| “ | After all, people's lives aren't created equal. | ” |
—Eva | ||
Eva Heinemann (エヴァ・ハイネマン, Eva Haineman?) is the daughter of Eisler Memorial Hospital's director, Udo Heinemann, and the ex-fiancée of Kenzō Tenma.
Appearance
Eva has fair skin, light purple eyes, and shoulder-length blonde hair with an offset middle-part.
Personality
Eva is initially a haughty woman, spoiled by her father and status, often displaying an elitist attitude and looking down on people who she perceives as being "beneath" her. However, as the series progresses and she experiences different (sometimes tragic) losses in her life, she eventually comes to grow and mature as a person.
Relationships
Udo Heinemann
Eva's relationship with her father, though left largely unexplored, is shown to be overwhelmingly positive, in spite of his often ethically questionable actions. In fact, Eva seems to justify and even embrace her father's world outlook that "not all lives are equal" over the philosophies of people like Kenzō Tenma (Eva's more kind-hearted fiancee), such that Tenma becomes visibly disturbed and disgusted at the conversation of Eva and her father when they meet with him to discuss their future. When her father demotes Tenma after he operates on the boy Johan Liebert instead of Mayor Roedecker, she readily and even enthusiastically acquiesces to his decision, calling off her engagement to Tenma before telling Tenma that he's a fool, though she later comes to regret these actions.
When her father dies, Eva is visibly distraught as she breaks down and sobbing during his funeral, even as Tenma and others attempt to comfort her. Although her character development allows her to progress beyond being beholden to her father's will and desires and though she becomes a kinder and more sincere person as a result, she nevertheless admits to Werner Weber in "Another Monster" that she still believes that "not all lives are equal", implying that she has never stopped respecting her father and his worldview.
Kenzō Tenma
Eva's relationship with Tenma can best be described as deeply complex and evolving throughout the series. Initially, Eva appears very affectionate toward Tenma in anticipation of their upcoming engagement and due to his prominent position among her father's hospital staff as the ascendant chief neurosurgeon. Though Eva is shown in flashbacks to not always admire Tenma's pleasures, at one point even covertly sabotaging his attempts at having an outdoor picnic with her due to her stubborn discontent, she nevertheless seems to have fallen in love with him in spite of this, waking him up and warmly embracing him when he is seen on the news following the miraculous surgery he performed on the opera singer F. Rosenbach. However, she still shows instances of disrespect toward Tenma, scoffing at his ethical dilemma at failing to have saved a Turkish woman's husband due to his focus on Rosenbach's surgery and proclaiming that "not all lives are equal", which visibly disgusts him and alienates him from her. This is likely due to the influence of her more careerist-oriented father.
Ultimately, when Tenma chooses to operate on a young boy with ballistic trauma (who will later come to have a great impact on both of their lives) rather than the ailing Mayor Roedecker of Düsseldorf, resulting, respectively, in the boy's recovery and the mayor's death, he is demoted by her father and she dumps him for another member of the medical staff, cruelly dropping her engagement ring on the ground in front of him and labeling him "a fool." Following her father's death, she relents and tries to get Tenma back, remembering that he tried to comfort her during the funeral, but he turns her down and leaves the cafe that they were meeting at in mute resolution.
Thereafter, Eva falls into a state of drunken anguish, managing to maintain her financial standing by marrying and divorcing several times, using the settlements therefrom to bankroll her assets and lifestyle. All the while, she yearns to have Kenzō Tenma back at her side, at one point ruining his date with a congressman's daughter and subsequently following him to the abandoned warehouse that he tracked Adolf Junkers to, where she instead briefly encounters Johan Liebert, the boy that Tenma had operated on ten years ago, when he exits the premises, having murdered Junkers. In spite of this, Tenma falls under suspicion for the murder by the German BKA (Federal Authorities). Shortly thereafter, when Inspector Lunge visits her with a necktie lifted from another crime scene that belonged to Kenzō Tenma, she formulates a plan to get him to accept her back. Thereafter, she meets with him at Eisler Memorial Hospital and tries to reconcile with him and rekindle their relationship, but Tenma, burdened by his duties at the hospital and his endeavors to find and destroy Johan Liebert, turns her down yet again. Subsequently, in an act of paramount frustration, the jilted Eva finally flies into a rage at Tenma, calling him a "murderer" in front of hospital patients and staff, and proclaiming that she intends to inform Lunge of his involvement in the recent spate of murders, despite personally knowing that Tenma is innocent.
Thereafter, she is devoted to Tenma's downfall, corresponding with Lunge on the progress of the investigation and personally desiring that Tenma is arrested. However, she is shown to still have feelings for him in spite of this, as indicated by the fact that she keeps his portrait and pictures of him in her scrapbook and many of the men she finds herself attracted to, such as her gardener, mirror aspects of Tenma's personality. It is shown that she does not want to see Tenma dead, but would rather see him rot in prison, since she refuses to kill him with Roberto and derails his plans as a result, helping to stop any harm from befalling him; hence, it is definitively shown that she still cares for Tenma more than she despises him following this moment.
Later, when Tenma is arrested by Czech authorities in Prague and transferred to German custody, she expresses initial satisfaction with the situation, but she is eventually won over by Julius Reichwein and Fritz Verdemann to help clear his name in court by reporting on what she knows about Johan Liebert and his connections. Her attempts to exonerate Tenma are prematurely waylaid when she fearfully realizes that "Alfred Baul", Verdemann's legal partner, is really Roberto, who intends to assassinate her before she can testify with evidence that would prove Johan's existence; knowledge of this prompts Tenma to escape from his confinement with the help of the escape artist Gunther Milch and his brother Gustav to protect her from Roberto. However, before Roberto can act or Tenma can reach her, she leaves with a mysterious bodyguard named Martin, sent by Petr Čapek and The Baby to help facilitate and organize a meeting between Johan Liebert and his fellow Kinderheim alumnus, Christof Sievernich, since Eva knows Johan's appearance and will be able to spot him in a crowd. However, she falls in love with Martin during this time, in part because he reminds her of Tenma, and Martin begins to reciprocate her feelings; when Martin betrays the organization that hired him by failing to kill Eva and allowing her to escape, he is shot and passes on his full story to Dr. Tenma, who treats him before he dies of his wounds.
When Tenma meets Eva at Frankfurt Central Station, where she and Martin had intended to meet and informs her of Martin's death, she realizes how the error of her ways has brought on the situation at hand and, when the two have coffee at a cafe afterward, she attests that she doesn't know how someone like Tenma could ever bring himself to love a horrible woman like her after all that she's done to him. After this, the two reconcile, with Eva becoming committed to clearing Tenma's name as well as secretly finding Johan Liebert for the purpose of destroying him. When she tracks Christof Sievernich down and demands to know where Johan is, Christof abruptly manages to subdue her and comes dangerously close to killing her, with only Tenma's intervention saving her. Thereafter, they interrogate Christof together, but Christof only informs Tenma of Johan's location when Eva departs to phone the paramedics due to Christof's injuries in the confrontation. When she returns to find that Tenma has left her yet again, she begins to cry, much to Christof's confusion.
As revealed by her comments to Dieter, Eva Heinemann has clearly tried to assert Tenma's innocence in the following period, but the authorities don't believe her confessions. However, by the end of the series, when Tenma's name has been cleared and Johan has been incapacitated under separate circumstances, Eva Heinemann has managed to get beyond the trauma and sadness in her life and become a better person, atoning for everything she did to Tenma and others in pursuit of retribution and selfishness, and thereby indicating that her love for him won out over her anger.
Martin Reest
When Eva first met Martin, the latter having arrived where she was staying at Room 402 in Düsseldorf, she found herself under desperate circumstances (with Roberto being in the vicinity and apparently looking to murder her, due to her knowledge of Johan Liebert's existence and her previous involvement with Kenzō Tenma) and was all too willing to take up his offer of protection, in spite of being initially unclear on who had sent him and what their purposes were. However, thereafter, she proceeded to berate his slovenly, ruffled appearance and bristly, apathetic personality/demeanor, and the two initially appeared somewhat offput by each other while on their way to Frankfurt. Nevertheless, when Petr Čapek, who had sent Martin, lent her a debit card to use as she pleased, her first course of action was to purchase him a nice outfit, including ties that reflected Tenma's dress sensibilities, and insisted that he keep himself well-groomed and carry himself as Tenma would have. This indicated that she already had some affection or proclivity towards Martin, but only in the sense that he was a stand-in for Tenma.
Over dinner of that evening, the two came to some understanding of the other's social circumstances and hence began to genuinely bond. In particular, Eva lent the impression that Tenma had abandoned her, making Martin sympathize with her and later beat Tenma up when he encountered him in his favorite diner thereafter, whilst Eva began to see Martin as something more than just a substitute for Tenma. However, both had trouble coming to terms with their attraction to one another due to their previous relationship problems: in Eva's case, her inability to hold a long-term relationship with anyone but Kenzō Tenma, whom she had lost, and in Martin's case, the fact that every woman he'd ever been involved with had died under tragic circumstances, including his mother and his former girlfriend Edda, something that would later be cruelly pointed out to him by Christof Sievernich.
Martin soon realized that Čapek and The Baby, who had warned Martin not to get personally involved with Eva, as well as the organization they represented, intended to have her spot Johan at a gathering to introduce him to Christof, after which point she would have outlived her usefulness and Martin's job at that point would be to kill her. Eva had concurrently come to the same conclusion, and, having resigned herself to her situation and the misery of her life, asked Martin to kill her while she was in a drunken stupor, just as Martin's mother and Edda had wished to die before. Ultimately, Martin couldn't bring himself to go through with it, refusing to perpetuate the cycle of tragedy that had embodied his life and thereby saving Eva's life.
To that end, he escaped to a motel with Eva Heinemann once she had regained her senses and convinced Eva that they could run away together and form new livelihoods in each other's company, effectively admitting their love for one another. When Martin realized that agents of Čapek were on their way to see to Eva's death and get rid of him in the event he hadn't already killed her, he told her that he would meet her at Frankfurt Central Station and they would elope from there, much to her initial protests, since she insisted that they should remain together. Ultimately, however, Martin's argument won out, and she was convinced to leave for her own safety, ostensibly to meet him there. She departed shortly before the agents arrived and Martin engaged them in a gun battle.
At the train station, she later eagerly awaited Martin, confessing as much to a nearby janitor who inquired as to her situation, but she would instead be met by the sight of Kenzō Tenma, who informed her of Martin's death, causing her to burst into tears as the janitor sadly remarked to himself that Tenma must not have been the man she was waiting for. This indicated above all else that she truly loved Martin and hoped desperately, but ultimately in vain, that he would survive to be with her from then on.
Ultimately, it would be Martin's death that compelled Eva to renounce her feud with Tenma and reconcile with him, realizing all the suffering that her actions had wrought, as well as find Johan Liebert and end his life for bringing her such pain.
Roberto
Eva and Roberto's relationship was ultimately mutually antagonistic, though initially, they attempted to use each other for their own ends. Roberto was attempting to obtain a scrapbook in Eva's possession that had a picture of Johan Liebert as a child inside, alongside her deceased father Udo Heinemann, as well as use her as a means to find Kenzō Tenma, whom Roberto intended to get rid of, possibly against Johan's wishes. As such, Roberto ingratiated himself to Eva as a date and, when she left her bag behind after being arrested following a drunken binge on her part, he found her searching for it in the park the following day after her release and returned it to her, before reminding her of their relationship from the previous night. Eva, seemingly grateful to Roberto for finding her bag, acquiesced to spending more time with him, and he took her out to a nightclub that evening, where they danced to the tune of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" and seemed to enjoy each other's company.
However, it appeared that it was just an act on both of their parts when they went to Eva's apartment thereafter, with Roberto asking to see several pictures of Tenma, whom Eva had referred to derogatorily throughout the evening, and, when Eva didn't meet Roberto's requests, slapping her and knocking her to the floor in a sudden fury; however, her initial shock soon gave way to sardonic laughter, as she revealed that she knew what he was really there for. To Roberto's confusion, she revealed that, unknown to everyone, she had personally encountered Johan Liebert on the very night that he killed Adolf Junkers and met with Tenma again, having made eye contact with him as he left the construction site where his encounter with Tenma and murder of Junkers had taken place, and inquired as to how he was doing now. Roberto, disturbed by this revelation, decided to kill her after having sex with her the following morning, but, as he pointed his gun at her when she was supposedly asleep, she arose from bed and stated that if he killed her, he would never be able to obtain the photo of Johan and her father that he was really seeking, as she had removed it from her scrapbook and hidden it somewhere else. Roberto was quick to call her on her bluff, however, noticing that her knees were shaking with fear during her whole speech, as she fell to the floor in despair.
Unexpectedly, however, likely realizing he could manipulate her to destroy someone's life just as Johan did with great frequency, he inquired as to whether she wanted to know where Tenma was so that she could kill him. Eva, seeing an opportunity to forestall any harm to herself or anyone else, agreed to find out and accompany Roberto to supposedly kill Tenma, at which point Roberto informed her that he was treating a mob boss's injuries at a secure, fortress-like mountaintop enclave near Füssen and departed from Düsseldorf with him thereafter. Arriving in Füssen thereafter, the two made their way up the only accessible trail to the mob boss' villa, with Roberto killing the mob boss's bodyguard along the way, before handing Eva a pistol to shoot Tenma with when they reached the villa. However, at that point, Dieter arrived and interrupted the proceedings and, when Eva told him to run and warn Tenma, her cover was blown and Roberto shot her in the leg from the bushes where he was hiding. Dieter managed to drag her to safety and cover behind a tree, where they refused to leave the path unattended and thereby thwarted Roberto's attempt at seeing Tenma dead, forcing him to secretly retreat before Tenma arrived to tend to Eva's injuries.
Thereafter, Eva Heinemann had an apparent but understandable fear of Roberto. Later, when "Alfred Baul", a legal consultant and attorney partnered with Fritz Verdemann in defending Tenma "convinced" Eva to testify on Tenma's behalf and made plans to meet with her at the hotel where she was staying in Düsseldorf, she initially had no idea that "Baul" was actually Roberto, who had survived the fire at the University of Munich library and was seeking to kill her once more due to her incriminating evidence of Johan's existence. However, while she awaited "Baul" in the hotel lobby, she heard his voice talking to someone on the other end of a cellphone he was carrying and gradually recognized it as Roberto's voice before he noticed her, fleeing back to her Room 402 in terror. When she arrived in the room, she became even more terrified when she recognized his scent, signifying that he'd already been in the room searching for her. When she heard a knock at the door, she feared it was him and anxiously peered out into the hallway, though it would really turn out to be Martin, there to retrieve her for other reasons.
Eva's ongoing fear of recalling Roberto or anyone/anything else to do with Johan Liebert was apparent in "Another Monster", when she stated such to Werner Weber.
Heinrich Lunge
Though Eva and Inspector Lunge both initially collaborated in attempting to bring Tenma into custody, their relationship seemed fairly unorthodox and even unpleasant. Heinrich Lunge likely first met Eva Heinemann at or proceeding her father's funeral, though their interactions at this stage weren't directly shown. However, around nine-to-ten years later, Lunge visited Eva Heinemann at her father's former residence, where she resided, to find her in an alcoholic state on the couch. There, she proceeded to tell him about her life since she'd last seen him, including being a three-time divorcee and living off of the settlements therefrom, before taunting him and asking if he was "turned on or if he wanted to join in the fun", to which Lunge remained characteristically impassive, before announcing why he was there: to this end, he produced a necktie found at the site of the murder of Ivan Kurten and asked if she recognized it. Realizing that it belonged to her former fiancee Kenzō Tenma, Eva initially declined to answer and said she'd think about whether she recognized it and call him if she determined who it belonged to. Lunge accepted her answer and departed from her residence, while Eva used knowledge of it to attempt to blackmail Tenma into rekindling their relationship afterward; when she was refused, she bitterly revealed to Inspector Lunge that the necktie belonged to Tenma, allowing him to finally bring a case against him and seek his arrest, as well as seemingly justifying his suspicions that Tenma was a serial killer.
Eva would correspond further with Inspector Lunge in the following period, harassing him on several occasions for not catching Tenma and insisting on his arrest, while Lunge always distantly rubbed her shortcomings in her face, asking her if she'd been drinkng and reminding her of her alcoholism. By and large, Eva angrily sought Tenma's downfall and was disappointed that Lunge couldn't bring it about more quickly and occasionally taunted Lunge, whereas Lunge seemed to take pleasure from patronizing Eva and playing on her emotional state while remaining cold and unempathetic, often pushing her buttons.
What, if any, interactions they had following their respective realizations about Johan Liebert and following their assistance and rehabilitation of Dr. Tenma and others are unknown, though it is likely that if they did interact, they managed to get beyond their previous relationship, which was largely based around seeing to Tenma's downfall and arrest.
Dieter
Eva first met Dieter under desperate circumstances. When the boy came to invite a guard up to his boss' villa for dinner, he instead came upon Eva, holding a gun. When she secretly tried to tell him to warn his friend/caretaker and her former fiancee Kenzō Tenma that Roberto was there to kill him, Roberto shot her in the leg from the cover of the bushes. Despite the shock of the moment, Dieter was able to help her to safety behind a tree, even as she insisted that he run away. She seemed offended that he called her "ma'am", perceiving it as being a comment about her old age, but seemed to genuinely care for his well-being in spite of this, insisting that he get away before Roberto killed them both. Dieter in turn cared about her well-being, refusing to leave her side until Tenma arrived and asking if she was "Tenma's girlfriend." As such, they guarded the trail together to ensure that Roberto wouldn't be able to kill Tenma, based on their mutual desire to see him live. Ultimately, their resilience paid off, with Roberto giving up on trying to access the villa and fleeing the area, while Tenma arrived to treat Eva's injuries and leaving her in the care of the mob boss when he departed with Dieter. Later, Eva Heinemann took care of Dieter while Nina Fortner was with Dr. Reichwein and Rudy Gillen, and Kenzō Tenma was away in Ruhenheim. She expressed an interest in what Dieter was drawing while she smoked on a rainy afternoon, to which Dieter responded by telling her it was a picture of Kenzō Tenma and showing it to her, causing her to sadly remark that she had tried but failed to get Tenma exonerated from his crimes. Fortner and Reichwein looked on from outside, making sure that the two were doing well and not wanting to get them involved in the terrible events that were to come.
It can be concluded from their interactions near the end of the series that Eva and Dieter became friends as well.
Julius Reichwein
At one point, Eva sought the services of Dr. Julius Reichwein is unknown; however, it likely had to do with his status as a notable and respected psychiatrist and his specialization in alcohol-related therapy. Since Eva Heinemann was an alcoholic at the time of Tenma's endeavors to find Johan, she was likely either ordered to or willingly went to see Dr. Reichwein. They were both in the midst of a therapy session at Reichwein's Munich clinic when they saw a news bulletin about Kenzō Tenma's arrest in Prague. Reichwein was shocked to find out that Eva Heinemann knew Tenma personally as well, apparently revealing that she hadn't informed him about that aspect of her past in their counseling sessions, and, thereafter, they embarked back to Düsseldorf by train, with Reichwein insisting that Heinemann report what she knows about Johan to the authorities to clear Tenma's name and prove his innocence. Eva Heinemann initially refused to do anything of the kind, satisfied with the situation and having eagerly awaited the moment of Tenma's capture due to her vengeful bitterness towards him, but it's clear that Reichwein's words ultimately helped persuade her to confess what she knew on Tenma's behalf, causing her to try to help deliver a testimony with the encouragement of Tenma's attorneys, Fritz Verdemann and "Alfred Baul", though the testimony is waylaid by separate circumstances.
At the end of the series and as confirmed in "Another Monster", Eva confers with Dr. Reichwein, who allows her to get beyond her alcohol addiction, and now lives a stable life as an interior decorator. Reichwein is greatly pleased with her new outlook towards life, and seems confident that she can live without being dependent on alcohol or encumbered by her emotional state; Eva, for her part, is grateful for Dr. Reichwein's therapy, speaking pleasantly to him and thanking him for all of his help.
Trivia
- Casa Brutus magazine had an issue featuring Naoki Urasawa's work and Eva ranked 2 in childishness and 4 in compassion.