What I Believe "No one is born evil" Means

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It's a common interpretation that one of the major themes of Monster is the emphasis of environmental factors on the impact on someone's choices of good and evil rather than someone being born purely good or evil. But I always wondered, why? What does this ultimately drive to, what is Urasawa saying through this.

Well, a part of it is that people can change no matter how evil as we all have good and evil inside us, but I think another part is systems themselves. Johan Liebert suffered because of the systems and politics of the world. His birth was made to be the "perfect human" or solider to serve the world or lead it. Because of this his family life was hell, he was dehumanized utterly and it caused his upbringing. He was either the perfect human, the perfect soldier, or the next Hitler, all to serve, not to live.

Basically Johan became evil, a lot of it because of the system. The politics of the world ended up molding a innocent child into a monster, and while Johan made his choices it's ultimately the system's fault for letting something like this happen. If Johan was born evil, then the systems won't need to be called out for their problems, it can even be argued it's a way for them to avoid accountability and not change.

This is what I believe the second half of what Urasawa wanted with how no one is born pure evil, it's to not cop out of the fact it's usually a system's fault for putting people into darkness and make them want to inflict it on others.

Posted Jun 3, 2026, 1:37 AM UTC

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