20th Century Boys 13

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 24 volumes

Wow. I wondered about the aftermath of… well, the Friend/Shogun business last volume. Naoki Urasawa really knocks my socks off with his skills at facial expressions and pacing. When a news announcer is speaking of the Friend at the beginning of the volume, there’s a series of panels where he silently moves through a few different facial expressions that are not only wonderful (a lot of artists have trouble nailing facial expressions this subtle), they convey better than words just how shocking the news really is.

Aside from the Earth-shattering and spoileriffic news, and the wonder of just how deep the Friend’s plans go, there were a handful of little things I really enjoyed. I loved seeing Maruo unite with the main Kenji faction (which has everyone accounted for at this point save for Kenji himself, right?), and I also really liked the background story about his boss, the celebrity Haru Namio. I knew there was a story behind him, and it was a pretty classy (if slightly cheesy) one.

I also liked seeing Kyoko’s slow transition from empty-headed schoolgirl to a player with a vested interest in what goes down in the Friend organization. Seeing her fear about what’s happening on the news broadcast contrasted with her group of school friends and their relatively petty concerns was interested, and I loved that her friend was the link that took us into the new direction for the series.

And yeah, the series does shift gears here. Radically. There are hints that it was coming, but given the… extreme actions taken at the end of last volume, something big had to happen in order for the characters to move on and tackle another challenge.

It… uh, reminded me a lot of The Stand. Different countries and all, but the little peek at what was happening in the US definitely helped me make the connection.

Yeah. As always, this is great stuff. Every volume really throws you for a loop, but these last two have really turned things in a different direction. I think there will be plenty of death and devastation in the volumes to come, and I’m very interested in seeing how the Kenji faction will manage to take on the Friends as “terrorists” in the face of a globally-loved political group.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.