20th Century Boys 20

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2012 – 22 volumes

THIS VOLUME. I should have known the ending would be ridiculously epic. It’s just hard to imagine, because I have no idea where it’s going. My best and most recent prediction was that Yabuki Joe was going to lead the people in some sort of rock revolution, except that doesn’t appear to be the case. This volume re-introduces a lot of characters that have long been out of the picture, and even one whose been a major player without ever having been in the story. That’s quite interesting. But all these people have their own plots to foil the Friend, who is set up to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth because he’s bored. The Friend’s plan has something to do with making it look like a flying saucer is destroying humanity, and somehow giving people a fake option to settle on Mars enters into the picture. The counter-measures range from simple grenades to violent internal revolutions to… well, a repeat. A fantastic repeat.

There were a couple show-stoppers here, though. One of them was seeing Kanna and the Friend meet face to face for the first time. I’m not really going to say anything about this. Parts of it were confusing. The ending was baffling. But all of it had me flipping the pages as fast as I possibly could. Again, one of the absolute best things about 20th Century Boys is that it keeps me guessing, something which few manga can do now. I had no idea where any of this was going.

The other was when Maruo ran an errand to find a long-lost… brother in the struggle, so to speak. The story leading up to how this person was found is fantastic. The place where this person is being held is fantastic. And this person’s story fills in a lot of gaps. Well, some gaps. There are still a lot of strange things about 20th Century Boys, but I wonder how logical the explanations can be for some of them.

Two other very small shocks in this volume, though, then I’m finished.

The first was when Otcho and Yukiji walk in on Manjome. That was crazy. Just… crazy. There are a lot of things that come as unexpected here, but that was literally from left field. It will haunt me.

The second was… the 20th Century Boy. That was also incredibly creepy. He’s always creepy, but that was especially so.

I am so excited to figure out what that’s about. To be fair, I’ve been waiting for the story to tie back in to the first few pages of volume 1 for some time. I’m pretty sure this is it. It will have to be, because there are only two volumes left to… resolve all this. I don’t know how that will be possible. Perhaps that’s why we need the 2-volume epilogue of 21st Century Boys.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

20th Century Boys 19

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 22 volumes

Well! It looks like 21st Century Boys will be a separate series. I had been including it in the volume counts with these, but I guess it counts separately.

I love Yabuki Joe. He’s completely unconcerned with everything. He’s… sort of a hero? But not really? More of a rallying point. The same thing can be said about the Friend. I also love that the rallying point is music, as if an adolescent dream of being a rock star is being fulfilled. An interesting counter-measure to the Friend’s madness, since his world domination ploy was also based around the fantasies of children. Also also interesting, as much as Yabuki Joe is using his music for good, he states in this volume that it’s not going to save the world. Even though… it kind of is. So, in that, he’s unlike the friend with his childhood dream. Perhaps the fact he’s still succeeding at being a popular musician is some sort of commentary on the dangerous weakness in crowd mentality? Hmm.

I guess I either didn’t realize or forgot that the currency in this post-apocalyptic world was the buddy. If you’re buying a forged permit, it’s going to cost you a lot of buddies. I can’t make this stuff up.

Basically, in this volume, Yabuki Joe and Chono (whose name I can’t read without thinking of the French artist CHOMO, a hermit that lived in Fontainebleau forest for 50 years) reach a checkpoint that they need to cross to get into the Kanto region and Tokyo. The problem is that you need a legit pass to get through the checkpoint, and on the non-Kanto side, there’s a booming business in forgeries that will get you shot in the head should you present them to the checkpoint guards. But Yabuki Joe convinces the lost half of the Ujiko Ujio artist duo to draw permits for every person in the border town. Madness ensues. Chono is caught for a bounty. Yabuki Joe faces off against the ruler of the checkpoint forest, a man who is obsessed with the idea of being a bad guy and who, long ago, chose Kenji to be his good guy nemesis. Well, now there’s only Yabuki Joe.

Guys. The end of this book is absolutely EPIC. The identity of the Friend is once again in question. The identity of the leader of the checkpoint is also in question, though I wonder if he actually is anyone important. Probably. He’ll be something insane, like Kanna’s father. Yabuki Joe, though. Yabuki Joe steals the scene. He tells all.

So… I’m just gonna go ahead and read volume 20 now.

20th Century Boys 18

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 24 volumes

Oh, Yabuki Joe. You’ve got to get up.

I love every single volume of this series. I probably start every review that way, but it’s absolutely true. There hasn’t been a single volume of 20th Century Boys that hasn’t offered a completely unique reading experience. It sounds like trite overpraise when I say it, but it’s rare that I can’t see where a story is going a mile away. 20th Century Boys is all sorts of absolute insanity, and it is dead serious about it. I literally have no idea what’s going to happen next, and somehow, all the crazy is absolutely acceptable in context. Sometimes it throws me an intentional curveball, too.

There’s one truly epic scene in this volume. Yabuki Joe manages to enter the base where Chono is stationed. He and a group of other officers are ordered to shoot “the alien” on sight. When they swarm him, Yabuki Joe simply strolls out of the house he was in and begins singing a nonsense song with his guitar. The officers are at a standstill, utterly entranced. Nobody knows what to make of this. One of the officers does manage to follow orders, and shoots him. Yabuki Joe falls, then calls Officer Chono over to cheer him on with “Get up, Joe!” (a line from Joe of Tomorrow, which is where the alias Yabuki Joe comes from). He then stands up, wanders over to the officer that shot him, and faces him down, insisting that you can’t shoot a man who is singing a song. This scene is really intense and triumphant, and because Yabuki Joe says it, every officer there believes it.

Officer Chono uses this excuse later when his superior officer shows up to shoot Yabuki Joe. He then starts singing so that the officer doesn’t shoot him. Later, when Yabuki Joe rides off on a motorcycle, Chono thanks him for that particular bit of wisdom. Yabuki Joe turns to him in disbelief, explaining that he was indeed shot, and you can shoot a man singing a song if you damn well please. Then he leaves.

This is why 20th Century Boys is great. It may have several triumphant moments buried in absolute and utter nonsense. There’s a lot of other totally awesome things going on in that scene, too. But the best is the line about how you can’t shoot a man singing a song. And then it turns around and just throws that away completely.

Yabuki Joe is a newcomer to the story, but his coming has been foreshadowed for several volumes, and we’re only now getting to see his face. We still don’t know very much about him, or what exactly he’s doing, but he has a huge crazy following, and seems completely unconcerned with all the Friend stuff going on. I am curious to see how he’ll waltz in and change the world with his concerts. I’d love to see that work in a world where kid logic rules and military tactics fail.

There’s more about Kanna’s group, and her split from Yoshitsune. Otcho meets back up with her and talks some sense into her.

More interesting, though, is the ever-present flashback. This time, we see history through the eyes of Manjome Inshu. How he met the Friend, and his role in everything that the Friend has been so far. Interestingly, in his previous life he was what Otcho calls a “snake oil salesman,” and I like how his skills come in handy, or not, as the case may be.

I’ve got two more volumes to read, and there are two more volumes to the conclusion (then another two volume follow-up, which I assume will be published here as well). I cannot wait. I have absolutely no idea how all this could end.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

20th Century Boys 17

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 24 volumes

I’ve fallen a few volumes behind on this series, which is shameful. It’s such a compelling story. I also like that it’s slowly drifted into post-apocalypse territory, but is free of the usual manga stereotypes I associate with these types of stories. Then again, being like other series is not something 20th Century Boys has ever done.

This is a relatively quiet volume, mostly about the living conditions under the new Friends regime again, though the story is building up to some action. What kind of action, I’m not sure. The narrative locates both Kanna and Otcho, though they are not yet together. We learn of an August date for action against the Friends, though it looks like it might be a hopeless exercise. Sanae and her brother Katsuo are still fleeing the government as political dissidents, which is hilarious to me since they are children being chased by a Defense Force wearing gas masks and singing about space aliens. But the Defense Force is no joke, and part of the story is also about how they kill in cold blood. A couple parts of the story are about that, in fact. While this sounds like run-of-the-mill action fodder in theory, the scenes where the Defense Force executes “criminals” are most heartbreaking. Urasawa has done a fine job of writing a modern totalitarian-style environment that doesn’t feel futuristic at all. Somehow, actually, it feels quite old-fashioned, since feudal lord systems also seem to be in place. It’s interesting, though I’m not sure how much more of it we’re going to see.

We also learn about Otcho’s years outside Tokyo, and how the “quarantined” citizens that were exiled after the virus outbreak live. Most of these people were arbitrarily shipped out to the country, and none of them are actually infected. Nonetheless, what looks like a group of people trying to cope and do the best they can among one another turns ugly whenever a vaccine shows up in a town. This neighbor-against-neighbor desperation violence even upsets the stoic Otcho.

The end of the volume, though. I’m not sure how, but frequently these books save the best for last. Koizumi reappears, and she re-discovers her boy band crush from the pre-Friend days. He’s singing a song. A song that he didn’t write, but claims someone taught him one night at the intersection in Nishi-Nippori. You know. A crossroads. The stranger’s name? Akuma.

Excellent. The story hams this up just about as much as it possibly can, and I love every page of it. I suspect this particular plot point won’t actually be relevant for some time. But the song in question is an anthem for the resistance, even without the presence of the original performer.

What I like best about this series, though, is that it isn’t really overly-complicated. I didn’t really care for Monster much because, though I read the whole thing straight through when all the volumes were out, I still had trouble keeping track of all the side-characters and subplots, and that was so important to that series. There’s a lot of stuff going on in 20th Century Boys, but it doesn’t overwhelm. Most of it is fairly organic, and isn’t that far removed from the most major events in the series. Every single detail doesn’t stick in my memory, but all of it relates back to something big I do remember, and it falls into place after that.

Part of it, too, might just be that all the stuff going on is so crazy in the context of a relatively serious and grounded storyline. There’s nothing that unusual about the dystopian society or the dissidents in 20th Century Boys. What is noteworthy is that the organization is called the Friends, and that they rose to power based on a children’s game of make-believe from the 70s. 20th Century Boys makes you believe that the Friends really could have come into power by building a crappy giant robot that they rampaged through the city with. And it’s more than believable when the Friend “comes back to life” and saves the Pope. It’s the over-the-top details like those in the serious and well-written context that makes 20th Century Boys special.

20th Century Boys 16

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.

20th Century Boys 15

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 23 volumes

I knew it. I think we all did. It went down a little differently than I thought it would, and I thought the Pope would play a different role. What happens in the story is much more fantastic than what I expected. As everybody says: deified. My only question is if… what I’m talking about is the same as before. Somehow, I suspect that is not the case. I am curious.

Unfortunately, the translation notes ruined the surprise at the end of the volume for me. We see an unusual two-page preview for volume 16, featuring a character strolling down an empty street. I wasn’t sure what the significance was until the translation notes identified the character. Then I freaked out. Again, this… particular thing isn’t that hard to pick up on, and I’ve been expecting it since the post-1999 story started. But I’ve been curious how this will be re-introduced into the story. All sorts of things can happen from this point.

Anyway. Enough of the veiled spoiler-free commentary. There’s plenty to like here, even without major bombshells from the story. The volume starts with a new character, an Italian priest named Luciano who bears an uncomfortable resemblance to John Belushi. In his youth, he was a drunk counterfeiter, until another priest and future mentor crossed his path. Luciano stumbles across the Friend’s New Book of Prophecy, and while at first he laughs it off as nonsense, he realizes that many of the items in it are true, and he begins to fear that the Pope will be assassinated when he visits Japan for the World’s Fair. He tries to warn the Cardinals, but this only triggers a very obvious cover-up operation, so Luciano flees Italy for Japan to try and save the Pope. He doesn’t speak a word of Japanese, but somehow he finds Kanna and the Kenji Faction and warns them with enough time to take action.

Father Luciano, awesome as he is, bothers me. One of the weaknesses of both this story and Monster is that they have far too many characters, each with their own section of story to tell. It’s less of a problem in 20th Century Boys, but Father Luciano is a great example. I doubt this man will be a major player ever again. He does illustrate the global influence of the Friends Organization, but did we really need to introduce and spend half a volume with a new character to learn that? And that a man that doesn’t speak a word of Japanese happens to find Kanna and her crew, along with a Priest that happens to speak Italian and is sympathetic to Luciano’s cause, along with being a former gang member himself, seems a smidge unlikely to me, even for 20th Century Boys. Having said that, I still think Luciano’s a great character, and the fact he looks like John Belushi and doesn’t speak Japanese will definitely make me remember him if he does reappear later. His tattoos are also pretty memorable, and very elaborate for a priest. The man running around in America right now? Any of Kenji’s classmates that aren’t Yoshitsune or Otcho? Random police officers and gang members? Not so much.

I loved the way Otcho and the anti-Friend group took action when they learned about the plans to assassinate the Pope. Seeing them getting the mobs to work together, and watching many different small groups comb for assassins in an enormous crowd around the Pope was pretty fantastic. But even this was overridden by the pair of bombshells dropped at the end of the volume. The 13th Assassin really does a number on the story when he finally does appear, and Urasawa really knows how to make the most of a ridiculously dramatic moment.

Even though I do hate it when authors involve too many extraneous characters in a story, I do like Father Luciano, I like the conspiracy that the Friends Organization seems to have cooked up against the Pope, and I adore what happens at the end of the volume. This has been the best volume of the series yet, and given the peek we see into volume 16, it’s only getting better from here.

20th Century Boys 14

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 24 volumes

Okay. I love this series to pieces. But I realized something this volume. Something I should’ve realized a long time ago. The foreshadowing? It’s getting absolutely ridiculous. No major event passes in this series without several characters seeing/remembering it, then talking about it very seriously for at least several chapters before it is revealed to the reader. That was fine when it was the identity of the Friend, or other people, but it happens with two separate events in this volume. I’m not even sure that they’re major plot points. All I know is that the characters are scared. Of something. Something that might be bad.

Actually, one of the events was more… bizarre than it was bad. I don’t even know if what we saw actually happened (because the ending was, in theory, impossible). But I don’t… I don’t know what it proves, other than the Friend is batty and eccentric. And we already knew that. The other thing is the identity of someone. And we don’t know who that someone is yet. But apparently several of the characters do.

Having said that, this series is pure, undiluted awesome. Most of this volume is a flashback to 1971, with Kyoko and Yoshitsune using the Friend Land program to enter a flashback of “what really happened in 1971.” These flashbacks are always an awful lot of fun, because even if the actions only have an abstract bearing on what happens in the present storyline (one that the reader isn’t privy to most of the time), I adore watching younger versions of all the characters as kids. Urasawa pegs everything about these flashbacks perfectly. They are simply kids being kids, with kid-like worries, fears, and dreams. All they wanna do is sneak back into the school and turn the fish pump back on, because they forgot. Telling ghost stories along the way is just par for the course.

We learn a little bit more about Manjome, the second-in-command of the Friend Party. We even get to see a past version of him. I’m not quite sure what his role is from here on out, but watching this poor shell of a man deal with grief and leadership is very interesting, even if we don’t know much at all about him. I’m looking forward to what he does.

Speaking of future roles in the story, I have absolutely no idea where the story is going from here, especially after the events of last volume. That was pretty much all I was expecting. There’s still the Friend Party, of course, and the characters still need to deal with the grip it has on the world, not to mention that silly virus, but the main threat seems to have been neutralized. Maybe. I’m looking forward to just what the plot is going to do with all these bizarre and fantastic story threads it’s been accumulating.

One more minor nitpick. So, Yoshitsune visits a bowling alley in 1971. In it, kids are playing pinball in a few panels. Now, I am what you might call a Pinball Wizard. A pinball otaku, if you will. Those pinball machines the kids are playing? Those are Williams SS machines, Pin-Bot and Comet, and they came out in ’85-’86. There is a third, but I don’t recognize the backglass. Shame on me. But judging by the score counters (they appear to be digital rather than reels), it’s also a solid state machine, which puts it post-’77.

Any sort of pinball in a manga is awesome, though, let alone seeing it in a manga as great as 20th Century Boys. This volume isn’t quite as action-packed, and I think serves more as exposition towards the next major storyline. Luckily I have one more volume here, so I intend to find out where this next little bit of story is going. I am currently very puzzled, but intrigued.

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.

20th Century Boys 12

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 22 volumes

I’ve been away a while. It’s nice to get back to this series, though. I know I sound like a broken record, since I have a lot of favorites, but this is one of them. It’s just gripping stuff, and with all the craziness it’s been building up since the first volume, now that we’re starting to get explanations for some of it, I can’t read the volumes fast enough.

What kind of explanations? How about the friend. Oh yes, no fake-outs this time. At least, I think so. We find out who the friend is at the end of the volume. And it made me want to read back through all the old ones. That’s all I’ll say on the subject.

What else happens? It hasn’t stopped dipping into the past, and I love that, even still, memories of Kenji inform absolutely everything that’s going on, both on the Friend side and the anti-Friend side. Connections to Kenji’s sister and the scientists that worked with her keep popping up, and Otcho investigates a lead at his old school based on a secret message system he remembered one of his more sinister classmates telling him about back in grade school. Apparently, because of this, Donkey saw something he shouldn’t have, though Otcho declined to tangle with them back in school. Nowadays, though? It’s on.

Hilariously, in the same school, the same room, and with the same book, copyright 1968, that has stayed in the library for 45 or so years.

What else? We also catch up with Maruo. His role in the story is an interesting one, and gives us yet another angle. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I liked him a lot in this volume, and am looking forward to where his story takes us.

And that’s it for this time around. Looking forward to the next one, which I’ll probably read this weekend.

20th Century Boys 11

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 23 volumes

This volume was a lot more exposition than we’ve yet seen in this series. Not a whole lot of action, nor any detailed flashbacks, nor were there Earth-shattering revelations of any kind. Just a lot of talking. It was still interesting though, and even 20th Century Boys needs to catch its breath sometimes.

Sadakiyo… hm. The situation with Sadakiyo gets very strange, very fast, and that develops while Kanna is being told that her father is the Friend (something I still doubt, though it was brought up in the early stages of the story). Basically, Sadakiyo knows damn near everything, and he learned it all from Mon-chan. Of course, we don’t learn what “everything” is, and “everything” is written in a cryptic, stained, and crumbling shorthand. So we’re left with the characters puzzling through their memories. Unfortunately, their revelations don’t really mean much at this stage, they mostly seem like major plot points for another day. But it’s still fun to see Yoshitsune and Yukiji hanging out together. And “everything” is important enough that the Friend organization would torch a building full of elderly people to destroy it. The head Dream Navigator is a ruthless, ruthless lady, and it looks like she’ll be back for more at a later date.

The story does explore Kanna’s background a little more, as it moves on from the point where she is told she is the Friend’s daughter (and why would you believe that? Especially under the circumstances in which she was told?). She learns what she can about her mother, absent for all these years. The truth of the matter winds up being pretty ugly, though it makes sense in a way, too. After all… would a nice lady have a kid with a man who turned into the Friend? Hmmm.

At this point, when it’s been established that all manner of craziness can and will happen, there are nonsensical things I am waiting to happen. I don’t know that the characters have ever said that Kenji was actually dead. In this volume, they mention he went off by himself, he put his life on the line, pretty much everything except “he gave his life.” I’m waiting for Kenji to show up. And I’m waiting for him to show up in some outlandish role that doesn’t make sense until three volumes of action/explanations make it clear that it somehow fits perfectly in the logic of the story, and has since the beginning.

As for the Friend, other than a lingering theory that it’s some sort of double personality for Kenji, I have no idea who it could be, and it seems like he’s relatively unconnected to Kenji’s group of friends at this point, at least the ones that had been established at the beginning of the story. That makes him a little less interesting, especially since the significance of Kenji’s class is lessened by new people coming out of the woodwork now, but… who am I kidding? I’m still dying to know who he is and how he fit in with Kenji’s group.

I’m also interested in the role of music in the series. Kenji is a musician, a tape of his songs is what keeps Kanna going, and in this volume, we see a speech he made about how all the classic rock songs are simply a part of his flesh and blood, and he only needs to close his eyes to feel any one of them. Also, given the fact that the series is named after a T-Rex song, and the first scene of a boy being bound and gagged and a song blasted over the PA has still not been explained… I’m waiting more and more for music to come into things. I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into it or not, but it’s still an interesting element.

A quiet volume, sure, full of characters pausing to try and sort things out, but I still have yet to see 20th Century Boys lose its forward momentum. It’s still getting better and better. It trumps Monster about a hundred times at this point, and is probably the best series I’m currently reading. Amazing stuff.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.