I'm pretty speechless already, as many people have said all I would have wanted to say about the series. All I'm left to say in my speechlessness is that it's AWESOME, hands down.

One of the things which kept me really glued to the series is how human the characters are, and just how much you can really feel every scene – you would forget that you are watching through a screen and instead feel like you're the fugitive in Germany, holding a gun in your hand. Even if some characters (notably Runge and Ad- "Robert") annoyed me so much, that just proves the artistry in the series – you empathize with the characters, and I loved them all as a result. Never read the manga version yet, but the anime itself is really good (good enough for me to break my old record of repeating an entire series five times), so I have high expectations.

I have to say that the jump rope scene bugged me a lot – it was really skippy when I watched it, and I kept rewinding to check if it was my CD which was horrible. I watched it over and over (as with the series itself), and I guess it really was a horrible animation cycle.

I secretly wished that they'd make a local dub for Monster here, but knowing how horrible many local versions for otherwise good series turned out, I wouldn't hope for it anymore.

I'm somewhat upset over the American-dub version, mainly over the fact that they had to shorten the episodes for about 2 minutes. (The average time for each episode, from intro to the very end of the ending theme song is approximately 22 minutes and 15 seconds.)

There goes my two cents (or maybe five, with the length I've used.)