20th Century Boys 7
Posted: January 12, 2010 Filed under: 20th Century Boys 5 Comments »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 22 volumes
Yes. Lots and lots and lots of epic goings-on happen here. In the present storyline, we see Shogun begin to make his move, and Kanna is AWOL and replaced by a girl named Koizumi who randomly decides to do a research paper on the Kenji faction and, somehow, is not blinded by the Friend propaganda and winds up meeting the right people to hear the story.
Meanwhile, Shogun is free, and we also re-encounter Kami-sama in the present storyline. Shogun is just how we left him, but Kami-sama’s new lot in life is pretty hilarious and unnecessary, and somehow fitting.
After that, the story flashes back to December 31st, 1999, and we begin to see how the day unfolded. I wasn’t expecting the explanation this soon, nor was I expecting it to be as straightforward as it is. There are still some flashbacks to childhood mixed in too, along with some 1999 explanations that go back to childhood, which makes the timeline for this series even weirder, if that’s even possible. I loved the childhood memories this time around, a little more than the robot battle, but I have a feeling that the most exciting parts of that are going to be in the next volume. Which I now need desperately, because this one ends on an awful cliffhanger.
I think the thing I like most about the childhood memories in this volume is that they are all nice and a little bittersweet, which this volume desperately needs for contrast to its dark, action-packed story. Kenji rocking out to 20th Century Boy as a little kid, contrasted with him rocking it as an adult while driving a truck full of dynamite up to a giant robot is pretty awesome. I also liked how they had to analyze the final battle in little kid terms, like taking hints about how the giant robot was controlled from the evolution of the giant robot in Japanese popular culture. Awesome. I also like that there is a manga story subplot running with the manga artist that escapes with shogun, but he will never be as awesome as Jewel Sachihana from Otomen.
Also worth pointing out is the fact that the Friend modification to the Tower of the Sun doesn’t hurt that (horrible) thing. Maybe in a worldwide takeover, it would replace the torch on the Statue of Liberty, or perhaps set atop the tines of (horrible) Joan Miro’s Chicago (I would suggest the more famous Picasso across the street from it, but it wouldn’t be much of a modification since it’s already mostly there).
Anyway, yes. I am still completely addicted and in desperate need of more volumes of this series, stat. May this never change as long as it runs.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
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I just finished reading this, and arrgh – *May* for the next volume? My nerves will be frazzled shreds by then.
It’s amazingly impressive just how tense all those storylines end up becoming during this volume, especially given the multiple time periods. And yeah, I also wasn’t expecting the explanation quite so soon – but I also don’t expect it to be that easy.
I really like Koizumi. I live in hope of two (or more!) of Urasawa’s awesome female characters getting to team up, so I’m hoping she and Kanna will end up dealing with the Friends in the future version of Tokyo.
Ooh, a Kanna/Koizumi team-up would be awesome. I still don’t have much of an idea where things will be going from here. And I completely failed to notice that there was a huge gap between the volumes. Aww. Hope that doesn’t reflect the sales… it really is an amazing series, it deserves a massive number of readers.
I’m still waiting for my copy of this volume, but I did look at the last page when I was at the bookstore today, so I know which cliffhanger you are talking about. I think it’s impact was a little lost in the movie, because at that point things were moving at a fast pace. By the time the audience would have had a chance for that to sink in, Kenji figures out who Friend is. And Kenji does not have the good grace to share this insight with the audience, forcing the audience to wait until the final fourth of the final movie to find out. The audience was not in the mood to ponder much else.
I think the movies deserves a much wider audience too. There were about 10-25 people in the theater.
That’s a shame about the movies being under-attended. I kept hearing buzz about them and assumed they were well-received, though I guess that’s a bit different than having a good turnout at the theater. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a crowd in a theater, honestly. I went to a showing of the Oscar-nominated shorts a few weeks ago thinking it would be packed, and there was probably only around 30 or so people in the place. It was sad. I still haven’t seen the movies myself, at this point I’m trying to decide if I want to pick up the first one after I finish volume ten and see how it fits, or wait until I finish the series and watch all three at once.
The thing about that cliffhanger was that I wasn’t even expecting it until the last page. I figured this volume wasn’t going to get around to the task they had started, but what they saw on that last page is a complete and total mystery to me.