Johan Liebert

"There's nothing special about being born. Not a thing. Most of the universe is just death, nothing more. In this universe of ours, the birth of a new life on some corner of our planet is nothing but a tiny, insignificant flash. Death is a normal thing. So why live?"

- Johan Liebert

Johan Liebert is the main antagonist in the manga and anime Monster.

Origin
Johan Liebert's origin is shrouded in mystery. When he was just a young boy, he was wandering the border of Germany with his twin sister, Anna. They were both discovered half-starved, and dying. They were taken to two separate orphanages, Anna to Orphanage 47, and Johan to Kinderheim 511. Kinderheim 511 was a horrid place where children were treated like criminals and experimented on in an attempt by the government to create perfect soldiers. One day, Johan led a revolt in the institution, and got fifty people to kill each other by simply "tossing an oil rag into a fire." Johan's mentors had always nurtured Johan's skill for manipulating others with no conscience. However, when confronted, they claimed that Johan was already a "monster" when he first came to the orphanage. The details of how his mind came to be so twisted are still unknown.

Personality
Johan is a sociopath. He has no conscience, whatsoever, and revels in human suffering. The only two people he seemed to refuse to kill are his sister, Anna, and the doctor that saved his life, Dr. Kenzo Tenma. He claimed that he has two personalities in his mind, where one likes to commit murder, and one tries to stop the murders. The evil personality is the dominant one, and the other has yet to be physically seen. His sister once described Johan as being "absolute evil."

He is cruel and unfriendly, but pretends to be polite and empathetic to hide his true colors. He is charismatic.

Abilities
Inheriting his mother's genius intellect & deductive reasoning capabilities, Johan is prodigiously brilliant in whatever he studies & the absolute best in anything he pursues. This is noted by Schuwald, when praising Johan's knowledge of law and economics, and by Karl, who notes that none could surpass Johan in anything. Johan has an amazing voice (hypnotic), he always intuitively knows the right thing to say at the right time, he is an excellent speaker & teacher. Johan can perfectly memorize, recall and understand anything in limitless volumes without stress. He has the most perfect, ideal, healthiest, & prime physical conditions, he possesses incredible pheromones, he is "well-endowed", handsome, attractive, has the most flawless face & body a man can have. Johan can intuitively & perfectly assess anyone's psychology, behavior, & motivations, he sees their mind & soul at first glance allowing him to perfectly predict what people will do and how to manipulate them, he has perfect; observational, perceptive, analytical, calculative, tactical and deductive skills, these allow him to perfectly predict, understand, & control anything no matter how simple or complex, easily. These skills, along with his supernatural; charisma, eloquence and persuasive abilities, allows him to create convoluted plans & control anyone into doing what he wants easily. He can amass limitless wealth & power without effort, without being noticed or challenged, he nearly & easily conquered Europe's entire economy only to stop because his goal changed. Johan can create loyal, submissive & completely obedient, "friends," allies, and followers out of anyone & anything after one conversation, one word & people will do what he says, absolute obedience. He can make anyone & anything feel good and hopeful, or feel overwhelming intimidation, fear and despair with his presence. He possesses endless willpower, vitality, and virility, he never gets bored. He is able to not feel fear, guilt, regret, loneliness or pain. He's capable of leading humanity on a global scale with ease, the most perfect person and the most perfect king (a perfection that far surpasses human perfection).

Johan is a master manipulator. The process of his exploitation could be represented by a tree where he is the base and each branch a separate case which is all tied together in one grand scheme.

Johan leaves such a strong impression on people that he is able to convince legions to commit murder, play suicide games, or do other monstrous things after just a single encounter. According to Heinrich Lunge, this process is done by altering the fulcrum of someone's identity, like removing a map's coordinate axis. The more jumbled their "lines" become without that foundation, the more room he has to redraw or redefine their maps.

As discussed in the personality section above, Johan often manipulates people to kill for him; this is done in a variety of different ways. When working Michael Müller and Detective Messener, for example, he blackmailed the two by threatening to reveal their drug scandal if they refused to murder Mr. and Mrs. Fortner. In other cases, such as with Peter Jürgens and Rheinhard Dinger, he befriends his victims and acknowledges their worth; they are therefore willing to perform "favors" as extreme as killing, dedicatedly withholding any information on him even in the face of authorities.

Johan is also skilled at making people reflect on their mistakes or any haunting memories of the past, as in the cases of Richard Braun and Miloš. He forced Richard to connect his former blunders as an officer and alcohol problems with his desire to see his daughter, making him believe he was not worthy of the one thing he truly wanted. Similarly, he convinced Miloš that he was not wanted by anyone and thus destroyed the boy's cheerful personality (at least temporarily).

When dealing with Schuwald, Johan gained the tycoon's trust pretty quickly. Schuwald noticed Johan's talent in law and business, and decided to employ him as his personal secretary. To further secure their relationship, he approached Schuwald's son Karl and reunited the family, putting himself on even more favorable ground to succeed Schuwald's position.

Tenma once visited the blind man who taught Johan French and English. The old man was impressed by Johan's intelligence, patience, and mastery of the languages, as he had quickly become perfectly fluent (mastered) in both within a span of just thirteen months. Johan learned and mastered Latin in a very short time while attending the University of Munich. He tutored Karl to help him impress his father.

Johan is also a master of perfect disguise. Around the middle of the series, he masqueraded as his sister while living in Prague. This proved to be quite useful, not only for spying but also because he was able to pass unnoticed while leaving crime scenes. However, Tenma wasn't fooled. Grimmer was also skeptical of Johan's disguise. Johan for the most part played his role as "Anna" perfectly, leaving the impression of a beautiful, charming and polite young woman. It was easier for him to manipulate people while in form, especially the male characters like Detective Suk.

Similar Villains
All of Johan's characteristics are similar to Michio Yuki, the main protagonist of MW. They turned insane when affected by secret military experiments. They are also experts at manipulating people, have ambitions to end the world, try to commit suicide by cop, and they also cross-dress.

Johan Liebert is also in some respects similar to Shogo Makishima of Psycho-Pass, in as much as both men are master manipulators who often manipulate other people into killing for them, but are more than capable of doing the deed themselves if necessary.

He's also similar to another villain, Dwayne Pipe. Both are charismatic, psychopathic mass murderers, being the antithesis of the main heroes (Dr. Kenzo Tenma and Dr. Alan Probe respectively). Their antithesis had saved their lives more than once, and both Johan and Dwayne tried to break them and ruin their lives, with zero success.

Goals
Johan has stated that his one true goal is to be the last one alive when the world ends. But in reality,his goal is to commit the "perfect suicide", dying without leaving behind any evidence of his existence, except possibly Dr. Tenma's memories of him.