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Monster Anime Premieres on Syfy's Ani-Monday Tonight (Updated)

The anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's Monster suspense manga will make its American television premiere on the Syfy channel tonight at 11:00 p.m. EDT/PDT. Two episodes will run every week through at least November. The same episodes will repeat on Syfy's sister channel Chiller.

In this story by Urasawa and his collaborator Takashi Nagasaki, brain surgeon Kenzo Tenma puts his entire career on the line to save the life of a boy over the life of the mayor. Dr. Tenma loses not only his job, but his fiancé, who happens to be the hospital director's daughter. He then finds himself in caught in a web of suspicion after a string of murders at the hospital. Even as he tries to unravel the conspiracies, Dr. Tenma learns that the boy he saved has dark secrets of his own.

Viz Media began publishing the original Monster manga in North America in 2006. Viz also publishes Urasawa's 20th Century Boys and Pluto, while the Japanese publisher Shogakukan published most of Urasawa's works including Yawara! and Master Keaton. New Line Cinema optioned the rights to make a feature film project based on the Monster manga four years ago.

Image © 2004 Naoki Urasawa, Studio Nuts /Shogakukan, VAP, NTV

Update: Manga Entertainment, the sponsor of the Ani-Monday programming block, is already hosting the first episode of Monster on its website. Thanks, chronoclast.