Take a moment to put yourself back into your childhood. Take a deep whiff and remember the smells and the aura of the playground. Remember being with your friends. Recall building a secret hide-out that wasn’t all that secret at all. Remember playing games, talking about girls (or boys) and lazy summer days. Remember those plans you made with your friends. (Ours was to buy a school bus and live in it.). Remember how you couldn’t grasp what exactly the future would hold but it was a blind excitement that confused you in ways you still can’t understand. You would be young forever and nothing would change. You would forget nothing and everything would end up like you dreamed.
Such is the aura that I find encapsulated in Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys. Recently seeing its third and final film released to theaters, this adaptation of the winner of a 2001 Kodansha Manga Award is easily one of the most engrossing stories I’ve encountered in a long time. The plot line traverses throughout the late 90s into and about 2017 and goes back time to time to events of the main characters in their elementary school days. What unravels is a story part mystery, part suspense and all around awesome.
I must admit if I have just one feeling that I cannot explain, it is my love and “nostalgia” for 70s and 80s era Japan. Having lived in America during the 80s and not being in existence in the 70s prohibits me from logically having these feelings, but they drum up as bright as my own nostalgic memories of youth. I can’t quite pinpoint what it is about this era of time, and why exactly Japan tickles me just the right way about but it most definitely is there. There is an aura of safety covered with a fine dusty haze of brutal reality that I sense from this era and while I can’t rightly even say what I feel is correct I can’t prevent myself from feeling like this. Urasawa’s depiction in the manga works wonderfully and it transfers over marvelously into the films. You can almost taste the dust that hangs around the air as the children run around the town. The future scenes are breathtaking as well and give a haunting feeling throughout.
For those unfamiliar with the basic plot line, the main characters as children formed a plan for how someone would take over the world. I mean, how can you defend the world from a danger if there is no danger? Fast forward to years well beyond when anyone would remember what they did as a child, someone starts putting the plan into motion. This someone refers to themselves only as Tomodachi and slowly begins unraveling a plan that only those who wrote it would know. So basically, it’s a whodunit or rather a “who’s doing it” as things continue to progress for the worse and, well, I’d rather not spoil anything. The point is that it plays out fantastically. The childlike innocence of the plan and how it turns out is damn scary at times.
Now the big crux of the plot seems to be “Who is Tomodachi, anyway?” And I’ll be completely honest. At one point I realized that it didn’t matter who Tomodachi was, but I really wanted to know. I felt as if betrayed by a lover. It didn’t matter who it was that did all these terrible things. They were done and irreversible and I could only move forward. But I had to know who did it. My soul was troubled and I had to know who was responsible. Extrapolate this hurt over the entire world and all the reason is something you did as a child and well, I’d bet you’d want to know who is behind it as well. Even if that doesn’t change anything.
So the movies are awesome and on top of that for those of you studying Japanese, they have word for word Japanese subtitles. It was a complete blessing. You’re looking at over six hours of subtitled, excellent entertainment. It pushed me to get the manga which, while lacking that beautiful furigana which helps me read the characters that I do not know how to read, getting a more in depth version of the story is quite delicious.
The manga, which I don’t know if I’d recommend before seeing the movies as I haven’t gotten that far into it yet, does although not feel tarnished by my having seen the films. While the plot seems to play out the same so far, many details are filled out and expanded upon. Their lacking is never a real loss in the movies, but the pacing of the books feels more apt for that medium than that of a film. They definitely did cut out parts in the film but nothing makes the films confusing or lacking, I so far find. I think both works have their own pacing down to what is necessary for that particular medium. To summarize, the manga seems to be the films plus more goodness. I can’t complain.
To give a brief rundown of my preferences, I’d rank the three films in the order of the first and third being neck and neck with my favorite changing by the day and the second at the bottom. I say this because I felt a little less entertained by the second film, but in retrospect it seems it was to build up for the finale that was the third. So if you find yourself enjoying the first but the second not as much, realize that it is necessary to prepare you for what is an excellent wrap up. A marvelous set of films and a fantastic manga is something no one should ignore. And on top of that it’s great for the studier of Japanese. You can’t go wrong.
Plus, its theme is the song that shares the name with the title, T. Rex’s 20th Century Boy. And I’ve heard friends say it is fine, friends say it is good and everybody said it’s just like rock ‘n roll.
Enjoy.
