20th Century Boys is about a God who died and lived again. It is about boys from the 20th century that never grew old. It is about the end of the world, about rock and roll, about terrorists armed with guitars, about robots in the verge of millennia, about people with masks, about biological weapons, about the ninja Hatori, about a world inside a virtual reality, about the Book of Prophecy, about a grand scale worldwide hoax, about people with supernatural powers, about UFOs, and in the end, about a fight between ice queen and a man called “friend”. 20th Century Boys is a comic that diverge itself from the mainstream. It has a very unique plot, characterization and narrative technique and thus, consequently, it will not be a comic that everyone will like.
The narrative flow is principally linear, but it contains a lot of flashback, subsequently some people might find it confusing. In a way, the story does not make any sense, but if you surrender your common sense and try to understand the logic of the author, it does. So if you want to try, try at least reading three volumes and see if you have the same taste as me, if you do, then you cannot put it down. Personally it is one of my favorite texts I have ever read, but you might not care whether or not I like it.
So let me tell you about what the rest of the world think about it: According to Wikipedia, “It won the 2001 Kodansha Manga Award in the General category, an Excellence Prize at the 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival, and the 2003 Shogakukan Manga Award in the General category.” Interested? If you want to know about the plot of the story, read again my first paragraph, if you think it is strange, be prepared, it is. As a synopsis, Kenji the protagonist, and his friends were imagining about the future where villains will try to destroy the world when they were in primary school. Moreover, they make up a story about it and in the end, they will come up to save the world; all is written down in a book entitled “Book of Prophecy”. About 30 years later, when all of them grow up, everything that was written in the book of prophecy did happen, except the part where they will come and save the world.
You might wonder who on earth is crazy, or creative I should say, enough to write these. It is Naoki Urasawa who had been writing manga since 1984. One of his best work is Monster:Horrible Story which won the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga in 2001. After all, MangaDownload has a superb scanlation and it is not in PA. So why not try and download the first three volumes and begin to read it. Be prepared, it is to a light, easy and enjoyable read, it will be dark, deep, gripping, and addictive.
Reviewed By: ArielGenesis
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