Johan Liebert

> I saw Hell right there in his eyes. Hell. In the eyes of a living human being.
>
> Hans Georg Schuwald on the true nature of Johan Liebert.

> Dr. Tenma. For you, all lives are created equal; that's why I came back to life—but you've finally come to realize it now, haven't you? Only one thing's equal for all... and that is death.
>
> Johan Liebert provoking Tenma to shoot him.

> Dr. Tenma. There's something I want only you to hear. That time, long ago, when the monster appeared in front of me—was my mother really trying to save me that day, or did she confuse me with my sister? Well, which is it? Which one of us didn't she need?
>
> Johan's last words to Dr. Tenma in his dream and in the entire series.

## Summary

**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 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).

**Name:** Unknown. Aliases include: 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)

**Origin:** Monster

**Gender:** Male

**Age:** 20

**Classification:** Human, sociopath

**Alignment:** **Chaotic Evil**

## Tropes

* A-M
* N-Z

* **Agent Peacock**: He's extremely effeminate in appearance, cross dresses, and is very poetic. He's also a monstrous sociopath.
* **Ambiguous Start of Darkness**: The **Driving Question**; is his evil **nature, or nurture**?
* **Ambiguously Human**: There is no real proof that he's anything but a pure evil **Muggle**, **however several characters believe him to be** a **Humanoid Abomination**. He is alternately perceived as a vampire, an alien, the Devil, and a drunk person hallucinates him as a multiheaded dragon **Eldritch Abomination**. Make of that what you will.
	+ **Schubert**: "...I can always sense it, **the presence of something so unearthly and precise, like Johan**. **I feel as though he's not of this world. I do**."
* **Attractive Bent-Gender**: Dresses in drag and seduces **Jan Suk**. For a very old-fashioned girl sense of "seduce," anyway. Or maybe he has stubble issues.
* **Ax-Crazy**: A very subdued and disturbing one. He never goes visibly nuts, is very soft-spoken, polite, and overall calm at almost all times. However, if you associate with him, you will die. If you meet him, you will die. If you make eye contact, you will die. If you so much as think about him, you will die. And if you won't think of him, he just has to think about you, and you'll be just as dead.
* **Badass Bookworm**: He's as intellectual as he is vicious.
* **Badass in a Nice Suit**: Johan is a very well-dressed serial killer.
* **Bad Samaritan**:
	+ He volunteers at an orphanage so that he can turn children into nihilists like himself and/or convince them to commit suicide.
	+ He gives money to a homeless junkie and tells her to buy drugs with it.
* **Bait-and-Switch Boss**: The Thursday Boy, with all the apocalyptic and previous information about him changing names, you'd never suspect this was an impostor. The actual Johan tutored with the professor in Munich under a different day and under his own name, **you got to hand to him pulling that off**.
* **Beauty Is Bad**: He is incredibly handsome, but an utterly depraved human being.
* **Big Bad**: He's the titular Monster and the catalyst behind several murders.
* **Bitch in Sheep's Clothing**: He's a great guy to hang out with, and a good listener, too! He'll even shed **Tender Tears** when you tell your troubles. He'll also cheer up your ailing elderly parents better than you ever could, and get along better with your kids, too. Then he'll do utter atrocities to you when you're of no use to him.
* **Break Them by Talking**: He is *very* good at this.
* **Bright Is Not Good**: Has platinum blond hair and is a psychopathic serial killer.
* **Broken Ace**: Of the evil variety. He's perfect at everything, including killing and manipulation.
* **Burn the Orphanage**: Johan orchestrated a riot amongst the staff and children in **511 Kinderheim** that lead to it burning to the ground. Given the events that took place inside, it was probably for the better.
* **Cain and Abel**: The Cain to Anna's Abel. He's a serial killer, and she's his sister.
* **Card-Carrying Villain**: He's fully aware of what he is and doesn't even try to justify his actions.
* **Cast as a Mask**: The anime does this. To make the reveal that the "Nina" who Suk has been courting in Prague is actually Johan more shocking, the studio used Nina's voice actress to play Johan whenever he dons this look. This is done both in the Japanese version and in the English dub.
* **Commie Nazis**: Having grown up in an East German orphanage, he'd have been raised communist. This doesn't stop Neo-Nazis exalting him as the next Hitler. Bonus points for the **Antichrist** motifs. **Truth in Television** - the vast majority of Neo-Nazis in modern Germany are from the East German areas, which are harsher and poorer than the West. A lot of Neo-Nazis were disillusioned teenagers raised in a communist society.
* **Corruption by a Minor**: Quite a few times, and we're not talking getting other kids to scrump apples here. Or just kids, for that matter. Inspires a taxi driver to emulate the film *Taxi Driver* without (thankfully) even going paedophile-like about it, at the age of ten. Even before that, he engineered the **Kinderheim 511** massacre.
* **Creepy Blue Eyes**: His light blue eyes are used to highlight how terrifying he is.
* **Creepy Child**: He caused a mass homicide among a cult at the age of ten.
* **Creepy Crossdresser**: At one point he dresses as a woman. As for creepy, he's a serial killer.
* **Creepy Monotone**: Very apparent in the English version, where in the Japanese, he comes across as soft-spoken.
* **Crocodile Tears**: Johan, when "lending a shoulder", actually sheds a tear during a conversation with Karl, when the latter recounts his own childhood, the tragic life of his mother, and being moved from one foster home to another. And when he cries, it looks very convincing — but don't be fooled, especially when you, the audience, are already aware of what an amazing actor Johan is. So of course, his tears were fake.
	+ In *Another Monster*, both Lotte and Karl himself contend that Johan's tears about Karl's past were genuine, but an **Alternative Character Interpretation** of *this* in-universe may be that Johan's manipulative abilities were so powerful that people still wanted to view him sympathetically *even after* they learned he was evil.
	+ Possibly **subverted** when Nina reveals that Johan had been crying while perusing through Bonaparta's sketches of the twins in the "Vampire's House".
* **Cultured Badass**: He's knowledgeable in several subjects, and he can even read Latin. He's also a murderer.
* **Cute and Psycho**: His gaze is visibly innocent, but that does not stop him from being a murderous psychopath.
* **Cut Lex Luthor a Check**: Notably **averted**. He *does* use his borderline super-human skills and abilities to make a living, but it's never more than a means.
* **Dark and Troubled Past**: Not really. He just did what he always does; *Nina* was the one taken to the Red Rose Mansion and Johan was already a murderer by proxy when he came to 511 Kinderheim, which ended in a massacre *because* of him.
* **Dead Person Impersonation**: In Munich.
* **Death Seeker**: This is his ultimate goal, insofar as he has one. He just wants to bring everyone else with him.
* **Dissonant Serenity**: He always maintains his calm and carefree demeanor. In fact, his default facial expression changes about *twice* in the series' entire run. Both times it makes him even *more* creepy.
* **Driven to Villainy**: Horrifyingly. Sure, he was already an **Enfant Terrible** as a child, but he was *severely* warped by the empathic bond that formed between his sister and him when they were still very young. While she repressed the psychological torture she'd gone through, he began to think it had happened to *him* instead... and thus from that seed a monster grew.
* **Empty Shell**: An exceptionally deranged and creepy example, even by what is by definition a creepy trope. Johan may look like **The Ace**, but he really has nothing to call his own; no real name (as evidenced by that fairy tale he likes), no proper identity (he had to pretend to be his sister when he was a kid and is still obsessed with her), and no personality- not even his atrocities can be called his own given how utterly divorced from them emotionally he is.
* **Enfant Terrible**: He commits several murders as a child.
* **Equal-Opportunity Evil**: Johan will kill everyone he feels like regardless of race, gender or class. When a group of neo-nazis try to make him the second fuhrer, he murders them before moving on.
* **Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas**: Seemed to have loved his mother when he was still a child.
* **Even Evil Has Loved Ones**: Though it is debatable on whether he's even capable of love, his obsession with Anna/Nina doesn't make it any less disturbing. However, it is notable that his greatest fear is forgetting about "Anna."
	+ Claims to view Tenma as a father figure and, alongside Anna, never makes any attempt to kill him.
* **Even Evil Has Standards**: **Played with**. He murders the neo-nazis because they discriminate with their murder upon the basis of race and he has no interest in that whatsoever.
* **Even the Guys Want Him**: He was cross-dressing at the time. On the other hand, Roberto *worships* him.
* **Evil Genius**: He's extremely intelligent, calculating and a sociopathic serial killer.
* **Evil Twin**: He's Anna's twin, and he's a serial killer.
* **Evil Virtues**: Works hard, is resourceful, ambitious, patient, and determined.
* **Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon**:
	+ For someone who's commonly compared to the Anti-Christ, he looks very kind.
	+ Used very effectively in his first scene as an adult (when he kills Junkers in the garage). He's concealed in shadow for almost the entire scene, underscoring him as "the Monster." But when he leaves, he locks eyes with Tenma and both the doctor and the audience see he looks not just handsome, but downright angelic.
* **Faux Affably Evil**: He charms, he smiles, he seems to *care* and he's such a beautiful and brilliant young man... as he uses you and kills you and if he takes enough of an interest in you, he will probably take the time to kill all your hopes and dreams, first.
* **For the Evulz**: He sometimes does things simply because he can. There is also some deconstruction in the fact that even if he does evil for evil's sake he doesn't seem to get any *pleasure* out of it — in a couple of occasions he is even apparently **Bored with Insanity** but he continues to be evil because **why the hell not?** He gets no kicks out of it, he doesn’t really care about hating anybody even as he plots their suffering (to the point he destroyed a Neo-Nazi movement **when they tried to make him their leader**), he doesn't believe in any vision that he wishes to spread, heck, he even wishes to commit suicide, but part of his scheme is to become an **Un-person** so it's not like he wants to use his death to become a **Dark Messiah** or something. Even other notable madmen like The Joker want to make some kind of point for all of their randomness, while Johan's evil is as much a part of him (and as boring as) as any other bodily function.
* **Freudian Excuse**: Sort of. It's complicated. The audience is presented with **several possible origins for what he does**, **but they all prove to be false**.
* **Freudian Excuse Denial**: Ultimately, he doesn't accept any **Freudian Excuse** to explain his nature and deliberately keeps his motives vague beyond turning people into monsters like he is.
* **Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse**: Multiple reasons for why Johan is what he is are suggested throughout the series, from Kinderheim 511 (which one of the staff members admitted they couldn't have created someone as devious as him) to The Red Rose Mansion (which was actually experienced by his sister and he projected happening to him), but they're all proven to fail to explain what he is. In the end, his mother deciding to choose one of her children over the other, without knowing who it was or what triggered things, and **he decides himself that this is insufficient to justify it after he finally learns his true name**.
* **Gentleman and a Scholar**: He feigns being this.
* **Good Eyes, Evil Eyes**: How *did* he get his eyes to be so wide?
* **Greater-Scope Villain**: Of *Another Monster*, as he's the one who drove Hermann Fuhr to commit murder.
* **Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold**: **Exploited Trope**. Johan tries to present himself as a blond, kindhearted man, but the rest of the tropes here should tell you he is anything but, unlike his sister, **who plays it straight**.
* **Half-Identical Twins**: He has a twin sister, who is otherwise identical. Although, his hair is somehow lighter than his sister’s.
* **Hates Everyone Equally**: Johan's desire to destroy everybody is **beyond** such things as race or religion. He even destroys a Neo-Nazi organization **that tried to recruit him because**, in a nutshell, they were **not indiscriminate enough**.
* **Horrifying the Horror**: Even hardened killers are terrified of him, one serial killer even commits suicide when he's brought up.
* **I Have Many Names**: His true name is only known to his mother, and he uses several aliases. He only seems to fall back on Johan because Tenma and Nina use it.
* **I Want My Beloved to Be Happy**: He does this for Anna/Nina twice. He willingly allows Anna to shoot him after finding out that he killed the Lieberts, and the reason behind his "perfect suicide" plan of a massacre in Ruhenheim along with eradicating his existence (mirroring Franz Bonaparta's Red Rose Mansion massacre, which is in itself an "expression of love" to the twins' mother) was partly due to how irredeemable he has become and to make Nina happy.
* **I Will Find You**: One of Johan's goals is to reunite with Nina. He tries to make contact with her a few times, but either Tenma or Neo-Nazis who want Johan for their own benefit have a tendency to get in the way.
* **I've Come Too Far**: Near the end, Johan reveals that he believes that he crossed the moral event horizon long ago and it's too late for him to redeem himself, so there's no reason for him to stop committing his horrible actions anyway.
* **Indirect Serial Killer**: He's a master at manipulating others into killing for him.
* **Intelligence Equals Isolation**: Johan is intelligent, and he mostly acts as a lone wolf. Any associates are mere tools to him.
* **Irony**: One of the reasons he became the guy he is, is due to the empathy he felt for his sister's traumatic experiences. That's right, compassion made him a monster.
* **Karma Houdini**: **Zig-zagged**. The ending does not make Johan's fate clear, but it could be interpreted that he left the hospital bed. The anime adaptation heavily implies that this is the case and he indeed escaped the hospital. The sequel novel, *Another Monster*, reveals that the general public is aware of his crimes and he is still believed to be in a coma. However, it's unknown if he is responsible for the new wave of murders described in the novel or if it's just a copycat.
* **Klingon Promotion**: Last-minute **aversion** when **in his own words**, "Something else came to mind." And by "something else," he does *not* mean resigning unobtrusively.
* **Lack of Empathy**: It is perhaps inaccurate to say that Johan *lacks* empathy; he is fundamentally incapable of it.
* **Laser-Guided Karma**: His physical threat is quashed by Herbert Knaup, a neglectful parental figure who is utterly oblivious to any of the philosophies at play in the story and whose son Johann randomly decides to threaten to get a rise out of Tenma. Herbert even guns him down to save Wim with one of the pistols he had handed out in the city.
* **Light Is Not Good**: He's a beautiful, almost angelic-looking man who gives off an aura of trust and kindness to all who meet him. Needless to say, he's almost unspeakably, irrevocably evil.
* **Made of Iron**: He survives a bullet to the head twice!
* **Madness Mantra**: "But that's not my real name." Reinforced by his supremely creepy fairy tale.
* **Manipulative Bastard**: His forte is to manipulate people to fulfill his plans.
* **Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane**: The series really likes to explore (and muddle) whether or not his borderline invincible efficiency as a corruptor of men is him being **just that good** or him actually being **the demon everybody else says he is**.
* **Meaningful Name**: Apart from the context the name *Johan* has within the series, it is noteworthy that this is a version of *John*, whose Revelations provide the source for the series' epigraph. Although the St. John of Revelations is usually referred to as Johannes, a different (and more formal) German version of John. John is also one of the most stereotypically generic names, which may be a reference to his own lack of identity.
	+ It may also be a reference to Johann Conrad Dippel, an alchemist who inspired the character Victor Frankenstein. He was said to have been spoken with the devil, and killed animals and collected dead animals to create an oil which he believed could gain him eternal life.
	+ Or it could be the Hebrew version of Johan, which is "**God is gracious**". If so, the irony is a riot!
* **Mind Rape**: His specialty is to break down people to destroy whatever happiness or goodness they could have.
* **Mommy Issues**: Check out his little chat with her portrait, for starters.

* **Nerves of Steel**: A villainous example. Johan is not bothered by things that would make a grown man cower in fear.
* **Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant**: Everything he does is terrifying, and even the scenes of him as a child are disturbing in nature.
* **No Name Given**: We never learn his real name.
* **Non-Action Big Bad**: More like so good at manipulation and killing, he doesn't need to fight.
* **Not So Stoic**: He breaks his stoicism in regards to his twin sister.
* **Nothing Is Scarier**: Almost nothing about why he's so evil or what his larger goal is (if one exists) is ever made clear. Potential **Freudian Excuses** making him act out in trauma? Genuine mental issues affecting his agency? The straight-up antichrist out to destroy humanity entirely? Nobody knows, apparently not even him. He just *is* and *does*.
* **O.O.C. Is Serious Business**: Is Johan showing a facial expression other than **Dissonant Serenity**? Well, it's been nice knowing you...
* **Omnicidal Maniac**: While his motives are left somewhat vague, his actions certainly suggest that his ultimate goal is the complete destruction of human society by manipulating everyone he comes across into killing themselves or each other and to be the last person standing atop the rubble of civilization.
* **Parental Abandonment**: There is a mystery behind what happened to the Liebert twins' biological parents. It's implied that their father was killed, but it's later revealed that the mother is still alive.
* **Pay Evil unto Evil**: When he kills Tenma's corrupt superiors, and later the Prague police officers who are plotting to murder Suk.
* **Practically Joker**: He is often called The Joker of Manga and Anime and it's not hard to see why. Mysterious past? Check. Ax-Crazy and For the Evulz tendencies? Check. Cult like followers? Check. Desire to corrupt their **Arch-Enemy** by getting them to kill them? Check. Johan is basically a more emotionally mature and stoic version of The Joker.
* **Pretty Boy**: He's very good-looking and has fine features. Unfortunately, his good looks plus his homicidal, anti-Christ-like psychopath personality make for a very dangerous (if not deadly) combination...
* **Pretty Little Headshots**: **Averted**, when shot as a child and as an adult, there is no exit wound.
* **Psychopathic Manchild**: A combination of Type C and Type D.
* **Pure Is Not Good**: Johan Liebert is portrayed as a charismatic, intelligent, and seemingly inhumanly perfect individual. After all, he's a **handsome**, **well-mannered, well-read, and educated young man**. However, nothing changes the fact that he is the monster: a **highly manipulative** **psychopath** who has been carrying out a series of crimes and murders since **his childhood**. With his qualities, the vast majority of the world's problems would be solved, not helped by the fact that he was raised to be the **perfect soldier**. His unwavering dedication to his twisted goals and his lack of scruples make him an example of how "purity" in terms of determination, physical appearance, intellect, personality, and **Evil Virtues** does not necessarily denote moral goodness.
* **Pyromaniac**: Books, buildings, books *and* buildings...
* **Raised as the Opposite Gender**: He wore girls' clothing as a child since his mother wanted to create the illusion of only having one child.
* **Redemption Earns Life**: A possible interpretation of the ending. By saving Johan's life again and telling him his true name, Tenma gave Johan the chance to live as himself and not "the Nameless Monster."
* **Renaissance Man**: Johan possesses extensive knowledge of seemingly unrelated subjects like psychology, literature, international law and other languages. This extensive range of knowledge is part of what makes him so dangerous.
* **Sadist**: He clearly enjoys tormenting people. Some of his ways of inducing people to suicide are unnecessarily cruel as well.
* **Satanic Archetype**: This is what Johan actually is. Like how the Bible claims Lucifer can appear as a "an angel of light", Johan is angelical, gentle and beautiful but only to hide **the pure malevolence underneath**, that of a twisted, sadistic **Serial Killer** who uses everyone as his own tools to advance him.
* **Self-Made Orphan**: He repeatedly killed his foster families.
* **Serial Killer**: A very nightmarish one. He enjoys inducing his victims to suicide, or being the catalyst for mass murders.
* **Sissy Villain**: He crossdresses, but it's because he sees himself and the sister he's dressing as as essentially the same person, with no definition between them. And he's too damaged and empty to even qualify as Asexual in the healthy orientation sense, let alone gay.
* **Slasher Smile**:
	+ Blink and you'll miss it, but when he sees that he's **broken** Richard, he makes an absolutely sadistic slasher smile.
	+ He gives another one when he's standing in front of the mirror, just after he's revealed to be posing as Anna. His usual half-lidded eyes make it all the more scary.
* **Smart People Know Latin**: Becomes a plot point as he reads books in Latin for Hans Georg Schuwald, a wealthy man who he is trying to get close to.
* **Soft-Spoken Sadist**: This. Oh. So. Much. And if you watched the anime and reached episodes 25 to 27 — where we meet Karl Neumann and co. — even if Johan hasn't physically shown up in a long time since episode 4 (not counting flashbacks), seeing him speaking very kindly and *acting* very nice is... erm, very creepy, for lack of better words; and kinda heartbreaking too because of how beautiful he is and how sincere he *sounds*. Especially when considering the fact that, by this time, we already know what he's capable of and how he's a master manipulator.
* **Spanner in the Works**: His final scheme to goad Tenma in to shooting him is undone by a random drunk, who knows nothing about the elaborate mind games Johan is playing and only shoots him because Johan is threatening his son.
* **Spell My Name with an S**:
	+ Johann is the German spelling; Johan the Czech. You choose.
	+ Also Liebheart is to Liebert.
* **Stalker Without a Crush**: To his sister. He sends her anonymous e-mails and even visits her university to watch her. Later, it is shown that he has studied her so well that he can impersonate her almost perfectly.
* **Straight Edge Evil**: He is never seen drinking or smoking. Even when he's in a bar with a glass of alcohol, he's never seen drinking.
	+ He does drink once, when he is proving to a very paranoid Peter Capek that the wine isn't poisoned.
* **Straw Nihilist**: **Subverted**. While he does think life itself is utterly meaningless, he also believes in something bigger. Unfortunately, what Johan believes in is evil.
* **Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!**: He points at his forehead to order people to shoot him.
* **'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain**: He is shot in the head **twice** and both times he is tough enough to survive and, after Tenma operates on him, be ambulatory and lethal after a short period recovering... or at least, **that is a big "maybe"** on the second time.
* **The Antichrist**: Not literally (**though he might be**), but certain Revelation passages parallel his life and are used as an epigraph for the series. He also likes to **tempt people in high places** and at **one point** hands someone an **apple**.
* **The Chessmaster**: An extremely effective one, able to control entire operations from great distances.
* **The Corrupter**: What tries to do those with corrupt hearts, making them indulge in their desires and for those like Tenma, he wants him to become **He Who Fights Monsters**.
* **The Dog Bites Back**: When he kills Dr. Heinemann's team, who were willing to let him die and then tried to exploit him and his sister for media publicity.
* **The Dreaded**: Every character who has knowledge of Johan is deathly afraid of him. One commits suicide when he's brought up too much in conversation and others start shaking uncontrollably just thinking about him.
* **The Farmer and the Viper**: Anyone who ever does anything remotely decent or nice for him ends up suffering at his hands, but Tenma, the one who saved his life in the first place, gets the very worst of it through the horrible things that Johan does to others in order to "repay" him.
* **The Sociopath**: His polite, soft-spoken veneer is a mere façade that masks the unfeeling creature dwelling beneath it. Killing is as natural to him as breathing; the same cannot be said of his capacity to feel ordinary human emotions, such as sympathy or remorse.
* **The Stoic**: Remains emotionless, cool, calm, and collected while he **murders people and burns down a library**. However...
* **The Svengali**: He volunteers at an orphanage in order to drill his nihilistic philosophy into the children.
* **The Trickster**: He frequently uses people's hypocrisies and the lies they tell themselves against them. And he likes to spread havoc too.
* **The Unfettered**: Part of what makes Johan so scary is that there isn't much stopping him from committing vile atrocities, given how he views most people as tools and is completely used to doing vile things for literally any reason.
* **The Unreveal**: It is never revealed what exactly is Johan's motive, *if* he has one. From what is known, most of his beliefs are nihilistic in nature. The only clue to his mindset is Franz Bonaparta's creepy fairy tale, "The Nameless Monster": a monster kills many people in search of a name, but by the time he succeeds, there is no one left to call him by that name.
* **Tragic Villain**: **Deconstructed**. He suffered extreme trauma as a child and it's clear that it continues to haunt him. However, others suffered similarly without becoming monsters, and Hartmann admits that he couldn't have crafted a monster like Johan.
* **Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour**: Lots. He was a really evil child.
* **Uncanny Valley Girl**: A male version, lampshaded in the Munich arc. He's actually at least initially less overtly uncanny when cross-dressing... but then again he *is* (mostly) impersonating his **sister**.
* **Underestimating Badassery**: A lot of the other villains think they can control him for their own ends. It tends to end fatally for them.
* **Unperson**: He is a rare case of this being self-inflicted. Destroying every trace of his existence before dying is one of his ultimate goals in life, what he calls "The Perfect Suicide".
* **Used to Be a Sweet Kid**: **Averted**. Even then, he was pretty horrible.
* **Übermensch**: A very evil and destructive one. He is the result of a Nazi product to create one after all.
* **Villain with Good Publicity**: **Double subverted**. A lot of people end up trusting and liking him for whatever reason, usually because he **turns on the charm** and starts convincing them he's someone they should like. Then they discover his true colors...and by the time they do, their life expectancy has already dropped significantly...
* **Villainous Breakdown**: After re-reading "The Monster With No Name" and again (offscreen) after Nina points out that some of "his" memories are actually hers. And once more when Nina forgives him in Ruhenheim and it becomes apparent that Tenma won't shoot him unless he actually threatens an innocent.
* **Where I Was Born and Razed**: He caused the destruction of Kinderheim 511.
* **White Hair, Black Heart**: His hair isn't exactly white, but it's either a platinum blond or it's bordering on platinum blond. And it's natural too — no dyes. He's an evil character.
* **Wicked Cultured**: This is part of what makes him so terrifying and effective. He is practically a genius knowing many languages with a keen understanding of law which he uses to **Mind Rape** a certain character and was even able to run a massive money laundering scheme at fifteen-years-old.
* **Wise Beyond Their Years**: Even as a child, Johan was a genius and master manipulator.
* **Would Hurt a Child**: This show doesn't shield the viewers from witnessing how Johan **psychologically manipulates little children into killing themselves**.
* **Xanatos Speed Chess**: He has a tendency to change his plans *repeatedly*, though typically with the same ultimate conclusion that **Tenma will shoot him** and **thus denounce his ideals and become just as much of a monster as he is**.
* **Yandere**: A creepy and platonic male example towards Anna/Nina.
* **You Monster!**: He isn't called one for nothing, you know. He serves as a very deliberate exploration and deconstruction of exactly what constitutes a "monster".

## Powers and Stats

**Tier:** **10-B** , **9-C** with guns

**Powers and Abilities:**

* **Genius Intelligence** (Manipulator, criminal mastermind, skilled student, language mastery)
* **Skilled Marksman**
* **Disguise Mastery**
* **Social Influencing**

**Attack Potency: Human level**, **Street level** with guns

**Speed:** **Average Human**

**Lifting Strength: Average Human**

**Striking Strength: Human level**

**Durability: Human level**

**Stamina:** **Average**

**Range:** **Standard Melee Range**, **Hundreds of Meters** with guns, at least **Thousands of Kilometers** via criminal connections

**Standard Equipment:** Beretta 92FS

**Intelligence:** **Genius** (With just his intelligence, he has brought various companies, criminal enterprises, white supremacist groups and other organizations down to their knees. At the age of ten, he managed to manipulate fifty people in 511 Kinderheim to kill each other shortly after having arrived to the orphanage. Between the ages of twelve and thirteen, he quickly learned and became perfectly fluent in English and French over the course of thirteen months, and at the age of fifteen, he started and presided over an underground bank, showcasing an in-depth understanding of mathematics, economics, trade, business, politics, management and leadership in spite of his young age. Heinrich Lunge, a man who could determine a killer's exact motives and personality by analyzing one of their crime scenes and psychologically entering their mindset, was unable to determine anything after analyzing the scene of one of Johan's crimes, eventually going as far as to say "I do not exist" when attempting to assume the latter's mentality. Hans Georg Schuwald, a prominent business figure renowned for his ability to manipulate the German economy with ease, praised Johan's knowledge of law and economics, even comparing him to the biblical Beast of Revelations and claiming him to be the beyond-human, chaotic monster he had aspired to be in years past. His mastery over psychology and analysis is such that he is able to find the root and foundation of an individual's personality within moments of meeting them, having displayed this ability countless times throughout the series)

**Weaknesses:** Does not value his own life due to his nihilism.