20th Century Boys 9
Posted: September 18, 2010 Filed under: 20th Century Boys Leave a comment »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 22 volumes
As much as I love marathoning this series, it ultimately makes little difference since the storyline jumps around so much. Luckily, two of the main plot threads join here as Kanna and Otcho (sort of) come face-to-face at the very end of this volume. There are a few chapters that deal with Kyoko, but her story winds up copping out a little bit more than I’d like. She’s still on the cusp of seeing the Friend’s face in a flashback, but as soon as she ran into a kid wearing a mask, I knew where that was going. There is… sort of a wind-down to that story, but I can tell we will come back to it later. Which is great. It’s fertile ground for the fun childhood flashbacks, and I do like Kyoko despite her shortcomings. She’s great as a neutral third party.
Most of the volume, however, follows Kanna as she goes her own way when recruiting allies to her cause. She uses… the luck that was mentioned very early on in the series, but she uses it in an interesting, non-exploitative way, and doesn’t actually force anybody to follow her. But she still winds up attracting rough types that are not what one would expect to be the forces of good. Then again, this series is all about doing things that you wouldn’t expect.
As fun as all this is, and with the spectacular recruitment scene that manages to be extremely thrilling across several chapters while the characters are all seated, this volume was still mostly exposition. Amazingly, I didn’t really mind since the exposition is still so good, but I can’t wait to get into some of the more mobile parts of the story. I still have very little idea where all this is going, and we are very nearly at the halfway point now.
It is, however, one of the most amazing manga I’ve ever read. I’m not really doing it justice. It’s extraordinarily original, and has a great story that incorporates so many elements of what makes manga fun to read. There’s really nothing like it. I know I say that a lot, but I really mean it this time. I promise.
