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Originally Posted by avmoghe
Interesting to see some information about this Roberto fellow... but overall quite a mediocre episode... just like the previous one. Three very annoying characters still continue to meddle with the story.
Deiter continues to be an annoyance...
For some reason the cherry fellow is hanging around Tenma again...
Finally, Eva...
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As you can see this series has a HUGE ensemble cast, and it's only going to get bigger. As much as you loathe any mention of the manga, in the later volumes, Urasawa makes flowcharts to show and remind the reader how all the characters are connected in the flow of the story. The same thing is done in 20th Century Boys, too.
From what I've been reading, Monster is going to be 78 eps, and I think this encludes whatever Recap eps (like the one airing next week ("Extra 1") will be mixed in. Yet another filler ep to look forward to, except this will be REAL filler, not the engaging short stories that are scattered throughout Monster and further flesh out the story. I doubt you'd do it, but if you want a quick resolution, just read the manga...well, if you can find it. You'll find more dialogue too not to mention extra scenes that didn't make the anime because of time restraints. Then again, that'd probably be a turn-off. If you rather wait and complain about all the "red herring" eps that come along, then your only torturing yourself with wading through the remaining 54 episodes. I'll applaud your patience though, for that will be a true test for it.
Personally, I watched the first episode of the show, loved it, realized that I had 77 more eps to go and knew that I couldn't wait that long to see the conclusion (over a year and a half). Besides, if Japanese fans have already read the manga and are enjoying the anime version, I'd figure it wouldn't hurt if I did it in a similar fashion - and because of that I'm enjoying it a hell of a lot more too.
Back to the episode, "The Men's Dining Table" was a great ep, by the way. It's always cool when Eva shows up, for she's always a "wild card" character and you don't know what her actions are going to bring about. Dieter, on of my favorite characters, is in great form, much like in "Reunion", when he helped to save the day with Heckel's rug. His interaction with Eva is one of those moments I liked in the manga and now more so in the anime.
I was disappointed with some of the series director's translations of Urasawa's dramatic still shots that are in the manga. When Eva stands there in the wind and with gun-in-hand in the manga (before you find out her true intentions), it's a spine-tingling display of her, but cocked to the side. In the anime it was more orthodox, panning from the ground up, and not encompassing more of her. I'd rather had seen it keep the askew angle, but pan in from the left side, slowing to a stop as they center her. Then again, this is a minor detail, but I think it would have been more dramatic this way. BTW, some other times in the series they messed up Urasawa's panels were:
* In Ep. 22, when Lunge suprises Tenma when he is in the car trying to get away. Instead of showing him slump on the glass, they just should have cut to him pressed on the glass, as if he just materialized there (like some horro movie villian). However, when Lunge was stabbed and loses his cool, the exchange between shots of him and his assailant was priceless.
* In Ep. 16 (I think) when Nina makes her move throughout the mansion that she's taken to to meet with Johan. The scenes where she discovers that all her captors are dead just seemed more chilling in the manga. Especially the hallway shot. ^_^
I'm probably being biased, but f*ck it, I love the manga. The show is still far better produced than some hack director would have done with it. Hell, we might have been subjected to a hacked up, Cliff-notes version that would have catered more to the "Short-Attention-Span-Theater" crowd. That would only made this series a shadow of what it could have been. Again, props to Madhouse for keeping it real.