Customer Reviews

Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys, Vol. 6

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The final battle to save the world was fought in the year 2000, but now it's 2014 and we don't know how it came out.

After the time jump in the last volume this book continues the adventures of the teen-aged Kanna and follows a manga artist imprisoned for his subversive works.

We get more clues what happened in 2000 but the focus in clearly on the 'present day' of 2014 with a murder mystery, intrigue in the police force and an Alcatraz-like prison in Tokyo bay.

Things are still humming along nicely and Urasawa's work is still strong but the delays in resolving old mysteries are starting to get annoying.

Volume 6 definitely takes the storyline of "20th Century Boys" to a different direction. For the last five volumes, we have watched Kenji and friends try to find out who is the Friend and then grow their force to fight them. But with the New Year's massacre evidently not going their way, 14 years later, the storyline focuses on Kanna.

We know that Kanna is the daughter of the Friend and Kenji's sister and since the earlier volumes, The Friends have attempted to kidnap her when she was a child. But now that she has become so street savvy, she has managed to avoid being caught by them and using her street smarts to fight her way out. But obviously, trouble is growing and it appears that the Friends cult are up to something sinister, once again.

Although not an action driven volume, there is good character driven storylines featuring Kanna and Detective Chono who appears to have a bigger role in this storyline. Nothing is revealed to what happened to Kenji and friends but we do see Otcho (Shogun) and how he has been mistreated, chained and possibly tortured within these last 14 years. If anything, I enjoyed this volume as it shows how much the Friends have permeated into regular society and are now so powerful that they would be difficult to stop.

I have no idea where Urasawa is going to take the seventh volume of the series but from reading vol. 6, I can't wait. Another excellent volume of "Naoki Ursawa's 20th Century boys"! All six volumes thus far are highly recommended!