Monster (manga)/Characters

A character sheet for Naoki Urasawa's manga/anime Monster.

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Main Characters

Kenzo Tenma

File:Tenma 1045.jpg

Voiced by: Hidenobu Kiuchi (JP), Liam O'Brien (EN)

The protagonist of the series, he is a Japanese neurosurgeon working in Düsseldorf, Germany. In spite of his Director's explicit orders, he decides to operate on a critically wounded boy instead of the city's mayor, which results in his demotion and the break-up of his engagement. He is, however, shortly promoted after the mysterious murders of three of his superiors, and continues working at the hospital until it is revealed to him that the boy he risked his career to save is, in fact, a mass murderer.

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• Action Survivor
• Actual Pacifist: Although he has no problem pushing, kicking, shoving, and threatening with violence, he has a hard time causing harm to others even if it is to defend his own life.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the manga, he starts off plain and downright funny-looking. The anime takes its cue from the later chapters' Hot!Tenma.
• Adrenaline Makeover: Ahem.
• Badass Pacifist: He can take a beating, jump off a bridge to avoid confrontation, and save peoples while avoiding the police and criminals alike.
• Beware the Honest Ones: Tenma's idealism turned out pretty shitty for his money-grubbing boss.
• Big Good: This is particularly evident in arcs where he is offstage or not the main character. In keeping with his nearly messianic role, by the end, nearly all the characters would do anything to protect him.
• Break the Cutie
• Brown Eyes
• Care Bear Stare: A lot.
• Celibate Hero: Post-Eva, although there is some subtext involving Nina that may avert this. In Another Monster, it is explained that he was still quite the celibate during his high school years and even purposely didn't get together with a girl who liked him (and the feeling was somewhat mutual) merely because he was friends with her (cheating) boyfriend.
• Character Development
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Averted, though not soon enough for poor Gillen's complex.
• Christ Figure
• Chronic Hero Syndrome
• Clear My Name: Averted. His reason for hunting down Johan isn't to clear his name but to rather correct the error he made in keeping Johan alive.
• Combat Medic: "This is the carotid artery. Even a ballpoint pen could kill him, if you pierce it in the right spot."
• The Drifter
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Starts off clean-cut, but gets progressively more disheveled.
• The Fettered
• Forgets to Eat: Quite frequently. At other instances, he'll bemoan the lack of soy sauce in Western cuisine.
• Friend to All Children
• Friend to All Living Things
• Gentleman and a Scholar
• Good Is Not Dumb: Well, he's good, and... not dumb. Heck, he's a brain surgeon. Beyond fitting the literal trope title, however, Roberto underestimates him at one point because of his goodness and pays for it by losing the use of his right arm.
• Good Is Not Nice: As his journey progresses, he lapses from a polite doormat to someone completely uninterested in following the basic precepts of civility. Evident even in the beginning in his self-righteous fits of rage, this escalates as the series goes along into outright violence, casual aggression, and much-too-frequent death threats.
  • Arguably more Good Is Not Soft rather than Good Is Not Nice. He really is a nice guy, but he's been placed in trying circumstances.
• The Hero
• Heroic Resolve: How Roberto got handicapped.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Wanted for the very murders that he keeps trying to stop.
• Humble Hero
• Hurting Hero
• Intelligence Equals Isolation
• I'm Not Hungry: When he was captured by the police, he refused to eat for so long they had to put him on an IV. Which doubles as Fridge Brilliance, as he was trying to end up in the infirmary in order to get in touch with Gunther Milch.
• Inconvenient Hippocratic Oath. All the more so (or not) for being an integral part of what he comes to be about after the first episode.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: One of the rare examples of this trope being pulled off successfully.
• Japanese Pronouns: Starts out using the somewhat immature boku and progresses on to the more mature and formal watashi after the first Time Skip.
• The Last DJ: Both played straight and averted, in short succession.
• Last-Name Basis: People tend to call him by his last name rather than his first name, even when they've got to know him well--including Nina and Eva (though the latter is the one that does it least).
• Magnetic Hero
• Manly Tears
• Married to the Job
• The Messiah
• Mr. Fanservice: Probably unintentional on the creator's part. But as an older colleague enviously puts it, "Who would have thought you were talented in that department, too?"
• Nice Guy
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
• Parental Favoritism: It's mentioned in Another Monster that his father favored him, his youngest son, over his other brothers. However, his mother favored his two older half-brothers (who are unrelated to her) more than him.
• Save the Villain: At first unknowingly. If Runge would cuff himself to Cthulhu, Tenma does his part to drive the plot by wavering between Shoot the Dog and the urge to get Ctulhu the best available Eldritch Abomination veterinary treatment while delivering a (literal) Have You Tried Not Being a Monster? accompanied by Care Bear Stare, leaving it open until the end which way he will finally turn.
• Skilled but Naive: Tenma's a surgical prodigy, but it's not his relative inexperience with a scalpel that gets him into trouble in the beginning. It's his inexperience with another aspect of being a doctor: hospital politics.
• The So-Called Coward:
  • "Tenma the Weenie! Tenma the Weenie! He peed his pants, too!"
  • Even more so considering the full story given in Another Monster. After the first time the other boys scared him during hide-and-seek, Tenma decided to go through it again in order to conquer his fear. What ended up happening was that they couldn't find him and thought that he just went home, so when one of the mothers told them it was time to go home, they left Tenma by himself. When they found him still hiding in the abandoned yard at night, they probably stopped picking on him simply because he had the guts to do all that.
• Think Nothing of It: Does not like to take credit for his achievements, e.g. denying that he'd saved the Turkish district.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: A personal philosophy that looks especially interesting when pitted against his initial tantrums of, "These people need to die."
• Took a Level In Badass: Early in the series, after receiving weapons training from an ex-mercenary.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Constantly, over and over again.
• Ubermensch: By the end of the series, although he starts out as a very clear-cut Last Man.
• Unwitting Pawn: Used, reused, and subverted. A lot of his actions, even his goal are propelled and encouraged by Johan.
• White and Gray Morality: How he sees the world.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Determinedly and stubbornly so.
• Wrongly Accused

Johan Liebert

File:Johan2 8606.jpg

Voiced by: Nozomu Sasaki (JP), Keith Silverstein (EN)

The antagonist of the story, he is introduced (outside Tenma's TV, that is) as a ten-year-old with a bullet in his brain. Shortly after being saved by Tenma, he escapes from the hospital with his twin sister Anna. He resurfaces nine years later as a killer, admits to having poisoned Tenma's superiors, and proceeds to wreak havoc across Germany. His identity is unknown to the general public, and his murders are subsequently blamed on Tenma.

He is alternately perceived as a vampire, an alien, the Devil, and the next Hitler. Both the manga and the anime open with a passage from Revelation that refers to the Antichrist and mirrors several events from Johan's life.

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• Affably Evil
• Agent Peacock
• The Antichrist: Not literally (though he might be), but certain Revelation passages parallel his life and are used as an epigraph for the series. He also likes to tempt people in high places and at one point hands someone an apple.
• Attractive Bent Gender: Dresses in drag and seduces Jan Suk. For a very old-fashioned girl sense of "seduce," anyway. Or maybe he has stubble issues.
• Asexual
• Ax Crazy
• Badass
  • Badass Bookworm
  • Badass in a Nice Suit
  • Cultured Badass
  • Underestimating Badassery
• Big Bad
• Bishonen
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's a great guy to hang out with, and a good listener, too! But not for long. He'll even shed Tender Tears when you tell your troubles. He'll also cheer up your ailing elderly parents better than you ever could, and get along better with your kids, too.
• Blond Guys Are Evil: Interestingly enough, his hair is conspicuously lighter than Nina's.
• Blue Eyes
• Broken Ace
• Cast as a Mask: The anime does this. To make the reveal that the pretty new girl in town is actually Johan more shocking, the studio used Nina's voice actress to play Johan whenever he dons this look. This is done both in the Japanese version and in the English dub.
• Celibate Villain: He doesn't seem to be interested in women (or men) with the only exception being his sister.
• The Chessmaster
• Commie Nazis: Having grown up in an East German orphanage, he'd have been raised communist. This doesn't stop Neo-Nazis exalting him as the next Hitler. Bonus points for the Anti Christ motifs.
• Complete Monster: An in-universe Deconstruction of the trope itself (namely, what could create an utterly unsympathetic and evil human being), and probably considered it by most people in the show as well.
• Corruption by a Minor: Quite a few times, and we're not talking getting other kids to scrump apples here. Or just kids, for that matter. Inspires a taxi driver to emulate, uh, Taxi Driver without (thankfully) even going Lolicon about it, at the age of ten.
• Creepy Child
• Creepy Monotone
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Notably averted. He does use his borderline super-human skills and abilities to make a living, but it's never more than a means.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Not really. He just did what he always does.
• Dead Person Impersonation: In Munich.
• Death Seeker
• Dissonant Serenity: His default facial expression changes about twice in the series' entire run. Both times it makes him even more creepy.
• The Dreaded: Every character who has knowledge of Johan is deathly afraid of him. One commits suicide when he's brought up too much in conversation and others start shaking uncontrollably just thinking about him.
• Driven to Villainy: Horrifyingly. Sure, he was already an Enfant Terrible by as a child, but he was severely warped by the empathic bond that formed between his sister and him when they were still very young. While she repressed the psychological torture she'd gone through, he began to think it had happened to him instead... and thus from that seed a monster grew.
• Enfant Terrible
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Though it is debatable on whether he's even capable of love, his obsession with Anna/Nina doesn't make it any less disturbing. However, it is notable that his greatest fear is forgetting about "Anna."
• Even the Guys Want Him: Though, to be fair, he was cross-dressing at the time. On the other hand, Roberto worships him.
• Evil Twin
• Evil Virtues: Works hard, is resourceful, ambitious, patient, and determined.
• For the Evulz: Some of the time.
• Freudian Excuse: Sort of. It's complicated.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: On the surface...
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: How did he get his eyes to be so wide?
• Half-Identical Twins
• Hot Guys Are Bastards
• I Have Many Names
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: He does this for Anna/Nina twice. He willingly allows Anna to shoot him after finding out that he killed the Lieberts, and the reason behind his "perfect suicide" plan of a massacre in Ruhenheim along with eradicating his existence (mirroring Franz Bonaparta's Red Rose Mansion massacre, which is in itself an "expression of love" to the twins' mother) was partly due to how irredeemable he has become and to make Nina happy.
• I Will Find You: One of Johan's goals is to reunite with Nina. He tries to make contact with her a few times, but either Tenma or Neo-Nazis who want Johan for their own benefit have a tendency to get in the way.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation
• Karma Houdini: The ending does not make his fate clear, but he might have escaped the hospital. In Another Monster, it is revealed that he is in fact alive three years after the events of Monster.
• Klingon Promotion: Last-minute aversion when in his own words, "Something else came to mind." And by "something else," he does not mean resigning unobtrusively.
• Light Is Not Good: He's a beautiful, almost angelic-looking man who gives off an aura of trust and kindness to all who meet him. Needless to say, he's almost unspeakably, irrevocably evil.
• Madness Mantra: "But that's not my real name." Reinforced by his supremely creepy fairy tale.
• Manipulative Bastard: His forte.
• Meaningful Name: Apart from the context the name Johan has within the series, it is noteworthy that this is a version of John, whose Revelations provide the source for the series' epigraph. Although the St. John of Revelations is usually referred to as Johannes, a different (and more formal) German version of John. John is also one of the most stereotypically generic names, which may be a reference to his own lack of identity.
• Mommy Issues: Check out his little chat with her portrait, for starters.
• Mr. Fanservice: Creepy and evil, but quite handsome.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
• Non-Action Big Bad: One of the things that makes him so scary is the fact that he barely needs to lift a finger to commit evil depraved deeds. He can just talk, point, pull a trigger...
• No Name Given: We never learn his real name.
• Pet the Dog: Surprisingly enough, he has a genuine moment of sincerity when he buys a balloon and gives money to a down-on-her-luck prostitute, showing us the good personality that wants to stop the monster inside him. And this happens right after he leaves Roberto to kill a woman who thought he was on her side.
  • Alternatively, he was just trying to make himself look good to avoid suspicion.
  • He gave the prostitute money and told her she can use it to buy herself some more drugs. A good look at that lady and you can probably assume that more drugs would be a very bad thing for her. So when you think about it, was it really kindness?
• Psychopathic Manchild: A combination of Type C and Type D.
• Pyromaniac: Books, buildings, books and buildings...
• Renaissance Man
• Self-Made Orphan: Repeatedly.
• Serial Killer
• Slasher Smile: Blink and you'll miss it, but when he sees that he's broken Richard, he makes an absolutely sadistic slasher smile.
• Smart People Know Latin: Becomes a plot point as he reads books in Latin for Hans Georg Schuwald, a wealthy man who he is trying to get close to.
• The Sociopath: Played with, and subverted.
• Spell My Name with an "S":
  • Johann is the German spelling; Johan the Czech. You choose.
  • Also Liebheart is to Liebert.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred: He points at his forehead to order people to shoot him.
• Trickster: He frequently uses people's hypocrisies and the lies they tell themselves against them. And he likes to spread havoc too.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Lots.
• Ubermensch: A very evil and destructive one.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: A male version, lampshaded in the Munich arc. He's actually at least initially less overtly uncanny when cross-dressing... but then again he is (mostly) impersonating his sister.
• The Unfettered
• Unperson: He is a rare case of this being self-inflicted.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Averted. Even then, he was pretty horrible.
• Villainous Breakdown/Villainous BSOD: After re-reading "The Monster With No Name" and again (offscreen) after Nina points out that some of "his" memories are actually hers. And once more when Nina forgives him in Ruhenheim and it becomes apparent that Tenma won't shoot him unless he actually threatens an innocent.
• Villainous Crossdresser: And he's really pretty, too!
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Repeatedly.
• Wicked Cultured: This is part of what makes him so terrifying and effective. He is practically a genius knowing many languages with a keen understanding of law which he uses to Mind Rape a certain character and was even able to run a massive money laundering scheme at fifteen-years-old.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Though not always.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
• Xanatos Speed Chess: He has a tendency to change his plans repeatedly, though typically with the same ultimate conclusion that Tenma will shoot him and thus denounce his ideals and become just as much of a monster as he is.
• Yandere: A creepy and platonic male example towards Anna/Nina.

Anna Liebert/Nina Fortner

File:Ninamonster 2349.jpg

Voiced by: Mamiko Noto (JP), Karen Strassman (EN)

Johan's twin sister. After the incident in 1986, she is adopted by a couple from Heidelberg where she leads a normal life. When Johan decides to contact her again, Tenma foils his plan by helping Nina escape. Her foster parents are, however, killed by Johan's henchmen, and their murder sends her on a quest for vengeance, across Germany and the Czech Republic where she picks up the forgotten pieces of her past.

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• Action Girl: Played straight and later deconstructed. Being an Action Girl does not equal having the mental fortitude to match.
• Bad Dreams: Before she recovers her memories of Johan, she has recurring dreams of a monster attacking her.
• Badass Damsel
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Blue Eyes
• Break the Cutie
• Broken Ace: She would be perfect in every way, exept that her mind is made of easily shattered glass.
• Broken Bird
• Celibate Heroine: There are a few guys in the series who seem to like her, but she either rejects them (Peter) or is outright oblivious (Lipsky). However, she does have some subtext with Tenma that may avert this.
• Dark and Troubled Past
• Driven to Suicide: Narrowly averted, thanks to Tenma.
• Dirty Harriet
• Distressed Damsel: Subverted early in the series. Played straight several times later on in the series including one case where she is saved from certain death by the same man who murdered her step-parents., as a part of the deconstruction theme that is a huge part of Monster. Though double subverted as people constantly try to capture her as a hostage and bait for Johan, but she willingly allows it if it means reuniting with Johan and killing him.
• Forgiveness: "I... I forgive you. Even if we were the last two people in the world, I would still forgive you."
• Go Mad From the Revelation
• Good Is Not Dumb: She's a sweet girl and one of the best students in her class. However, she won't hesitate to use her Aikido or scare a Neo-Nazi shitless.
• Hair of Gold
• Half-Identical Twins
• Heroic BSOD: It's amazing how often this happens to her.
• Identity Amnesia
• It's Personal
• Morality Pet: Subverted. She may be the one person in the whole world who Johan appears to care a great deal about and his greatest fear is forgetting about her, but he's not above mindraping her and nearly indirectly causing her to commit suicide. And her forgiving Johan doesn't stop the latter in wanting to get himself killed.
• Mutual Kill: Once she regains her memories, her plan is to kill herself after killing Johan.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: We never learn her real name.
• The Ophelia: In the first couple of episodes.
• Sibling Yin-Yang
• Stepford Smiler: What her shrink suspects. With her issues, he's not too far off.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Double-subverted (if not more) by the way Johan and she both get their memories and identities confused with the other's.
• Took a Level In Badass: From ever-so-wholesome law student to hooker-impersonating, gangster-frightening gunslinger in about one volume, and mostly through her own efforts (Rosso only ever got to teach her pasta sauces). That said, she occasionally finds herself in way over her head later into the series.
• Trauma Conga Line
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia
• Wide-Eyed Idealist

Inspector Heinrich Runge

File:Inspectorlunge 471.jpg

Voiced by: Tsutomu Isobe (JP), Richard Epcar (EN)

An agent of BKA (the German federal police), he is assigned to the case of the murders of the three Eisler Memorial officials. Believing Tenma to be the only logical suspect, but deterred by the lack of evidence, he resumes the investigation ten years later after an officer guarding one of Tenma's patients is killed using the same M.O. used on the three doctors. Personal pride, rather than an interest in justice, prompts him to chase Tenma across Germany and Czechoslovakia, concluding that 'Johan' is Tenma's alter-ego.

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• Agent Scully: So, Dr. Tenma, you're saying a ten-year-old fresh out of major brain surgery killed these people?
• Ambiguous Disorder: He has a ridiculously impressive memory, but very strange mannerisms and is implied to obsess over closing his cases.
• Anti-Hero: Type IV.
• Badass Bookworm
• Badass Grandpa: ... Well, he is.
• Busman's Holiday: Subverted in that when he finally takes a vacation, he turns down a request for assistance from the local authorities. Otherwise, not so much played straight as sneakily turned Up to Eleven.
• Character Tics: His most distinguishing feature is his habit of moving his fingers as though he were typing, which helps him memorize information verbatim.
• Combat Pragmatist
• The Comically Serious: Particularly when attempting to become Japanese.
• Defective Detective: Very defective. It's only towards the end that he starts to become less dysfunctional.
• Determinator: He obsessively tracks Tenma across Germany, not caring how it affects his personal life. Not even risking death from blood loss prevents him from trying to prove Tenma guilty.
• Implacable Man
• Inspector Javert
• Married to the Job: Viciously deconstructed.
• Pet the Dog: In Ruhenheim, he helps save a lot of people, befriends Grimmer, and actually apologizes to Tenma!
• Photographic Memory
• Spell My Name with an "S": The translated manga, some fansubbers, the English dub, and the official site of the anime all say 'Lunge' as the correct spelling, while the anime itself shows "Runge" on his ID.
• Stern Teacher: To a hospitalized Suk.
• The Profiler
• The Spock
• The Stoic
• To Know Him I Must Become Him: "I am Tenma. Domo."

Eva Heinemann

File:Evamonster 5301.jpg

Voiced by: Mami Koyama (JP), Tara Platt (EN)

The daughter of the Eisler Memorial Hospital director, she is engaged to Tenma at the beginning of the series. When he falls out of favor with her father, she breaks off the engagement, but has a change of heart soon after Heinemann's death. Tenma's subsequent rejection leaves her embittered and with an advanced alcohol problem, and she spends the remainder of the story vacillating between love and hate for him.

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• All Take and No Give: How most of her relationships play out.
• Break the Haughty
• Can't Stand Them Can't Live Without Them
• Character Development: No, really.
• Defrosting Ice Queen
• Despair Event Horizon
• Fallen Princess/Princess in Rags: Revolves a few times between these in the course of the series.
• Heel Realization
• Her Heart Will Go On: Eventually towards Temna and Martin.
• Hidden Depths: Yes, really.
• If I Can't Have You: Though she is kind enough to not actually try to kill him, she does attempt to put him in prison for life.
• It Got Worse: When waking up in a police cell with personal belongings missing, smoking someone else's cigarette butts off the ground outside the station just for the hit, and stealing booze from a panhandler is not the low point of her day, you know it's a steep downhill slope.
• I Will Wait for You: Waits for Martin at the Frankfurt Central Station to run away with him. He doesn't make it.
• Lady Drunk: Through most of the series. She eventually stops drinking as a token to Martin, who didn't like alcohol, and continues to order coffee instead of alcohol three years later in Another Monster.
• Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places: Most of the time, post-Tenma.
• Mistress and Servant Boy: With Martin.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: To the point where strong men of all character alignments flinch at the sound.
• Pretty in Mink: Has a gray fur jacket.
• Purple Eyes
• Really Gets Around
• Rich Bitch
• Stalker with a Crush: She was the former trope picture, after all.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Holiday season turning out a disappointment? Why not torch the mansion and surrounding gardens in an epic fit of pique?
• Villainous Breakdown: When her daddy gets killed, in the first volume. From here it's a long, painfull crawl back to the light.
• Woman Scorned

Dieter

File:Dieter 5680.jpg

Voiced by: Junko Takeuchi (JP), Laura Bailey (EN)

A young boy whom Tenma saves from physical and mental abuse at the hands of a former official of Kinderheim 511, he stubbornly tags along with the doctor (and, later, Nina), providing a Foil to Johan.

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• Cheerful Child
• Creepy Child: In his first appearance.
• Fell Down the Stairs
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The kid rivals Tenma in this since the kinderheim 511 method didn't work on him at all.
• Innocent Prodigy: Sometimes he's at least as wise to the world and people as any of the adult characters, sometimes he's all of his actual age, for better and worse.
• Morality Pet: Schumann deliberately lets him follow Tenma to prevent him from killing.
• Tagalong Kid
• Wide-Eyed Idealist

Other Characters

Franz Bonaparta

Voiced by: Nachi Nozawa (JP), Michael McConnohie (EN)

Also known as Klaus Poppe, Emil Sebe, and by many other pseudonyms, Bonaparta is responsible for the eugenics program that resulted in the twins' birth. When he wasn't busy kidnapping his test subjects' mothers and killing their fathers, he engaged in educating the superior children with the aid of morally questionable fairy tales he had penned himself.

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• The Atoner
• For Science!: Played partly straight, partly as a twisted excuse ("This is an experiment").
• Heel Face Turn: Rather a slow, maddening process in which he gives up his experiments and becomes a dull, old man, living incognito in a small town where he unsuccessfully tries to continue his creative pursuits.
• Love Redeems:
  • By killing over forty people in front of your love interest's already traumatized child to give her a chance at a better tomorrow. But don't worry about how your Sadistic Choice affected her, or her other child; your books and the pedagogy you developed will help fix all that. Just leave your evil conspiracy in place, it'll be all right.
  • However, in Another Monster, it is implied that he had a hand in erasing the twins' mother's past, and Lipsky hints that perhaps his reasons behind it was to isolate the twins' mother so only he would know of her existence.
• Matchmaker Crush: One of the most warped versions ever.
• Murder the Hypotenuse
• The Man Behind the Curtain: At least after his Heel Face Turn.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Undergoes this when he sees all the death and suffering Johan has brought, since he made Johan the man who he is.
• Parental Abandonment Disowns his own son. Also causes this in other families.
• Pet the Dog: Consistently, in his treatment of Wim. Also has an earlier, spectacularly badly thought out attempt.
• Redemption Equals Death: Although, whether he was truly redeemed or not is debatable.
• Retired Monster
• Stalker with a Crush
• Taking You with Me: Attempts to do this to Johan, but he is killed by Roberto before he can do it.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He takes this much, much too far.

Wolfgang Grimmer

Voiced by: Hideyuki Tanaka (JP), Patrick Seitz (EN)

A perpetually smiling man searching for Franz Bonaparta, the man whose pedagogic theories formed the basis of the brainwashing program Grimmer had been subjected to as a child. Unable to feel emotion in his regular state (according to himself, although that doesn't stop him from trying to "fake it"), he transforms into a brutal and unstoppable alter-ego when under extreme duress.

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• A Day in the Limelight: He, not Tenma, is the main character for the vast majority of Volumes 10 and 11.
• Adorkable
• Anti-Hero: Type III.
• Awesome McCoolname
• Berserk Button: A very literal berserk.
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Big Brother Mentor: To Jan Suk.
• Care Bear Stare: An odd version, but it works.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
• Friend to All Children: Though his past at Kinderheim likely contributed to his protectiveness of children.
• Intrepid Reporter
• Nice Guy: Just don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.
• No Name Given
• Obfuscating Stupidity
• Stepford Smiler
• Taking the Heat: For crimes committed by Johan, but for the sake of Jan Suk, who had been framed for them.
• Tin Man: Possibly a deconstruction.
• Unstoppable Rage: His Magnificent Steiner persona, which he named from a children's show.

Roberto/Adolf Reinhardt

Voiced by: Nobuyuki Katsube (JP), J.B. Blanc (EN)

A survivor of Kinderheim 511, he takes on different identities during the series in order to eliminate witnesses and obtain information as one of Johan's most devoted henchmen.

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• Axe Crazy: Very very much so.
• Battle Butler
• Biggus Dickus: If one is to believe the obese prostitute having sex with him.
• The Dragon
• Evil Is Petty: Rude, foul-mouthed, and generally nasty. With a TearJerker retrospective subversion.
• Fan Disservice: Good lord, so much!
• Forgotten Childhood Friend: Used to be Wolfgang's friend at 511. Both men remember each other fondly, but neither have any idea who the other is as adults.
• Gonk: In contrast to Johan's more effeminate looks.
• Handicapped Badass
• Implacable Man
• Kavorka Man
• Not Quite Dead
• Pet the Dog: Revealed retrospectively.
• Psycho for Hire
• Psycho Supporter
• Slasher Smile: Often.
• Tempting Fate: You Wouldn't Shoot Me
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Revealed retrospectively, and in a very moving way.

Dr. Julius Reichwein

Voiced by: Ichiro Nagai (JP), Paul St Peter (EN)

An elderly psychiatrist who becomes involved with Johan after the latter murders one of his patients. After being saved by Tenma from getting killed by Roberto, he becomes one of his main allies.

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• Badass Mustache: A double subversion. He seems like a simple crumudgeon at first. Then he beats up two men younger than him after taking several kicks.
• Bald of Awesome: Also doubles as a Cool Old Guy. Not to mention that his bald cap plays a role in breaking a guy's nose.
• Captain Ersatz: He is Urasawa's incarnation of the Osamu Tezuka character Shunsaku Ban, in everything but name.
• Cool Old Guy
• Gentleman and a Scholar
• Good Is Not Dumb: Beats up two guys and brilliantly outsmarts Roberto when he tries to kill him.
• Retired Badass: Used to work with the border police. This, being the West German border police during the Cold War, which was basically a paramilitary organization as they were expected to hold back a possible Communist invasion from the east, makes it even more Badass.
• The Shrink
• Trademark Favorite Food: He'll take attempts on his life pretty much on the chin, but the prospect of running out of Weisswurst, not so much.

Dr. Rudy Gillen

Voiced by: Takayuki Sugo (JP), Derek Stephen Prince (EN)

A former classmate of Tenma's, he is a leading criminal psychologist who attributes his proficiency to possessing the brain of a serial killer. After initially planning to turn Tenma over to the police, he realizes the latter's innocence and becomes, along his former professor Reichwein, an active helper in Johan's case.

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• Cheaters Never Prosper: Very much averted in the Backstory.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: His brilliant psychological insights have a tendency not to carry over into his personal life.
• Kirk Summation: Being a psychologist, this is a talent of his. He lays down a great one on Lunge, paving the way for the latter's Heel Realization.
• Married to the Job
• Not So Different: He explicitly invokes this towards the incarcerated serial killers that he interviews, though one may feel that he exaggerates. Also backfires, possibly due to his tendency to get "research subject" mixed up with "research assistant," leaving him repeatedly wide open to Hannibal Lectures from the "subjects."
• The Profiler
• Rival Turned Evil: Avoided, given his Heel Face Turn about turning Tenma over to the police.
• The Shrink

Martin

Voiced by: Shuichi Ikeda (JP), Roger Craig Smith (EN)

A criminal with a troubled past who is charged with looking after Eva when the mob discovers that she can be of use to them.

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• And Now for Something Completely Different: See Film Noir below.
• Bodyguard Crush
• Catch Phrase: "I hate this job."
• Dark and Troubled Past
• Deadpan Snarker
• Death by Irony: He manages to take out a group of The Baby's men. The one that finally manages to fatally shoot him appears to be a scared, way-out-of-his-league newbie who simply got lucky.
• Does Not Like Women: Initially at least, he was very insistent about this.
• Failure Knight: His reason for being insistent on the above, as the last two women closest to him have died with himself feeling guilty as the indirect cause.
• Film Noir
• Flashback Echo: The flashbacks within the main flashback fall under this trope.
• Go Out with a Smile
• Green-Eyed Monster: His reason for beating up Tenma in the diner is mainly due to this.
• How We Got Here
• I Will Protect Her
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though given he's up against Eva, his initial jerkiness doesn't register that easily.
• Love Martyr: He was this to the three women in his life: his alcoholic mother who died freezing in the cold because he left her there when he was a child, his drug-addict late girlfriend who committed suicide after he caught her cheating on him and refused to kill her, and Eva who he died protecting.
• Missing Mom
• Mistress and Servant Boy: With Eva.
• Replacement Goldfish: Eva admits that she made him wear the suits and neckties that she used to make Tenma wear in the past.
• Smoking Is Cool
• Tempting Fate: "I'm surprised I lived through that." Cue the fatal gunshot wound.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Those horrible cheeseburgers.

Otto Heckel

Voiced by: Yoshita Yasuhara (JP), Doug Erholtz (EN)

A small-time criminal who has a symbiotic, highly illegal, and fairly comical relationship with Tenma.

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• Back for the Finale
• Black Market: He is one of Tenma's links to it, both willingly and unwillingly.
• The Chew Toy
• Corruption of a Minor: Attempted with Dieter.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The only recurring character who seems to avert this.
• Hidden Depths: Gets quite serious about his gourmet cooking. Not to mention touchy about Tenma's apparently inevitable suggestion that whatever the dish, it could be improved by the addition of soy sauce. Seriously, this includes Chicken Marengo.
• Hustler
• Plucky Comic Relief: His "get rich quick" schemes all tend this way.
• Resentful Guardian: To Dieter.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Disappears after Volume 5 and doesn't reappear until Volume 18.
• Supreme Chef: Surprisingly enough.

Mr. Maurer

Voiced by: Yosuke Akimoto (JP), Kyle Hebert (EN)

A senior reporter for the Heidelberg Post, he (initially reluctantly and skeptically) gets involved in Tenma's attempts to track down the twins.

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• Agent Scully: An underage Serial Killer? You should write a novel, Dr. Tenma. It wouldn't sell.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Grumpy Bear: Initially comes across this way, but soon shows a warmer side by feeding a collapsing Tenma.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As above.
• Knight in Sour Armor
• Married to the Job
• The Pig Pen: First introduced by way of a voice-over of a colleague complaining about his failure to shower.
• Sour Supporter
• We Hardly Knew Ye

Dr. Becker

Voiced by: Yasuyoshi Hara (JP), Christopher Smith (EN)

A colleague of Tenma's at Eisler Memorial Hospital, he is notable for being one of the few non-villains to hold hard onto his Jade-Colored Glasses even after long-term exposure to Tenma.

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• Casanova Wannabe: Though apparently not entirely unsuccessful.
• Cynical Mentor/Sink or Swim Mentor: To Tenma, who is friendly in return but proves resistant once he's got his own way worked out.
• Dr. Jerk: While not incapable of empathy (see his scene with Eva), he generally displays a burned-out lack of human response, including endangering patients by turning up late for surgery, possibly due to dalliances with nursing staff.
• The Matchmaker: To Tenma, repeatedly and unsuccessfully after his break-up with Eva.
• Only Sane Man: How he sees himself within the hospital, in relation to Tenma's idealism and more overtly amoral careerism of some other colleagues.
• Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism: Tends to stubbornly stick to the cynical side, even when a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming is going on all around him, such as the way he tries to pour cold water on Tenma's former patients when they band together to bankroll a defense lawyer for Tenma.

Jan Suk

Voiced by: Hisayoshi Suganuma (JP), Michael Sinterniklaas (EN)

A young, idealistic Prague police officer who is unwittingly caught up in the chase for Johan.

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• Ascended Fanboy/Heroic Wannabe: Inspired to join the police by obsessing about cop shows as a child.
• Broken Pedestal: Your heroes can really let you down...
• Dropped a Bridget On Him: And how!
• Ensign Newbie: Very much so, constantly inspiring others to attempt mentoring him, generally to his annoyance. By the time Verdemann tries it, pointing out his professional and personal greenness verges on a Berserk Button.
• Fair Cop
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He gets better, eventually, and not too soured, but it's a rough process.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He's really not on the kind of cop show he thinks his work resembles. And not in the kind of Boy Meets Girl plot he thinks, either.

Richard Braun

Voiced by: Hiroshi Arikawa (JP), Cam Clarke (EN)

A private eye in Munich attempting to deal with his alcoholism and his past. His life went downhill after he shot an alumnus of Kinderheim 511.

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• The Alcoholic: Recovering.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In-universe, by Johan. Welcome to (more) Mind Rape and Mind Screw.
• The Atoner
• Atonement Detective
• Character Title: Volume 7 of the manga.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Just like pretty much every other character in this series.
• Decoy Protagonist: Volumes 6-7 is one long day-in-the-limelight arc where the action shifts from Tenma to some new characters, which happens fairly often throughout the series. Initially, he seems to be the main character of this arc (Volume 7 is even named after him), but a tragic run-in with Johan causes the focus to shift to his therapist, Reichwein for the rest of the arc until Tenma returns.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The fact that it's not revealed just how he dies makes the whole thing all the more maddening.
• He Knows Too Much
• Heroic BSOD: In his final scene before he's killed off screen, he starts having one of these. Johan identifies it as a Heel Realization.
• Off the Wagon: Somewhat complicated and it becomes a plot point.
• Private Detective: Since being kicked off the force for shooting an underage suspect while drunk.
• Sacrificial Lion
• Spell My Name with an "S": Braun would be the German version, but the Viz translation gives his name as Brown throughout.
• Trauma Conga Line: He wasn't drunk when he shot Yost. He was completely sober and, upon seeing how the boy had become utterly depraved, shot him dead without remorse. To provide an alibi he drunk his ass off not long afterward, and forgot everything because of the combination of the trauma and the alcohol. Either way, his career was over and he started a new life. Things were looking up...until Johan forced him to remember and he commits suicide not long afterward. The kicker? The boy he shot came from 511 Kinderheim, so it was completely warranted for Braun to shoot him, but Johan's words were much too powerful.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: If you didn't already hate Johan by this point, you REALLY will now.

Hans Georg Schubert

Voiced by: Michio Hazama (JP), Dan Woren (EN)

A mysterious business juggernaut with a sentimental past, he is the center of one of Johan's extremely elaborate plots to wreak large-scale havoc across Germany.

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• Dark and Troubled Past: Yes, he's got one of these too.
• Dub Name Change: In the Viz translation of the anime, he becomes Hans Georg Schuwald and his nickname becomes the more sensible "Vampire of Bavaria".
• Fiction 500: According to Lotte, his wealth keeps accumulating without check. He is rumored to singlehandedly control the German stock market.
• Genre Savvy: The only person in-series to pick up on Johan's inhuman "perfection" this way.
• Jerkass Facade: "The Vampire of Bayern."
• Luke, You Are My Father: It's complicated. Johan complicates it some more.
• Spell My Name with an "S": The American broadcast went so far as to edit a poster in order to corroborate their mis-dubbing of his name as Schuwald. Schuwald is also the spelling used in the German edition of the manga.

Fritz Verdeman

Voiced by: Ryusuke Oobayashi (JP), Kyle Hebert (EN)

An extremely talented lawyer known for always getting innocent verdicts. In fact, he only takes on clients if he believes they are innocent. Naturally, he ends up being Tenma's lawyer after he's arrested in Prague. His desire to free innocent people is rooted in his childhood, when his father was accused of being a spy.

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• Good Lawyers, Good Clients: He only takes a case if he believes the client is innocent.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Ryusuke Oobayashi in the original, Kyle Hebert (AKA Kamina) in the dub.
• Knight in Sour Armor: He seems like a Wide-Eyed Idealist at first, but once his past is fully revealed, it turns out that deep down, he's this.
• Loser Son of Loser Dad: "Son of a spy!"
• Miscarriage of Justice: Subverted with his father, though it's implied that he made a Heel Face Turn.
• The Power of Trust: He struggles with whether he really believes in this or not due to finding out that his father really was a spy.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Verdeman/Vardemann.
• Unwitting Pawn: Roberto impersonates a lawyer in order to get close enough to kill Eva and to get his hands on his father's notebook.

Christof Sievernich

Voiced by: Masashi Hironaka (JP), Travis Willingham (EN)

Johan's disciple and another Kinderheim 511 survivor. Johan and several associates try to turn him into a second monster.

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• Bastard Understudy
• Berserk Button: Goes ballistic after getting shot.
• Blond Guys Are Evil
• Slasher Smile
• Smug Snake