Ok so from my understanding of your analysis Johan killed the fortners because, 1:so that they could become one again and destroy the Nina identity and 2:bec Johan distrusts adults except for Dr tenma and he wanted to entrust nina to Dr tenma? The 9 year gap could be Johan leaving her alone so that she could heal (she had a terrible emotional shock after all and the fortners gave her a therapist) 1)
Hello little monster fan Anon! I'm sorry if my answer lacked clarity, often the asks I read impel me into an analysis that doesn't precisely and succinctly answer the question posed.
*** You've summed up my answer perfectly, but I just wanted to clarify a few points. To understand Johan is to understand a shadow cast on the wall. Even if we understand its contours, it is uncertain. After all, Johan's very existence in Monster has been questioned by characters, he has no name and appears very little. So we won't know, and the point is not to know precisely what Johan might have been doing for 9 years.
I don't think Johan himself was interested in studies, education or even knowledge. Or rather, he wasn't interested in them as such. He saw them simply as means either of domination, and playing at martyring ants, as with the bank, or as means of accessing answers about himself.
The fact that he studied children's rights in international law proves this. He is studying it in order to manipulate better; being close to children, his speciality as an academic, is part of the mask he has decided to wear at Munique University. But I don't think he chose this speciality at random and that in this discipline, but also in his interactions with children, Johan was looking for answers.
I'm researching the rights of children proclaimed by the United Nations in 1986.
He is a selfless genius, but he has also shown hesitation at times, even vulnerability. And he suffers from traumatic amnesia, just like Nina. For Nina, the secret to her recovery was to forget Johan. Johan's recordings show that ‘Anna’ was his lifeline.
I was waiting for Anna. - For Anna? Who's Anna?
You really have to read them as reflections of each other, because even though Johan's actions are obviously awful and against Nina's happiness, I'm going to take the risky step of saying that I don't think Johan wanted to hurt Nina. I know that sounds excruciatingly inevitable. But although Johan embodies nihilism, the only inevitability he admits to is Nina.
When Nina returned from the House of the Rose, Johan decided to carry the trauma with him to the point of convincing himself that he had lived through it. Convincing himself that he has lived through it is a mental defence mechanism for Johan. It's more terrible for him to think that Nina suffered than that he suffered.
All the despair, the trauma, the fear of Bonaparta and his return, Johan has carried with him. Nina was rid of it. If Johan asks her to kill him, he is doing it for her. Johan is Nina and Nina is Johan. If Nina gets rid of the dark, desperate part of herself (Johan), she will be able to achieve happiness.
It's all yours.
It's all an unconscious, silent contract between the twins. When Johan kills the Fortners, I think Johan knows he's not doing it for Nina's sake. But he doesn't want to hurt her either. But it was inevitable. Paradoxically, Johan is the bearer of a certain fatalism, the past and memories are the greatest determinism that conditions us. The past returns. And even if she has forgotten it, the death of Nina's parents has hit her again.
There is no question of limiting the Fortners' death to Johan's intentions per se. The death of the Fortners is a question.
Who killed them ? Nina by failing to kill Johan? Tenma by saving him? If we see them both in front of the bodies, it's to question their own responsibility. They contributed to the tragedy and are actors in it.
Why did you save him? - Didn't I kill him?!
Why did you save him? - Didn't I kill him?!