Johan Liebert

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## Evil-doer

### Alias

Johan Liebert
Anna Liebert
The Nameless Monster
The Next Hitler
The Devil
Franz Heinau
Michael Reichmann
Erich Springer
Otto
Hans
Thomas
J (by the media)

### Allies

Roberto
Christof Sievernich

### Occupation

Criminal mastermind
Money launderer

### Resources

Genius-level intellect
Murder methodology
Torture methodology
Immense Charisma
Inhuman prowess for manipulation
Multilingualism (fluency in German, Czech, French, English and Latin)
Mastery of disguise

### Hobby

Murdering, corrupting and manipulating others.
Shattering the ego of innocent people until they lose their will to live.
 Toying with Kenzo Tenma.
Bossing his sister Anna Liebert/Nina Fortner around.

### Goals

Kill the caretakers in Kinderheim 511 (succeeded).
Commit the "perfect suicide" (i.e to leave no trace of his existence).
Cause the collapse of human civilization and be the last man standing (formerly).
Break Tenma’s philosophy that all life is equal (all failed).

### Moral Event Horizon

Killing all of his caretakers and foster parents, thereby scarring Anna.
Manipulating the residents and instructors of an orphanage into killing each other one by one while burning it down, of which there were over 50 casualties in total.
Murdering hundreds of people in Germany, directly or otherwise.
Psychologically torturing Detective Richard before pushing him to suicide.
Nearly driving an orphaned child to suicide by sending him through a red-light district and indoctrinating him with nihilism.
Threatening to shoot Wim, a child, in the head unless Tenma kills him.

### Kill Count

Hundreds (at least)
Billions (indirectly attempted)

### Crimes

Mass murder (including child murder)
Mass corruption
Attempted omnicide (indirectly)
Attempted populicide
Attempted genocide
Psychological torture
Suicide inducement
Arson
Conspiracy
Incrimination
Stalking
Impersonation
Terrorism
Vandalism
Sabotage
Identity theft
Blackmail
Money laundering

### Type of Villain

Nihilistic Serial Killer

**Johan Liebert** is the titular main antagonist in the manga and anime series *Monster* and the overarching antagonist of its light novel sequel *Another Monster*. He is a ruthless and psychopathic serial killer whose life was saved by his archenemy Kenzo Tenma as a child. He is also the older twin brother of Nina Fortner.

Johan has stated that his one true goal is to be the last one alive when the world ends—but upon rediscovering a children's book that appeared to play a pivotal role in his past, he instead set his mind on committing the "perfect suicide", i.e. dying without leaving behind any evidence of his existence (with the possible exception of Dr. Tenma's memories of him, in order to destroy Tenma's faith in humanity).

He was voiced by Nozomu Sasaki in the Japanese version of the anime, and Keith Silverstein in the English dubbed version.

## What Makes Him Pure Evil?

### Backstory

* While he had a tragic past due to Bonaparta's actions, it doesn't hold up as Johan intends to erase every trace of his past and detach himself from it, refusing to be simply a product and have his own crimes justified and commit evil just because he feels it is as mundane as breathing to human beings and embrace his true nature.
* While it is possible there was a time Johan did have love for his mother, it is clear in his attempts to erase memory of his past, which includes the very existence of his mother, that it is all gone by the present.
* With alarming premeditation and calculation for his age, he murdered his caretakers despite being homeless due wanting no one to find out where him or Anna was
* He infamously caused the 511 Kinderheim massacre, once more as a child, by insidiously manipulating and provoking the orphans and instructors into inciting chaos—which culminated in the orphanage burning down and Johan tossing an oil rag into its fires, ominously watching as dozens of other children die by either killing each other or burning alive. When asked by Hartmann why he did this, Johan states his goal of causing the collapse of human civilization and to be the last man alive amidst a wasteland of death. There is no apparent motive for this beyond nihilism and, possibly, misanthropy.
	+ Hartmann—a former director of 511 Kinderheim and no saint himself as an abusive caretaker—refutes Tenma's claims that Kinderheim made Johan a monster, and even admits that there was no way the orphanage could've created a "masterpiece" like Johan.
* He murdered his foster parents, the Lieberts, before successfully prompting a traumatized Anna to shoot him herself with the intent to corrupt her. Despite Anna's life nearly being ruined that night and his alleged love for her, Johan shows no remorse for this—said "love" appearing to stem merely from his notion that they are two halves of the same entity, that she is a nameless monster much like him (as per the picture book that Johan had been shown), rather than brotherliness.
* He tortured Helmut Wolf by forcing him to watch his wife, children, and many friends and acquaintances all die one after the other, reducing him to a broken and paranoid wretch just to make him experience the same solitude that Johan did—despite the fact that Wolf saved him and his sister from a near-death experience. Although Wolf was a neo-Nazi, what he was subjected to was not only irrelevant to that, but cruel even for him.

### Present

* He murders Tenma's boss and coworkers Director Heinemann, Dr. Oppenheim, and Dr. Boyer with poisoned candy, ostensibly as a "favor" to Tenma for saving his life, simply because Tenma had unwittingly told Johan that Heinemann would be better off dead—despite this declaration stemming from anger and resentment rather than genuine malice—thereby incriminating Tenma for the murders due to his severe demotion prior to this. Whether Johan's incrimination was deliberate is uncertain, but not unlikely.
	+ While Director Heinemann and his subordinates were thoroughly repugnant for their corruption and disregard for the lives of their patients, Johan did not kill them solely for this reason, but to invalidate Tenma's belief that all lives are equal, as Johan brings it up when Tenma tells him that killing is wrong, and tells Tenma that his career was only salvaged thanks to the murders.
* He encourages Rheinhard Dinger and other serial killers to commit murderous acts with little to no effort, seemingly bearing a corrupting influence on a nearly supernatural level.
* He organizes a successful money laundering business only to abandon it, which in turn instigates another massacre.
* He hires serial killers from all around Germany, including Adolf Junkers and his two partners, to dispose of all of his former foster parents—only to backstab the trio by disposing of them once they've outlived their utility. Junkers initially survives, but is later executed by Johan himself in cold blood right in front of Tenma, just as Junkers was on the path to redemption and recovery. In doing so, Johan also torments and possibly attempts to corrupt Tenma—a purely good character—by insinuating that the blood of Heinemann, Oppenheim, and Boyer is on *his* hands and that their deaths benefitted him due to his promotion to fill their place, suggesting to Tenma that disposing of those in one's way is acceptable.
	+ He habitually murders his own subordinates (e.g. Horst Grossman later on) or neglects their potential deaths (e.g. his sole surviving disciple, Christof); even his most loyal henchman, Roberto, is not exempt from this callousness when he dies before an indifferent Johan's eyes without having his end of the bargain fulfilled, as he is ultimately nothing more to Johan than a pawn. Furthermore, his kindness to Roberto and Christof in the past was purely out of pragmatism.
	+ Johan's interactions with Tenma overall are attempts to invalidate his belief in the equality of all life, hence the former's acknowledgement of the latter's promotion and persistent encouragement of shooting him in the head. As seen in the climactic showdown, he goes to depraved lengths just to crush Tenma's idealism. He also tends to subject his victims to the worst possible loss and suffering rather than actually killing them himself, which often drives them to suicide anyhow. This would explain his disinterest in killing Dr. Tenma.
* He hires Detective Messener and Michael Müller to murder the Fortners, Anna's (now Nina's) new family, upon luring her out of their domicile. This would also lead to Jacob Maurer's death as he was there to investigate the Fortners when Messener and Müller went to kill them.
* He corrupts children with his worldviews and convinces them to jump from rooftops as a game, which they're told to try again should they survive. It's highly likely that many of them either become critically wounded or do not survive.
* He initially plans to have Schuwald assassinated by his hitman Roberto so that he may seize control of Germany's economy, manipulating murderers to target those close to Schuwald in order to get closer to him by taking their place and earning his trust, in addition to driving Edmund Fahren to suicide for no apparent reason. His reason for nearly subjugating the economy is to set his aforementioned apocalyptic initial plan in motion.
* When recovering alcoholic and detective Richard Braun is hired to investigate Fahren's suicide and begins to draw connections between Johan and other unsolved murders, Johan retaliates by meeting Richard in a bar and, veiled as research for a college thesis, confronting him on the latter's execution of a 17-year-old serial rapist and murderer, citing various sections from the Convention on the Rights of the Child to put the detective in the wrong—initially under a neutral, understanding façade. This façade gradually erodes as instead of simply luring him someplace he could kill him, Johan does so while slowly and ruthlessly hammering away at Richard's psyche by planting seeds of guilt, asking Richard how he intends to look his daughter Rosemary in the eye the next day when her father is a murderer and a coward, and finally manipulating him into drinking again—which is followed by Richard either jumping/falling off the rooftop Johan has lured him to or being pushed off, killing him, despite Johan's knowledge that Richard was to see Rosemary the next day for the first time in years. His wife and daughter grieve his death afterwards. This is done not to deliver justice for the otherwise morally upright Richard's past crime, but simply for his interference with Johan's plans.
* After murdering Blue Sophie (which is arguably well deserved), Johan gives drug money to a prostitute near the crime scene for seemingly no other reason than to further ruin her life by having her abuse more drugs—although it is *possibly* also pragmatism, i.e. to dispel suspicion by rendering her an unreliable witness due to her addiction, if not simple hush money.
* He sets the highly occupied Munich University Library ablaze while instilling terror into Schuwald, killing a few and injuring many while burning myriads of books simply because of his loss of interest in murdering Schuwald. Since he refuses to abandon his plans for Schuwald without ruining the business tycoon's life in some way, he spitefully traumatizes him and shows him scenes from Hell—both in the library and in Johan's very eyes.
* Upon embarking to Prague in search of a 511 Kinderheim tape from his youth, Johan murders and deceives people—including Reinhart Biermann, the repenting headmaster of said orphanage who, up until his death, was raising children in a manner opposite to that of his past experiments—while disguised as his sister Anna, deliberately gaslighting and potentially incriminating her. In said disguise, he frequents a local bar and acquaints himself with Detective Jan Suk, who is enamored with him due to his convincing appearance as Anna; however, upon extracting the required information from Suk, Johan poisons his boss and other (corrupt) policemen involved with the Czech Secret Police attempting to acquire and sell the tape that Johan seeks, which deflects blame and suspicion onto the innocent Suk due to the similar poisoning method utilized by said police.
* To exonerate Wolfgang Grimmer from false suspicion of murdering Biermann, several of the orphans who were previously in the latter's custody band together to find the "mysterious blonde lady" (Johan) who was present at the scene and presumed to be a witness—and one of the boys, Miloš, is successful. What follows is one of Johan's most wanton and reasonless acts of cruelty when, still disguised as Anna, he tells Miloš that he should find his lost mother at a nearby red-light district, but bombards his hopes with the notions that his mother abandoned him because he was never wanted and that all life is insignificant; he then sends the boy through said district wherein he witnesses several forms of human depravity, including rape, which—coupled with his inevitable failure to find his mother—tortures the boy enough to drive him to the brink of suicide. Although this is stopped through Tenma and Grimmer's narrow intervention, Miloš is still very visibly traumatized and implied to be corrupted by Johan when he squishes a moth unprovoked, and his fate thereafter is unspecified.
* He burns down the Red Rose Mansion, which contains a painting of his own mother, in his endeavor to erase his past and (ultimately) himself.
* Subsequent to disposing of his henchman Horst Grossman, he visits the remote village of Ruhenheim wherein he instigates a massacre by playing on the doubts, fears, and innate greed associated with human nature, destroying its peace and killing many more in the process. He intends to have its entire population dead at its own hands.
* He rejects Anna's forgiveness of all of his actions during their final encounter, immediately before holding a nearby child at gunpoint just to coerce Tenma to shoot him and fulfill his goal of a "perfect suicide" (and once more to corrupt Tenma and invalidate his worldviews).
* In the ambiguous ending of the story, Johan appears to escape the police hospital he was sent to following his second brain surgery, indicating that in the end, he receives no comeuppance for his long list of atrocities. It is also possible that he is still in a comatose state, but regardless, his ultimate fate is unknown and it is likely that he evaded justice.
* Regardless of being foiled and exposed after the events of *Monster*, he indirectly instigates the events of *Another Monster* by inspiring Hermann Führ to dispose of Molke and everyone else aware of his existence, now that his criminal record is publicized.
* Overall, he lives up to the manga/anime's name as a living force of evil (complete with parallels/allusions to the Antichrist as opposed to the Messiah that Tenma symbolizes) which brings out the absolute worst in people, spreads as much evil and suffering as possible, and champions the downfall of all human society and morality, showing no signs of any genuine caring towards Anna or anyone else beyond mere fixation (e.g. his refusal to kill Tenma out of a petty desire to destroy his optimism and negate his humanitarianism). For this reason, neither Johan adopting Anna's memories of the Red Rose Mansion, nor his trauma from the day Anna was abducted for the experiment , nor whatever *The Nameless Monster* may have imprinted on his mind upon reading it as a child can truly mitigate his emotionlessly antisocial behavior and copious atrocities—especially not what would have transpired if he hadn't rediscovered the aforementioned picture book.