Is This Still The 20th Century?

 

 

A long time ago, volume after volume of Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster” was released in the US.  I read every volume I could get my hands on, if only to make sense of all the mysteries that were teased throughout the work.  It seems to be a hallmark of Urasawa’s that he never just plops the main conflict and the main villain and their main goal down right in front of you.

 

No, you have to work for it.

 

And the same holds true for 20^th Century Boys.  The story jumps wildly between the present day, what is implied to be the future, and the friend group’s shared past growing up in the 1960’s-70’s.

 

Several loose threads are present: a mysterious group that is led by a mysterious man with mysterious powers and up to no good, an unknown threat to the world itself, and an unseen group of heroes who will eventually defeat this threat.

 

To be honest, there is so much going on in this series that is almost impossible to tell where it all begins.

 

A children’s group in the 1960’s-70’s has a bunch of mundane adventures, witnesses history and discusses deep topics.  In the present day, many people connected to the group are meeting with mysterious fates.  And one member from the old group has started a cult, based around their old playtime secret symbol, and gained strange powers with the implicit intent to destroy or otherwise upend the world.

 

We follow Kenji Endo, our protagonist, as he attempts to unravel this twisted web of intrigue.  And, as he does, so do we.

 

As I said before, the whole business of following all the threads and finding out how they all connect is a big part of why one reads something like this.  It’s like Evangelion, or Urasawa’s previously-mentioned Monster in that way.  The artwork is stark, enough to fit the serious themes that, yes, are still present in a story containing a worldwide cult with mysterious powers.  We get to watch the protagonists and others as they grow up and try to find their way in a world that is not always kind to them.  There is a real gritty realism to it.

 

That being said, there are a lot of characters and, yes, threads to keep track of, so it can sometimes be hard to remember what is what, particularly if you buy/read only one volume at a time.  By the time you have finished reading Volume 1, you may very well have forgotten all of it by the time you get to Volume 2.  (Which would be more than understandable.)

 

And the time jumps are definitely not helping.

 

That being said, this series is allegedly one of Urasawa’s best-known works.  Monster wasn’t too bad, either, and that is the only series of his that I am actively familiar with, so that is my only frame of reference.  So I get the feeling that 20^th Century Boys is also going to wind up being something I was glad I read, and held onto for as long as I could.