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Aug. 12th, 2013 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIt turns out that while I have been steadily reading Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys since 2009 (!!!) I haven't actually talked about it much on here since 2011, which clearly makes it time and long past - especially since a.) I just completed a high-speed reread of the whole thing and b.) it remains my favorite Urasawa manga and also one of my favorite mangas in general, HANDS DOWN.
So 20th Century Boys is about a group of plucky kids who come up with a plan to save the world from evil!
. . . well, except now it's thirty years later, and Our Hero Kenji is instead spending his time running a failing convenience store and taking care of his missing sister's baby, AND THAT'S FINE.
. . . except that a mysterious cult leader has started using the symbol that Kenji and his friends made up for their secret clubhouse evil-fighting league, and somebody seems to be doing their level best to transform the fantasy of WORLD-DESTROYING EVIL that Kenji & Co. came up into a reality. Which means that Kenji and his friends might be the only people who know what's going on with enough warning to stop it!
. . . except that that was MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO and how much does anybody actually remember of the stuff that happened when they were eleven? NOT MUCH.
This is where the story begins; it goes many, many places from there, paying loving homage to all kinds of sci-fi and spaghetti western and shounen manga tropes along the way. (There is a whole extended sequence in the desert where half the cast is wearing ponchos and cowboy hats. Why? BECAUSE SERGIO LEONE, THAT'S WHY. At another point the bad guys all get in a huge generational fight about their world-destroying robot: the older guys want their evil robot to be remote-controlled a la Tetsujin 28, and the younger dudes want it to have a pilot like the Gundams do! Meanwhile, the actual robotics engineer they have kidnapped is just weeping into his hands in despair because ACTUAL ROBOTS DON'T WORK THAT WAY.)
All the trope-dipping is there for a reason: 20th Century Boys is, at its heart, a story about what shapes you as a kid, and the choices you make then, and how they do and don't define who you are as an adult. It's about memory and nostalgia, and the ways you can get stuck there. So of course Urasawa has to take a meandering path through his own nostalgia, in order to get there.
And, I mean, of course I love this story; it's about manga and how that can shape you, and music and how that can save you. Kenji is a frankly awful singer whose signature song is called "Bob Lennon" because it's ripped off from Bob Dylan and the Beatles in equal measure; his music helps save the world. At one point an army of hippies turns up and accidentally takes down an evil government outpost. My favorite character, Koizumi Kyoko, spends most of her time obsessing over a totally ridiculous visual kei band; she is, in fact, so obsessed that the evil cult completely fails at brainwashing her, which both saves her life and makes her a major player in the story.
. . . but it's also a story about an EVIL CULT that's trying to DESTROY THE WORLD based on a plan written by an eleven-year-old, so you know. Fair warning for some DEEPLY IMPLAUSIBLE STUFF.
Other fair warnings: there are a ton of awesome female characters who have independent relationships, but for the first few volumes it's pretty much a boy's club with the exception of one token badass lady (SORRY YUKIJI I love you Yukiji I just wish you weren't basically the only one in Volumes 1-4!); there are sympathetic trans characters but I could wish they were handled a lot better than they are; every so often Urasawa wanders off on a tangent and sort of has to yank himself back (seriously, we did not need to spend alll that pagetime on ANGSTY SHOGUN IN THAILAND); there are FIVE MILLION CHARACTERS. FIVE MILLION. One of these days I may do a primer to the ladies, because I love them, but most of the dudes are also great and for those y'all are on their own.
(Also, speaking of ladies:springgreen's story 20th Century Girls is also super worth checking out, for an awesome and much-needed take on the same themes from the perspective of girl groups and shoujo manga.)
So 20th Century Boys is about a group of plucky kids who come up with a plan to save the world from evil!
. . . well, except now it's thirty years later, and Our Hero Kenji is instead spending his time running a failing convenience store and taking care of his missing sister's baby, AND THAT'S FINE.
. . . except that a mysterious cult leader has started using the symbol that Kenji and his friends made up for their secret clubhouse evil-fighting league, and somebody seems to be doing their level best to transform the fantasy of WORLD-DESTROYING EVIL that Kenji & Co. came up into a reality. Which means that Kenji and his friends might be the only people who know what's going on with enough warning to stop it!
. . . except that that was MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO and how much does anybody actually remember of the stuff that happened when they were eleven? NOT MUCH.
This is where the story begins; it goes many, many places from there, paying loving homage to all kinds of sci-fi and spaghetti western and shounen manga tropes along the way. (There is a whole extended sequence in the desert where half the cast is wearing ponchos and cowboy hats. Why? BECAUSE SERGIO LEONE, THAT'S WHY. At another point the bad guys all get in a huge generational fight about their world-destroying robot: the older guys want their evil robot to be remote-controlled a la Tetsujin 28, and the younger dudes want it to have a pilot like the Gundams do! Meanwhile, the actual robotics engineer they have kidnapped is just weeping into his hands in despair because ACTUAL ROBOTS DON'T WORK THAT WAY.)
All the trope-dipping is there for a reason: 20th Century Boys is, at its heart, a story about what shapes you as a kid, and the choices you make then, and how they do and don't define who you are as an adult. It's about memory and nostalgia, and the ways you can get stuck there. So of course Urasawa has to take a meandering path through his own nostalgia, in order to get there.
And, I mean, of course I love this story; it's about manga and how that can shape you, and music and how that can save you. Kenji is a frankly awful singer whose signature song is called "Bob Lennon" because it's ripped off from Bob Dylan and the Beatles in equal measure; his music helps save the world. At one point an army of hippies turns up and accidentally takes down an evil government outpost. My favorite character, Koizumi Kyoko, spends most of her time obsessing over a totally ridiculous visual kei band; she is, in fact, so obsessed that the evil cult completely fails at brainwashing her, which both saves her life and makes her a major player in the story.
. . . but it's also a story about an EVIL CULT that's trying to DESTROY THE WORLD based on a plan written by an eleven-year-old, so you know. Fair warning for some DEEPLY IMPLAUSIBLE STUFF.
Other fair warnings: there are a ton of awesome female characters who have independent relationships, but for the first few volumes it's pretty much a boy's club with the exception of one token badass lady (SORRY YUKIJI I love you Yukiji I just wish you weren't basically the only one in Volumes 1-4!); there are sympathetic trans characters but I could wish they were handled a lot better than they are; every so often Urasawa wanders off on a tangent and sort of has to yank himself back (seriously, we did not need to spend alll that pagetime on ANGSTY SHOGUN IN THAILAND); there are FIVE MILLION CHARACTERS. FIVE MILLION. One of these days I may do a primer to the ladies, because I love them, but most of the dudes are also great and for those y'all are on their own.
(Also, speaking of ladies:
springgreen's story 20th Century Girls is also super worth checking out, for an awesome and much-needed take on the same themes from the perspective of girl groups and shoujo manga.)
no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 09:56 pm (UTC)Despite rereads, I am still not sure what happens at the end, but I really don't care because even though this may not be the technically best thing Urasawa has written, it is so full of everything that hits all my buttons.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 10:05 pm (UTC)Hahaha man your feelings are pretty much exactly mine; I think Monster is almost certainly a better-crafted story but I love 20th Century Boys SO MUCH MORE, because it is just so much fun and so gleeful in embracing its own id! I have a slightly better handle now on the end than I did before the reread, but slightly better is not . . . actually great . . . like, what DID happen to the army of hippies, anyway?
no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 12:40 pm (UTC). . . that, and the time that Kenji flailed his way earnestly to stop a bomb going off at the wrong airport. WAY TO GO KENJI (I love you Kenji)
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Date: 2013-08-13 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 05:47 pm (UTC)It makes so much more sense on a reread though! Like, there were all these characters I was like "oh wow, you WERE actually introduced early! WOW OKAY URASAWA SORRY I UNDERESTIMATED YOU, A+ FOLLOW-THROUGH."
no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 08:16 pm (UTC)Mainly I remember wanting to hug Sadakiyo. :c And Kyoko. (SHE MAKES THE BEST "OH HELL NO" FACES, THOUGH.)
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Date: 2013-08-14 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 03:07 am (UTC)