Kenzō Tenma

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Overview

Plot

Appearances

Gallery

Kenzō Tenma
Information
Gender	Male
Age	28 (1986/beginning) 37 (1995/post-timeskip) 41 (1999/ending)
Date of birth	January 2nd, 1958
Relatives	Unnamed father Unnamed mother Unnamed half-brother Unnamed half-brother
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	Neurosurgeon
Status	Alive
First appearance
Manga debut	Chapter 1: "Herr Doctor Tenma"
Anime debut	Episode 1: "Herr Dr. Tenma"
Portrayal
Japanese	Hidenobu Kiuchi
English	Liam O'Brien
French	Taric Mehani
German	Sven Gerhardt
Korean	Ja-Hyeong Gu
Spanish	Jordi Brau

“	When you're in the darkness, you only sink deeper into it. Keep the light shining.	”
—Tenma, "At the Edge of Darkness"

Dr. Kenzō Tenma (天 (てん) 馬 (ま) 賢 (けん) 三 (ぞう) , Tenma Kenzō^?) is the protagonist of the Monster series. Formerly, he was a genius neurosurgeon and a rising star at Eisler Memorial Hospital, often considered to be one of the best in the field, but he would eventually lose his standing after disobeying the hospital director and later coming under suspicion for murder.

Appearance

Tenma is a man of average build with middle-parted black hair, brown eyes, and tan skin. At the start of the series, his hair is kept short and he is usually clean-shaven, but as the story progresses, his hair grows out to the point where it reaches his shoulders, and he is often seen with a stubble.

Personality

Tenma is a workaholic who prioritizes his patients and their well-being more than anything. Although he's a highly skilled neurosurgeon, he confesses to Inspector Lunge that during a surgery he's jumping out of his skin due to the fright of committing a mistake.

Tenma is often obsessed with saving as many lives as he can. Johan enjoys toying with this mindset, sprouting several massacres possibly to challenge Tenma to prevent them.

His kindness is prevalent throughout the series - in contrast to Johan's unscrupulous nature - and he sometimes ponders about the moral of his actions. When he is worried (often with Johan) he neglects his own self care and goes as far as collapsing from lack of food or sleep. Other than that, he is overall an optimistic individual, or tries his best to seem so to others, giving words of encouragement to the people around him.

When Lunge enters Tenma's psyche he discovers that Tenma doesn't fit in either Japanese or German society. Nevertheless, Tenma isn't too unsociable, and ironically in several flashbacks he can be seen happily hanging with groups. He does prefer to work alone rather than in a team if he can help it though.

"All lives are equal"

Tenma's motto and the reason he disobeyed Director Heinemann's orders to save the person who arrived first regardless of social status. This ideal is not just a matter of work ethic, much of Tenma's psychology stems from this principle, and it is one of the reasons he struggles so much with his own decision of killing Johan. For instance, Tenma becomes wracked with guilt at shooting Roberto in spite of the apparent necessity of his actions, believing that he had killed the man, and expresses such great remorse over his seeming death that he feels himself unworthy of being called a doctor. There is even a personality shift when Tenma starts to doubt his own belief.

Many close friends of Tenma interviewed in Another Monster, including Eva, mention the reason they love to be around Tenma is that he never looks down on them, and regardless of his exceptional skills, he treats others as equals or puts more value in their abilities over his own.

Background

Born on January 2nd, 1958 in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Tenma is the third son of a director of a prestigious hospital and a former editor of a medical publisher. Both of his parents had previous divorces, and his father had two sons from his previous marriage, who are seven and two years older than Tenma.

Tenma stood out for being a bright boy who's always the top of his class; this allowed him to attend the best schools in the city which made his father proud.

Throughout his life in Japan he made very few friends and didn't forge strong bonds even with his own family, which is one of the reasons given by Dr. Takahashi to explain why Tenma came to Germany and never went back.

In his early childhood, Tenma tried to make friends by clinging to his kid neighbors so they could play with him. The two bullied Tenma in return, and gave him the nickname "Sissy Pants Tenma" as a cruel mockery. Despite that, Tenma earned their respect after a game of hide-and-seek; the bullies ran home during the game on purpose so that Tenma would be left hiding alone. After hours passed by, his mom called asking for the whereabouts of her son. The two got extremely worried and went looking for him, and they found out he was still waiting in the same place that whole time. Amazed by his endurance, the two genuinely became his friends.

In middle school, a teacher went too far with his punishment and humiliated one of his classmates in front of the class for playing with a coal heater. Tenma stood up for that classmate to protect him from being further mistreated.

During his teenage years, Tenma loved music. He learned how to play guitar but didn't join a band, maybe because he didn't want to be in a group. His talent for music eventually became dormant as he got very busy with his studies. He also participated in the school's track and field club.

He entered one of the best schools in Kanagawa prefecture. His path was pretty much set in stone by his father at this time: he would inherit the Hospital and become its new director. Despite being his younger son, his father found his brilliant scores far superior to his older brothers'. This upset Tenma in some way, thus, he refused to accept his father's request.

His eldest brother opted for a career in Economy, so appointing him as a hospital director was out of question. His second-eldest brother, however, was following in his father's footsteps, but it took him two years to enter a medical school and his university was much less prestigious than Tenma's. Still, Tenma wanted his middle brother to be the new director. Tenma's mother agreed with his choice because it benefited her less talented stepson (the novel mentions she favored her stepchildren over her own biological son with no given reason), but Tenma's father didn't change his mind. Tenma was going to be forced to inherit the hospital whether he wanted it or not.

What ended up changing the course of Tenma's life was an outstanding thesis by a German medical professor at Dusseldorf University named Udo Heinemann. The thesis, printed in a medical journal, was a paper on the care of Alzheimer's disease victims. Tenma made up his mind on a whim that he would leave Japan and study under Heinemann, forcing his father to give the hospital to his brother.

Using his scholarship fund, he went to Düsseldorf University in Germany and spent a year in a language school to clear the requirements to enter into med school. Then, he graduated and specialized himself in neurosurgery, and finally, he found a job at Eisler Memorial Hospital whose director was Dr. Heinemann.

But this decision seemingly backfired. Tenma's middle brother decided to provide health care to small towns instead, and to this day he sends letters pleading Tenma to come back to Japan and take over the hospital. On top of that, Dr. Heinemann, the supposedly-brilliant professor, didn't write the article Tenma loved; it was written by a ghost-writer, and Tenma was fated to become one as well.

Relationships

Eva Heinemann

Eva, Tenma's fiancée, calls off her marriage with Tenma after discovering he disobeyed her father's orders. In Another Monster, she explains that she did so because her father needed a right-hand man in whom he could put his full trust, but still emphasizes that breaking the engagement was her own conscious decision.

Tenma tries to reach Eva several times after they are separated, but she harshly ignores him. Yet, when Tenma gets to be the head of the surgery department again, their roles are reversed, and Tenma ignores Eva's pleas to get back together. Later, Eva goes as far as falsely accusing Tenma of murder and chases him to make him regret not wanting her back.

Tenma still cares for Eva deeply, despite the cruel way she broke off the engagement with him, saving her life once and going as far as escaping prison to save her from getting killed by Roberto. Their relationship finally gets closure after Martin's death, when the two meet again and remain on good terms with each other.

Johan Liebert

The relationship between the two is a complex one. Although they met for brief periods and usually during tense situations, they both developed a deep understanding of each other.

Nina Fortner

Tenma looked after Nina in the hospital alongside her brother when they were 11. After the twins disappeared, Tenma met Nina again nine years later while searching for Johan. He also saved her from committing suicide and the two had a good and respectful relationship.

There are a few parallels between Tenma and Nina. For instance, they seem to both share a scholarly aptitude and interest. Tenma appears to see a glimpse of himself in Nina as she pursues her studies and holds out an ideal vision of humanity and justice.

Heinrich Lunge

Tenma met with Lunge first at the funeral of Eva's father. After that, years later, Tenma allowed Lunge to speak with his patient, Adolf Junkers and Lunge after a while, believed that Johan doesn't exist and that it is all in Tenma's mind and that Tenma has DID and Lunge, for a part of the series, is hunting Tenma. When Lunge however gets stabbed in the side, Tenma saves him and much later in the series, Lunge finds out that Johan really exists. Overall, the two have a strange and complex relationship.

Dieter

Tenma first met Dieter when he met with Dr. Hartmann. After finding out Hartmann abuses Dieter, he saved Dieter and left with him. Despite Tenma wanting to get rid of Dieter and leaving him in good hands, since Tenma is a fugitive at this point in the series, knowing Dieter can't be provided education since he is constantly running away, he tries getting rid of Dieter but Dieter refuses and when Tenma asks Dieter how he is going to make friends if he is running away, Dieter says that he already has a best friend named Tenma. Overall, the two have a great relationship.

Rudy Gillen

Rudy met Tenma first in med school where he thought that Tenma despised him and Rudy became envious of the foreign exchange student named Tenma. On one of the tests in med school, Rudy was cheating and Tenma saw him, but never said anything. Years later and Tenma goes to Rudy since he can only go to him and they are once at a carnival and Rudy is secretly with the police so that they can catch Tenma, but Rudy shows Tenma a paper that says they are being heard and that the police is close. Tenma then reveals that he also cheated and Rudy is constantly trying to prove Tenma's innocence and Johan's existence to Lunge.

Quotes

• "Even if you can forget, you can't erase the past."
• "Do doctors have the right to choose whether or not to treat a patient based on how they feel about the character of the patient?"
• "Revenge just breeds more revenge; its a vicious cycle that needs to stop. Don't give in to hate. You're better than that."
• "How can I be calm when I hold another person's life in my hands?"
• "I was only able to get back to being a real doctor by saving your life. I realized that human lives have equal value by saving you. Nobody has the right to take another's life! I've been living as a doctor with that engraved upon my heart for years."
• "When you're in the darkness, you only sink deeper into it. Keep the light shining."

Trivia

• He shares his birthday with Naoki Urasawa, January 2nd.
• In an issue of Casa Brutus featuring Urasawa's work, he ranked 3 in Genius/Talent and 1 in Self-Indulgent.
• The kanji of his name (賢三天馬) mean Wise, Three, Heaven and Horse respectively.
• Although in the first volume Tenma says his father is a small-time medical practitioner, Another Monster disproves this by explaining that his father was in fact the director and manager of a city-owned hospital.
• His all-time favorite song is Let's Stay Together by Al Green.