20th Century Boys - The Greatest Manga Ever

For the span of my lifetime anime has been very popular. The novelty of violence and nudity being present in a children’s cartoon rocked many people’s world and from that anime’s popularity outside of Japan grew. It was only a matter of time before the source material for many anime became popular in North America and the rest of the world, and the well spring for many Japanese cartoons is manga, their equivalent of comic books.

For whatever reason I never really got into manga, and as a consequence I have not read very much of it, however I am one hundred present confident that Naoki Urasawa is the greatest manga writer of all time. Furthermore Urasawa’s magnum opus “20th Century Boys” named after the famous T-Rex song, is the greatest manga of all time.

It is instantly obvious the title of Urasawa’s twenty-two volume manga series is named after the 1973 glam rock hit “20th Century Boy.” Read more about it here: http://colinkellymusicinreview.blogspot.ca/2014/04/trex-20th-century-boy.html

The influence of Marc Bolan on Japan’s music scene, and apparently creative storytelling, may not be astronomical but still substantial enough to surprise us casual westerns. In fact glam rock, along with the rest of classic rock, was very popular in Japan. While the central themes and story of Urasawa’s “20th Century Boys” has little to do with any possible literal interpretation of Bolan’s music the series is still named after it. The symbolic meaning of Bolan’s music however, along with the music of Bob Dylan and John Lennon, carries a cultural significance capturing the spirit of the 1960 and 1970’s that lingers in the hearts and minds of all our central characters in Urasawa’s “20th Century Boys.” The theme of being a “20th century boy” is something of a central symbolic conflict between the heroes and the villain “Friend.” There is also something of an internal conflict with the antagonist “Friend” as he feels he himself is the “true” “20th century boy.”

It is very common for aspects of art to mean something to the audience that has little to do with its actual expressed meaning. Many songs become timepieces for many people; the song will remind them more about the time in life when they discovered the song than the song itself. A song that was a hit when we were young will remind us of when we were young and this is exactly the case for Urasawa and his protagonists in “20th Century Boys.” Our main cast all grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and as such the music of that time meant a lot to them, as did giant robots like Tetsujin 28, the moon landing, and manga; which is kind of meta. This all plays into Urasawa’s strength as a writer, he is not only writing about things he knows a lot about, but he is also able to express his own youthful admiration for these things and how they influence his adult life and creativity, which is projected onto his characters, which again is kind of meta. Also, if Urasawa has only one strength as a writer, and he has several, but if I had to pick one that really stands out, it is how he fleshes out all of his characters and makes all of them very relatable, and for me, personally, I feel like Kenji Endou the main character of “20th Century Boys” and his friends are basically me and my friends.

Kenji Endou is invincible.

Kenji Endou is our main-main character. He is the leader of the group both when they are kids and when they are adults and must face off against a threat to mankind that only they are uniquely equipped to deal with. Kenji loves rock and roll, and as a youth he tried being the front man of a band but he never got anywhere. As an adult he ended up the owner of a convenience store taking care of his niece and mother. It is all too easy to relate to Kenji. I myself personally feel like we have almost everything in common except circumstance.  We share common interest, youthful hijinx, and unrealized dreams of high adventure, and the way all these things affected us both in our youths and adulthoods is comparable.

In their youth our main characters go to a grassy field where they tie together a series of the long strands to form a small makeshift hut, that is very well hidden, what being made of grass, and being in a large grassy field. This grass hideaway becomes the young boy’s base of operations where they can read comic books, listen to a radio that plays rock and roll, and also share scraps of pornography with each other. This base is a hugely successively idea because the twin bullies they are constantly at ends with, Mabo and Yanbo, are unable to find it... at first. Once the base is destroyed by the twins Kenji goes to stand up to them and under his leadership the kids unite and defeat the bullies. In the three part movie adaptation the second movie rolls its credits with black and white footage of the kids successfully fighting off Mabo and Yanbo to the score of T.Rex – “20th Century Boy.” It’s perfect, I can’t find a clip but believe me it’s perfect.

The main cast of “20th Century Boys” grew up in the outskirts of Toyko, or maybe rural Japan, and their friendships are all built around common interests and shared adventures, they create a fictional story about how they will save the world from a group of evil terrorists that involves a new virus that makes people bleed through their skin, the destruction of an airport in Tokyo and an attack from a giant robot. Many years later, when they have all grown up, events around the world start to unfold strikingly similar to the ideas they invented for their fantasy adventure. Eventually Kenji notices this symbol at one of the recent crime scenes:

This symbol is very familiar to Kenji and at his high school reunion he asks his friends about it and they all confirm that it had something to do with their little group when they were kids. Someone in the group recalls they buried a box of their stuff near the tree in the grassy field where they used to play, so they decide to go dig it up and this is what they find:

And it turns out some asshole named “Friend” has adopted the image for himself.

Now the real mystery becomes who could Friend possibly be? This person obviously knows Kenji and his friends, and he had to have known them when they were young because he is somehow re-enacting the events of their storybook fantasy. The virus that makes people bleed through their skin has hit Africa, and there are two more places that will be hit next and Kenji should know, only he would never think to apply his childhood imagination to the unfolding events of real life, at least not until he is prompted to by a turncoat from Friend’s organization.

"It's too stupid."

This is my single favorite moment in the entire series, Kenji realizing he knows exactly what’s happening and just how stupid it is that he knows. From this point the quest begins to stop Friend from destroying the world and it is the greatest manga ever.

When I finished watching the movies I told a friend of mine he had to watch it. I told him he would be able to relate to it on all points, because my friend and I lived very similar childhoods to Kenji and his friends. Now someone might find it strange that I can relate to a Japanese fictional character who for the most part is a self insertion of an older Japanese man, but I think we often focus far too much on the trivial difference between borders and generations, we tend to forget how much we have in common and just how often that occurs.

For example;

I am rather fond of Chris Rock’s “Everybody Hates Chris” and not just because it is a funny show, but also because I feel like it strongly reflects my own childhood. Some people might scoff at the idea that a white Canadian growing up in rural Alberta could relate to an African American growing up in urban Brooklyn, but I think they are missing a commonalty among human beings. We all have childhoods filled with struggles and moments of growth, most of us have families and siblings, and most of us fight with them sometimes, most of us make weird friends, deal with bullies, form awkward crushes, and make a lot of humorous mistakes along the way. We all deal with growing up when we are kids. Most of us have a lot in common.

Additionally there are specific moments in “Everybody Hates Chris” that remind me of my youth perfectly. Like the time their dad buys a very large amount of sausages when a good deal comes his way and they end up eating sausage for dinner every night for multiple weeks straight, that happened to my family, exactly the same way.

So yes, Chris Rock’s childhood seems a lot like mine. It’s almost like we are both human beings.

Now I know that apparently kids growing up in Japan were just like my friends and me.

My childhood was insanely similar to Kenji Endou’s. It might seem a touch strange that another country, a generation before my own, could share effectively ever single aspect in common, but we do. Kenji and Shogun might as well be me and my friend watching the movie adaptations. Every point of the plot every character development of every character felt like someone real, someone I knew, and something I was a part of, and this is why “20th Century Boys” is the greatest manga ever, or at least why I feel so strongly about it. It feels like the sort of story I would wish I could have written.

“20th Century Boys” has several highly effective hooks aside from being so easily perfectly relatable. We all want to believe we are special, and more often than not most want that to be the default position. In “20th Century Boys” we have highly relatable characters, who for all intents and purposes might well be us, made uniquely special by the crazy circumstance of Friend’s terrorism on the world. Imagine someone took something unique about you and used it as a weapon against civilization, and since the inspiration and strategy for all this is coming directly from your mind, you alone are uniquely equipped to deal with it? When this necessary heroism is thrust upon our protagonist we the viewers have to pause and wonder how we would react, because while the plot is outlandish, it is also impossible not to self insert ourselves into Kenji’s shoes and wonder what if? It is a very personal narrative, perhaps specific to the writer’s personal interests and characteristics, yet wholly universal. A self insertion so perfect anyone and everyone can relate and partake in the fantastic adventure.

Friend is such a great villain, because I hate him. Hating Friend is completely unavoidable; he is stealing the innocent ideas of a bunch of great kids and perverted them into a weapon to destroy the world. He is mocking our heroes by taking what was theirs and making it unmitigated evil. And for him it’s just a god damn game.

Then, just to pander to me specifically even more, our hero Kenji, after much struggle, manages to save the world with rock and roll... sort of. He unites the world with a song called “Bob Lennon” named so because his niece Kanna keeps getting the two legends names’ mixed up. Everything about those last two sentences sounds like the perfect series of events to my life, if I could choose it.

Bob Lennon

Best manga ever.

- King of Braves