Hejhej, I hope it's ok to barge into your ask box and ask about Monster. ^^'
I would like to ask a bit about cultural context about Poppe's/Bonaparta's children's books.
Since Urasawa did mostly highly accurate research to the point he even got local architecture and major landmarks of cities right, but also different affected immigrant groups in 90s Germany (disregarded Turkish "guest" workers, Vietnamese immigrants either coming in or coming form the GDR unsure about their rights to stay in Germany). So I've the impression of an overall thorough detailed research.
In relation to the children's books, I wanted to ask if the fictional style responds to any Czech-Slovak books of the time? Given how in his early life Bonaparta leans into the German part of his cultural heritage, these books struck me as the infamous German black pedagogy children's books. (Like "Struwwelpeter" or "Max and Moritz".)
Hi, thank you for asking!
I've actually been trying to think of Czech children's books from the mid 20th century with a similar vibe to Bonaparta's for a while now myself but I couldn't come up with any. It might be because most books written at the time had to adhere to strict censorship laws. However if we look at Czech literature in general, I'd say look no further than the fairytales from Karel Jaromír Erben.
As any good folklorist from the mid- 19th century he collected and wrote down many folk tales, a lot of which were pretty dark. In fact, I'm nearly 100% certain that one of the books mentioned in Monster (The man with the big mouth and the man with the big eyes, I don't remember the exact name) is a reference to the Erben fairytale "Long, Broad and Shortsighted", even though the plot of the story quite different tbh. Also (and this might just be me) while watching the anime for the first time I found the story of the Nameless monster strangely similar to "Otesánek", which just so happens to also be an Erben fairytale. So I suppose if you're interested in this topic, his work is definitely worth looking into.
I could ramble on more if needed but I hope I at least sort of answered your question.
I was also very pleasantly surprised at how thorough Urasawa's research clearly was. Seeing the culture and place I grew up in be represented with so much care and appreciation by a foreign author made me really happy. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it.
