Urasawa is one of the mangaka who can boast fame both at home and abroad. Its popularity in the West is due to, inter alia, the fact that his titles often refer to American pop culture. Taki Monster draws handfuls from the Fugitive series , and an important plot in Pluto is a poorly veiled criticism of the American expansion into Iraq. On the other hand, the first two volumes of Boys of the Twentieth Century were full of clues typical of Stephen King’s work. A multi-track plot that navigates between the present and the past is a tribute to such titles as To or Dream Hunter. References to the king of horror should be treated as an appetizer, because the third and fourth volumes take a completely different direction.
Secrets of the 20th century
In previous volumes , the reader met Kenji – a simple boy who suddenly had to confront a worldwide conspiracy. As a child, he and his friends wrote the “Book of Prophecies” about apocalyptic visions of the future. However, the mysterious leader of the sect, the Friend, after many years decided to put these children’s games into life, which led to the death of thousands of victims.
There is an escalation in the third volume. The Friend’s identity and motivation are still unknown, and his influence grows into politics. Kenji’s team is blamed for the terrorist attacks, and they must operate underground. Meanwhile, a robot invented in childhood according to a “prophecy” appears on the streets of Tokyo on New Year’s Eve 2000 and spreads a deadly virus. Kenji and friends embark on a suicide mission to stop a Friend.
Secrets of the 21st century
Everything here is gaining such momentum that in many other titles it would be the culmination of the story – while it is only half of the third volume (out of eleven!). And when it comes to the “final” confrontation, Urasawa … jumps with the story several years ahead, to Japan, where the Friend won and introduced his regime. Completely new characters are introduced to the plot, and their initial plot seems very loosely related to the previous plots. Are you sure?
Oh, Urasawa is playing games with readers, playing games. Man wants to know the result of the confrontation, but the main characters of the first two volumes disappear into hundreds of pages. However, this is where the mangaka’s narrative mastery is revealed, because in the fourth volume, old and new characters are neatly intertwined with each other. Connecting the threads that took place in the 1960s, the end of the 20th century and the second decade of the 21st century could easily lead to fictional chaos, but it is not here. Urasawa has a tendency to water-oil and stretch the story, but thanks to this, each element has time to sound properly. And although the reader knows, for example, about a friend’s victory during the unfortunate New Year’s Eve, the slow dosage of events from that day can still build suspense for the recipient. It is also worth mentioning
Evolution
Graphically, 20th Century Boys are still at the forefront. I read the previous Urasawa series, Monster , in parallel, and there a lot of the supporting characters look the same. You can see that the artist has developed over time, because in Chłopaki this problem does not occur – the designs of the heroes are varied, although most of them have the tired eyes characteristic of this mangaka.
Boys just wanna have fun
Naoki Urasawa trolls readers: he does not end the threads, but starts new ones, introduces a multitude of previously unknown characters and does not explain secrets (who the hell is a Friend?). I suspect that there are a few more (teenagers) fictional flips waiting in the next volumes. And I would love to read them, because Chłopaki is the top comic book that I have read this year.
