20th Century Boys 16
Posted: July 26, 2011 Filed under: 20th Century Boys 3 Comments »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 24 volumes
I think one of my favorite things about this series is the little kid logic. The main plot is all about little kid logic, adults that grew up while clinging to ridiculous and childish plans, and, as revealed in this volume, spiteful childhood vendettas. And yet, it takes the little kid logic very seriously in a non-ironic way, and the fate of the world literally rests on this little kid logic. I love it. I love every volume, but this volume in particular helped shed a lot of light on this facet of 20th Century Boys.
The first half of this volume is all about Fukube, and we see many of the main events from Kenji & company’s childhood from his perspective. As expected, he’s a demented little kid, and also a little sad and lonely. Most disturbing are the ways he manipulates people as a child. Sadakiyo especially, but Yamane, too. I love these flashbacks. Not only are they a nice break from the very serious present storyline (they’re usually very lighthearted, and even this disturbing Fukube flashback was less serious than… you know, resurrection), I also like that not much has changed over the last 40 or so years.
We see how Fukube met Manjome for the first time. He has a business card that identifies him as Chuck Manjome, which has forever linked him with another person in my mind. I’m not sure why his business card gave his name as Chuck. Elsewhere, he is Manjome Inshu.
The second half of the book is about Otcho and a couple of kids. About the last thing I want, at this point, are new characters, but I’m quite fond of these little Hulkamaniacs. Wrestling is discussed several times (the children think that Otcho is a professional wrestler, for some reason), and everybody seems to remember different details about these celebrities. I’m not sure of the significance, unless the unreliability of human memory is about to come up as a plot point.
Three years have passed in the main storyline since the game-changing events last volume. Otcho has been separated from Yoshitsune, Kanna, and the others, and he’s trying to follow a lead in order to meet up with them. For some reason, the children are with him. While he doesn’t meet up with the others by the end of the volume, Kamisama makes another appearance, and that’s never a bad thing. He gets upset when the younger child confuses corned beef with a steak.
After I was so upset with the end notes spoiling the next volume teaser in volume 15, that scene didn’t even remotely come to pass in this volume. What. Hopefully we’ll see that character in volume 17. Or better yet, maybe that was just messing with us, and we won’t see him until the end, and he won’t play any role at all. That would be awesome.
But yes. This volume is one of my favorites, simply because of the Fukube flashback. It’s hard to top the rather epic storyline from last volume, and while all of it is good, this is more my flavor. But 20th Century Boys has yet to disappoint in any way, and I’m hoping it maintains this wonderful quality all the way through the end.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
[...] on vol. 16 of 20th Century Boys (Slightly Biased Manga) Kate Dacey on Basic Anatomy for the Manga Artist (The Manga Critic) [...]
One disapointing thing about getting the volumes of 20th Century Boys now, is that most of the allusions being made are out of date or forgotten now. The clownfish at the end of volume 12 were an obvious reference to Finding Nemo. Likewise, I thought they were talking about The Great Antonio who recently died, not Antonio Inoki, a Japanese wrestler. The Great Antonio was a real-life Canadian strongman who very likely influenced Hagrid of Harry Potter fame. (go ahead, look him up)
If this volume could be summed up in one sentence, it would be: “You’ve seen childhood friends, now see Friend’s childhood.”
I completely missed the references to both The Great Antonio and Antonio Inoki, I wasn’t sure if they were real wrestlers or just something the characters were mistaking and making up themselves. I think they were conflating the two, but that’s interesting to know about The Great Antonio. I had no idea.