↑Monster is a manga by Naoki Urasawa which has been very faithfully adapted to a 74-episode anime series by Masayuki Kojima. The series aired from 2004 to 2005 in Japan. The story, a psychological thriller centred around the main protagonist Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese MD and brain surgeon, takes place in a Germany of the 1980s and 1990s. It is not a cyberpunk anime, but hardboiled for sure. Locations are several German cities, Munich among them, in particular my university here. The whole story is thrilling and filled with suspense—besides that, for the German audience it is particularly amazing that the scenery is stunningly true-to-life. The scenery in every screengrab I reproduced here is perfectly familiar to everyone studying or working at Munich University.
 


 

But it becomes even better. In chapter 25 “The Thursday Boy” of the anime series, Karl Neumann, a “management studies major in the business department at Munich University” befriends a female student, Lotte Frank. And guess what? She studies cultural anthropology! Given that this part of the story plays in 1996, she must have studied with me! But honestly, somehow I do not really remember her.