r/naoki_urasawa

Just finished Naoki Urasawa’s Monster and if I’m being 100% real I enjoyed it a lot but the discourse online to me seems to conclude Johan doesn’t have any kind of magic powers but there are many many scenes that don’t make any sense unless he does. The show also heavily implies he does. Like the eugenics experiment was a success and him and his sister were the successes. I believe they made Psychics. Hence why Johan can know things about people he shouldn’t and has no real way of knowing and why Nina later can also see other peoples memories. Nina having a name acts as a natural barrier to this in the form of her sense of self but Johan is nameless so there is no identity to protect himself from memories of others. They all become his and Johan was packed full of the worst people on top of his own repressed experiences. Johan is more others than he is himself. Johan can also use this repression in others to mind control them almost. Since he can read minds and transmit memories (we see him do this at the end with Tenma) he can absorb everything about someone even their repressed or stolen memories. Hence why Johan has such a grip on a lot of these killers he can deliver them things they’ve repressed or forgotten as well as his internal version of themselves is more complete than the version living in their real bodies. Johan can essentially pilot them because the real Roberto is more in Johan than in Roberto. Since Johan has access to things Roberto has had removed. He’s s blank slate except what Johan gifts him. Nina starts awakening to her powers towards the end as well. We can see her doing it a few times. She has Johans memories and vice versa. However Johan can’t separate them from himself because he is nameless. Hence why Tenma rebirths him as a new being at the end of the show when Tenma tells him his true name. Johan finally becomes a person who can make his own memories. Rather than this void of everyone else’s. I just think Johan 100% has Psychic powers and the discourse online doesn’t take into account the many times he actually uses it. Like he is a master manipulator but he has an upper hand by being this nameless monster than can consume others memories and even grant them memories they’ve forgotten. I think when Tenma gives him his real name at the end the nameless monster dies and whoever Johan actually is is born.