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20th Century Boys vol. 1
Sep. 30th, 2010 18:52Urasawa Naoki. 20th Century Boys. 22 vols. Tokyo: Shogakkan, 2000-07. [Also available in English translation.]
It is my great good fortune that my public library has the first twelve volumes of this manga in Japanese, because holy crap is it good.
The premise is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant: What would you do if, well into your rather boring life, you were suddenly reminded of the games you and your friends used to play when you were children, games in which the world was brought to the brink of disaster? And what would you do if those games suddenly started becoming true? In 20th Century Boys that's just what happens; a group of loosely connected old school friends gradually realize after the murder of one of their own that another of their old friends, who calls himself 'Friend' and has started a cult, is turning their old games into a very dangerous reality.
The main character is Kenji, the scion of an liquor store family who turned the shop into a convenience store and who's been saddled with his sister's kid to raise; his other school comrades gradually come into focus over the course of the manga; they're a nice cross-section of fairly ordinary middle-class lives in the Tokyo suburbs, which might as well be Anytown, Japan, but the characters aren't stock types, to Urasawa's credit.
I really, really can't say enough about Urasawa, and how awesome he is--right from the beginning the sense of pacing in this manga is phenomenal, and phenomenally sure, and the dialogue is frequently funny to boot. His art style is a bit jarring after reading lots of CLAMP and shoujo, but it's very dramatic, and well-suited to the subject matter. He has two other manga, Monster and Pluto, available in English, and I've heard they're just as good.
It is my great good fortune that my public library has the first twelve volumes of this manga in Japanese, because holy crap is it good.
The premise is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant: What would you do if, well into your rather boring life, you were suddenly reminded of the games you and your friends used to play when you were children, games in which the world was brought to the brink of disaster? And what would you do if those games suddenly started becoming true? In 20th Century Boys that's just what happens; a group of loosely connected old school friends gradually realize after the murder of one of their own that another of their old friends, who calls himself 'Friend' and has started a cult, is turning their old games into a very dangerous reality.
The main character is Kenji, the scion of an liquor store family who turned the shop into a convenience store and who's been saddled with his sister's kid to raise; his other school comrades gradually come into focus over the course of the manga; they're a nice cross-section of fairly ordinary middle-class lives in the Tokyo suburbs, which might as well be Anytown, Japan, but the characters aren't stock types, to Urasawa's credit.
I really, really can't say enough about Urasawa, and how awesome he is--right from the beginning the sense of pacing in this manga is phenomenal, and phenomenally sure, and the dialogue is frequently funny to boot. His art style is a bit jarring after reading lots of CLAMP and shoujo, but it's very dramatic, and well-suited to the subject matter. He has two other manga, Monster and Pluto, available in English, and I've heard they're just as good.