan and Anna lived with many foster families throughout Germany. In Cologne, Johan met this old man and learned French and English from him.

How did Johan come to use this old man as part of his plan? We can extrapolate his process from what we see in the anime (see screenshots)

I think the anime gives us enough clues to reconstruct Johan’s process. 

Firstly, the old man is blind. Either Johan deduces this independently or the old man told him. 

In the anime, we see:

1. cataracts in his eyes
2. him handling objects without directly looking at them
3. him staring forward while navigating his own home

Assuming he was already blind back then, Johan could’ve inferred this easily.

Despite being blind, the old man:

1. keeps well-maintained, framed photographs of his u-boat crew and himself as a young soldier during the war. 
2. Military memorabilia 
3. Carefully folded and neat beret

Here’s what Johan could notice: 

The photos were clearly not for himself anymore. He can’t see them. —> they are for others to see. 

He lives alone —> they are for guests to see. 

From this Johan could likely infer a few things:
- the old man values memories, his time in the war and legacy
- he wants visitors
- he wants his stories remembered
- he still psychologically identifies with his past (emotionally nostalgic)

This is reinforced by how quickly the old man told Tenma detailed war stories with almost no prompting, and how the old man very readily invited Tenma up for tea. 

So Johan begins visiting him regularly and listening to him talk, confirmed by the old man himself.

This serves multiple purposes:

1. Building a relationship with the old man
2. Giving the old man emotional engagement and companionship
3. Appealing to the old man’s desire to be remembered
4. To satisfy Johan’s own fascination with “the ultimate fear”

Once Johan (known to the old man as Franz) establishes this relationship, he can ask for a favour:
“One day, a doctor named Kenzo Tenma will come asking about me. Tell only him.”

As the old man likes Johan, he would be more inclined to oblige his request. 

It is likely that Johan instructed the old man to tell only Tenma as Johan doesn’t want anyone else to know of him, of course. He wants ONLY Tenma to follow the breadcrumbs.

This is evidenced by the old man stating Johan had predicted specifically Tenma to come, and how the old man knew Tenma before Tenma even introduced himself. 

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you? The boy told me about you. You’re doctor Tenma, aren’t you?”

Johan somehow gave the old man a non-visual description of Tenma—whether it be his actions, or his manner of speaking, or his accent—for the old man to identify Tenma and tell only him.

Note that Johan did not randomly choose an old man to deliver this highly important message

Why choose him specifically?

The obvious one is that the old man is blind: he couldn’t identify Johan, which synergised with Johan’s use of a fake name. 

Johan realizes the old man is isolated, emotionally nostalgic, and highly likely to remember emotionally significant requests.

Moreover, Johan could infer that war veterans, especially of this kind, often strongly value
- promises,
- legacy and memory, 
- storytelling,
- and meaningful encounters.

Moreover, you might’ve noticed the war veteran’s good memory, apparent by his ability to recall war stories with excruciating detail from decades ago. 

Hence Johan chose him because a lonely war veteran
- with strong memory
- strong attachment to stories and memory
- and likely a strong respect for promises and meaningful encounters
is actually an extremely reliable messenger.

In conclusion, Johan didn’t merely ask an old man to tell someone something: he had profiled, charmed and carefully groomed an ideal long-term messenger, serving as one information node in a wider network surrounding Tenma, designed to lead Tenma on a predetermined path.

>!Categories include: emotional understanding, emotional perception, social integration, profiling, information control, logical prediction, planning intricacies, strategy logistics.!<

Context: Johan painted on a water tank “Help! The Monster inside of me is about to explode!”

Most casual Monster fans interpret this as Johan talking about himself, professing his own grappling with the “Monster” inside of him. This is only partly true. 

It seems like Johan felt there was a monster inside him, distinct from himself. That would imply Johan’s killing only because it’s his split personality doing that. It’s too much to get into, but I’ll argue that this isn’t what Urasawa is trying to say. Instead, I’ll argue that Johan internalised “Franz Bonaparta” (before he realised he was a real person) as the monster inside him (before he read the Nameless Monster).

For the statement to make sense from Johan’s perspective, it would require Johan to have a sense of identity apart from this monster, for the monster to feel like an invasion or a separate entity. Johan didn’t feel like he had an identity, only his sister Anna did. That’s why I believe this statement can’t apply to him.

So why did he write it then? The answer is simple but deep: Johan wrote it to frame Tenma as having a double personality (confirmed in LN + anime).

This is where it gets convoluted and a bit confusing, so stay with me.

Rewind all the way back to when Junkers died. Imagine it from Johan’s perspective: you’re trying to frame Tenma, and lure him along your path. 

You’ve planted his tie at Heidelberg castle, you’ve killed his superiors 9 years ago and he conveniently benefited from it, you’ve linked him to the middle-aged couple murders. What would be the biggest barrier to framing Tenma?

To figure this out, Johan has to think from the perspective of the BKA. 

Let’s go over the facts of the case:

1. Junkers is connected to the middle-aged couple murders. He’s suspected as a lock pick 

2. Junkers was hit by a car, fleeing from something. He was in critical condition.

3. He was rushed over to Eisler Memorial Hospital, where Dr Tenma saved his life.

4. Junkers is guarded heavily in the hospital. 

5. While recovering, Junkers was lured out of the hospital and murdered in a carpark. 

6. The murder left no traces: no gunpowder residue, rain to wash away the traces. 

7. Tenma claims this is the work of Johan, the boy he saved 9 years ago.

PREMISES HE CAN WORK WITH:

Note that Johan knows with certainty that the BKA will know points 1-6. He was in direct control of that flow of information, as he controlled Junkers. There was NO assumption needed to assume the BKA knows point 1-6. 

Point 7 could be assumed via EU: Tenma is a good guy —> likely he’ll go to the police / BKA after witnessing me (Johan) kill Junkers in front of him. He’ll earnestly tell the BKA everything he saw. 

Now, imagine you’re Johan trying to frame Tenma, thinking from the POV of the BKA: what are the two biggest contradictions to the theory that “Tenma is guilty and the mastermind behind the Middle-aged couple murders”?

1. If Tenma is guilty, why not kill Junkers on the operating table?

If I’m the BKA, I’d wonder this: Tenma had a perfect opportunity to kill on the operating table. It was medically plausible that Junkers would die—even for a brilliant surgeon like Tenma, no one could blame him. 

So why didn’t Tenma kill junkers on the operating table, if he’s guilty?

2. If Tenma is guilty, why would he come up with such a ridiculous cover story?

Notice the murder of Junkers. 

No gunpowder left. Rain to “wash away the evidence”—said by inspector Lunge. 

This implies awareness of evidence and planning and sophistication and explicit intention to murder and get away with murder.

The weakest point in the whole murder is the cover story.

“The boy I saved 9 years ago came back and killed my patient!!! Then he left without a trace!!! Also he’s behind all the middle-aged couple murders.”

Ridiculous. If he’s guilty and coming up with this stuff, couldn’t he have chosen a better cover story? Why endanger all that perfect planning with such an absurd cover story?

Johan’s possible thinking

“Now, if I’m the BKA, what possible explanation could account for both of these?

Simple. Tenma has a split personality. Being a doctor and being a murderer are polar opposites: such a contradiction in a person could cause a personality split. 
I am Tenma the doctor, I cannot kill in the hospital. That’s why Dr Temma couldn’t kill Junkers then, and why Dr Tenma had to lure Junkers outside of the hospital to kill him.

Moreover, it explains the cover story: Dr Tenma genuinely believes “Johan”, which he feels as a separate personality, killed Junkers. This is why Dr Tenma is able to earnestly give a ridiculous sounding account, while still being verifiably false.

Tenma need not lie to be guilty.”

With this, Johan accounts for contradictions in the “Tenma-as-guilty” theory.

To do this, of course, Johan would need to assume the perspective of the BKA and reason from their perspective. To anticipate someone’s reasoning, you obviously must reason from their perspective first to see what they could think up.

Moreover, this completely counters Lunge’s reasoning. Whenever presented with evidence that Tenma is acting differently and that Johan truly does exist, Lunge will chalk it up to “Johan is Tenma’s shadow personality.”

And what happens?
In the anime, this is EXACTLY what Lunge does. I can’t remember the episode but I can recall the scene: Lunge is presented with evidence that Johan exists, and he says: “Yes. Johan is real. Johan is Tenma. Johan is real in Tenma’s mind.”

Even more of Johan’s reasoning / thinking feats

There are even more reasoning feats from Johan I didn’t touch on. 

His whole framing and luring of Tenma via breadcrumbs is one, which happens throughout the whole anime. 

His Jurgens profiling and deducing his childhood.

His 511 Kinderheim massacre could also be interpreted as partly a reasoning feat. 

His realisation that Franz Bonaparta is alive. 

Some other unusual Johan takes you don’t see on this sub

Johan > Canon L in intuition low diff, yes LOW diff. 

Johan > Hannibal in Manip overall mid diff

Johan is not that broken in Narrative scaling. If we go band for band, characters like Baku have even crazier narrative. Johan gets a decent buff with narrative. In fact, believing he’s so strong in narrative prompts people to call him a narrative merchant, and downplay his on-screen and off-screen feats. (Narrative statement =\= off-screen feat btw)

Kid Johan >>> Kid L >> Kid Koji in outsmarting. But in intelligence (LA, NCPS, fluid, General, crystallised) it’s the other way around. 

Note that there will be MAJOR spoilers for Monster if you read this without having consumed the media. I highly highly recommend watching it first.

Preamble

IMO, Johan is the most absurdly underrated character on this sub. People often say Johan has no reasoning & thinking feats. This is downright provably false. 

I’m of the opinion that almost every feat is also valid as a reasoning feat. Reasoning is the ability to make sound and evidenced conclusions based on premises. Thus, it’s clear that Reasoning and thinking are the broadest and, imo, the most important categories, as they touch almost all other categories. That means for me, every strategy feat, planning feat, foresight and MOST EU profiling feats are also at least slightly valid as reasoning feats. 

Johan’s reasoning feats are not purely reasoning feats. They often overlap with other categories like EU, profiling, trap-setting, foresight. 

And like most of his feats, they aren’t on-screen nor explained. Thus, a readers’ interpretation is required to infer and explicate Johan’s reasoning. I hope it becomes evident that my interpretation of his feats are grounded in the narrative and not biased or reaching.

1st Reasoning feat: Tenma’s sniper trap-setting in Schuwald’s library (see screenshots 1-4)

CONTEXT: Johan is cozying up to Schuwald, planning on using him to cause economic chaos across Europe. Dr. Tenma has been trying to find and kill Johan for a while now. Tenma purchased a sniper rifle just for this.

Here is one of Johan’s simpler and clearer reasoning feats. Note that this isn’t his pinnacle of reasoning, but I chose this because it’s pretty much undeniable and easy to understand from the get-go. 

P1: Tenma is trying to kill me (fully airtight premise. Evidenced by everything that happened before this)

P2: Tenma has come to my city (info from Roberto)

P3: Tenma was observing me from a long distance in multiple areas (observation from when Johan walked Schuwald in the garden)

C1: Tenma is trying to find a good spot to kill me, by observing where I repeatedly go.

P3: One way to kill someone while not getting caught is to do it from a distance. I know Tenma does not want to get caught. He’s been evading the BKA for so long. 

P4: Tenma was observing me from a long distance (same as P3)

P5: Tenma wants to find where I go repeatedly, that is to say, he wants to know where I’ll be consistently. That is to say, to kill me, he needs me to be somewhere consistently. (From conclusion 1)

C2: this all lines up with Tenma wanting to kill me with a sniper rifle.

P6: Tenma wants to kill me with a sniper rifle (this is an abduction, and shows good intuition too)

P7: to kill someone with a sniper rifle, you must have a clear sight and an open shot, ideally from above, and Tenma understands this. (“There must be no barriers between you and the target.”—this was told to Tenma when he bought the rifle. Clearly Johan could assume / induce this much.)

C3: Tenma will choose a spot where he’ll have a clear shot of me, with no barriers between us, and try to snipe me there.

STRAT / TRAP-SETTING: Up till now, all my locations have not been clear shots: people were in the way, and I was moving around. He also needs a place he KNOWS where I’ll be, to set up a sniper rifle. 

Tenma won’t choose to shoot me there. From the knowledge that he needs a clear shot, I can choose where he’ll be by providing him with the best possible shot.

Thus, I’ll get Schuwald to donate his library, making it a ceremony. Since Tenma knows I’m Schuwald’s right hand man now, he likely expects me to be there, which means he’ll be there himself. 

Oh how convenient! The second floor of this library has a clear sight of the stage, where Tenma likely expects I’ll be. Most likely, Tenma will choose to go to the second floor to snipe me. 

Let me tell Roberto to go there also, in advance. That way, I can use the sniper rifle to kill Schuwald, framing Tenma even further. I wanted to kill Schuwald anyway. This is even better. 

And what happened in the end?
Tenma indeed wanted to kill Johan with a sniper and chose the 2nd floor of the library to do this. 

Of course, Johan then reads the Nameless Monster and changes his strategy entirely, stating that “Schuwald no longer amuses me” and changes his aim from ending the world to something else. So this doesn’t happen.

>!CATEGORIES: THINKING + REASONING, STRATEGY, TRAP-SETTING, FORESIGHT (PREDICTION), INTUITION!<

Anyway, I know what some of you are thinking

1. That reasoning chain is not that impressive. It’s only okay.

Okay let me remind you: 
He managed to conclude accurately exactly where Tenma would try to kill him, and with what weapon——all from noticing Tenma was observing him from a distance in multiple areas. 

Regardless, I agree. This is not his most impressive reasoning. But it’s a valid feat and easy to understand, which is why I put it first: ***from here on out, my primary argument that Johan has reasoning / thinking feats is proven.*** I will now go on to explain a few of his more complex reasoning feats; some I’d even argue compare with L’s reasoning. 

2. That was a reach!!!! How can you conclude that from all that!!!

Only conclusion 2 was a bit of a reach, concluding that Tenma wanted to kill Johan using a sniper rifle. But you can clearly follow the logic. It’s abductive reasoning, which requires intuition. And Johan’s intuition is excellent. 

And if you consider this kind of abductive reasoning too illogical because of the leaps it took, then a good 60% of Baku’s abductions are invalid too. 

3. This is just your interpretation. You can’t prove this was his actual reasoning.

Yes that’s true, but can you point out any flaws in my interpretation? Any way it deviates from the narrative in an untenable way? If you can, I’ll genuinely hear you out in the comments. 

2nd Reasoning feat: Poisoning of Tenma’s superiors (see screenshot 5-6)

CONTEXT: Tenma saved Johan’s life despite orders to prioritise the Mayor’s surgery, because Johan came first to the hospital. Tenma’s career is suffering immensely as a result of doing the right thing. Tenma complains to Johan about his superiors who wronged him. Johan hears it while faking a coma.

From this, Johan knows a few things:

1. The Hospital executives are greedy, “only caring about money” as Tenma says.
2. Tenma saved his life at great cost to himself. 
3. Tenma wants his superiors dead.

Now Johan has multiple goals:

1. Kill Tenma’s superiors
2. Help Tenma’s career
3. However, most insidiously and subtly, his third goal is to make Tenma feel guilty and responsible for the murders, as he’ll benefit from it.

The third goal’s full extent is not realised until 9 years later (crazy planning feat for a child!) where Johan kills Junkers and manipulates Tenma into trying to stop him. This is fuelled by Tenma feeling responsible for Johan, and responsible for the murders of his superiors.

Let’s now explore his thinking: 

Tenma’s superiors are greedy —> anyone who eats candy donated to a comatose kid must be greedy and a bad person too —> my best bet is to poison these candies, so that, on the off chance that Tenma’s superiors eat them, they’ll die. Regardless, anyone who steals candy from a comatose kid is probably a bad guy and Tenma wouldn’t like him anyway. 

I don’t want Tenma to appear guilty right away —> that’s to say, there can’t be any physical evidence linking him to the murders —> poisoned candies, no evidence linking him because there’s a time delay from when they eat the candy and when they die + No one will know from where they got the candy —> Tenma can’t be arrested for this, though he could very well be suspected 

If I remove all of Tenma’s superiors who were hindering his career, there’ll be no more barriers to his career —> he will progress upwards in the hospital —> even though he didn’t commit the murders, he’ll feel responsible as he benefitted from them, because that’s the kind of person he is. 

Again, quite straightforward. The only leap in logic was betting that Tenma’s superiors would eat his candy, which he couldn’t know for sure. But there was genuinely no other way to kill his superiors. It was the best move from what he’s concluded.

>!CATEGORIES: THINKING + REASONING, TRAP-SETTING, PLANNING, EU, ANTICIPATION!<

What’s next

The reasoning feats shown here are decent, not his best. The purpose with this post is merely to show he DOES have reasoning feats—albeit it isn’t obvious from the start.

With my next post, I’ll analyse one of Johan’s more complex reasoning feats.

Genuinely, it’s a pretty damn good feat in reasoning. IMO it’s comparable to Canon L reasoning.

The takes on this sub are genuinely egregious.

I’d understand if you use Methodology or Stop scaling, because fair enough he’s not good in those. But the people who say “offscreen fodder” don’t even use meth or stop.

And I can’t understand why people would wanna downplay him either—he’s genuinely well written! And from one of the best animes oat.

Anyway, expect a Johan reasoning post soon. Johan is said to have no reasoning feats but it’s provably false.

You have all necessary cognition to process and use the sensation, not just being able to sense it.

For example, if you choose Hal’s auditory sensory ability, you won’t just be overloaded with a quintillion different sounds. You’ll have the necessary WMI, PSI, PRI, VSI to take all that sensory data in, organise it, and visualise whatever you hear.

But that FSIQ buff ONLY applies to the sensory ability itself. It isn’t transferable to anything else.

Ayanokoji’s visual sensory without perfect memory

(Not sure if this is the exact feat) Ayanokoji recalls a name from a nametag he saw from a distance in a crowd in his peripheral vision. He wasn’t trying to look for that name or anything, but he saw it well enough and noticed it nonetheless.

You would essentially perceive visual details at that level constantly. But you wouldn’t log it into your mind perfectly as you would a filing cabinet, like Koji’s PMH.

Hal’s auditory sensory and echolocation

Feats:

- Was able to sense and visualise a handkerchief almost completely flattened placed on the floor in a soundproofed room.
- Was able to hear Gonen’s heartbeat, accurately counting its rise from 65 to 100 beats per minute.

Hannibal’s olfactory sensory

- He famously detects Bella Crawford’s cancer and Will Graham's encephalitis, describing the latter as having "heat" and a "fevered sweetness".
- He identifies people by their scent (e.g., [Will Graham's aftershave) and can identify if someone has visited a specific, scent-heavy location like a pharmacy.
- able to smell the perfume that Clarice had used the day before, through a poorly ventilated plate glass window no less.
- able to tell that a murder victim had been in a cornfield even though the body had been submerged in water overnight. He also claims that he was able to tell that his teacher had stomach cancer before he (the teacher) was aware of it.