20th Century Boys

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20th Century Boys ( Japanese 20 世紀 少年 , nijusseiki shōnen ) is a manga series by the Japanese illustrator Naoki Urasawa . It can be assigned to the genre science fiction and drama .

The work tells of the apocalyptic childhood fantasies of a group of friends and how they will come true one day.

action

During their carefree school days, Kenji Endō ( 遠藤 健 児 ) and his friends Otcho ( オ ッ チ ョ ), Yoshitsune ( ヨ シ ツ ネ ), Fukubei ( フ ク ベ エ ), Katsumata ( カ ツ マ タ ) and Yukiji Setoguchi ( ユ ), in which the whole world is destroyed ( ユ キ 戸 口 ) . You think up bacterial attacks, bomb attacks and giant robots and play the heroes who will save the world from an evil organization.

Decades later, there are attacks all over the world that stick firmly to the scenario they designed. A mysterious "friend" ( と も だ ち , Tomodachi ) appears as the leader of a sect, the Friendship Party , and can soon gain more and more power. The friend uses a symbol that the friends came up with back then. Kenji therefore knows that one of his childhood friends must be the friend and wants to stop him. In doing so, however, he is confronted with the growing power of his friend, which already extends to the police. This is how his niece Kanna is kidnapped.

By the year 2000, in which, according to the friends scenario, the world should end, Kenji was able to gather most of them together. But they are now being hunted as a terrorist organization and have to live in the sewer system. Nevertheless, they can stop the friend, he is shot. Fukubei is hiding behind his mask. But the friends are arrested as terrorists.

But in 2015 the friend will be active again. He seizes power and becomes president of the world. He succeeds in an assassination attempt on the Pope. After Otcho escaped from prison and further involved in the case with the girl Britney, the policeman Shōhei Chōno ( 蝶 野 将 平 ) and the schoolgirl Kyōko Koizumi ( 小泉 響 子 ), the fight against the friend begins again. Eventually it is revealed that Katsumata is the "friend" and had made common cause with Fukubei. He took his place after his death.

Concept and style

The manga takes place in several time levels, between which one jumps again and again. Reflecting on childhood memories is a central theme. The drawing style is realistic and detailed.

Emergence

The series was named after a favorite Urasawa song, the 1973 song of the same name by the British rock band T. Rex .

Urasawa came up with the idea for the manga at a class reunion of his elementary school class, where he hardly recognized his former classmates. In an interview with the Japanese magazine Tōkyō Walker , he said that most of the childhood stories depicted in the manga were, like the rest, fictitious. But the author has also experienced some himself. For example, when he was a child he and friends, like the children in the manga, built a secret base.

In 20th Century Boys, there are mentions of mangas that the main characters read in their childhood and adolescence. The grown-up Otcho Rumiko confuses Takahashi's manga Inu Yasha with Urusei Yatsura, which was written about twenty years earlier .

Publications

From 1999 onwards, 20th Century Boys was published monthly in individual chapters in the manga magazine Big Comic Spirits in Japan . In April 2006 Urasawa broke off the series prematurely. In December of that year, Big Comic Spirits began publishing the last two chapters . These appeared under the title 21st Century Boys (21 世紀 少年 , 21-seiki Shōnen ). The Shogakukan- Verlag published the individual chapters of 20th Century Boys in 22 anthologies, 21st Century Boys in two volumes. The series was thus concluded.

The manga was published in French by Generation Comics, Italian by Panini and Spanish by Planeta DeAgostini Comics . It has also been translated into Dutch and Korean. It is still published in English by Viz Media .

The German publication takes place at Panini Verlag on the Planet Manga label , where all 22 volumes have been published. The translation is by Josef Shanel and Matthias Wissnet. After Volume Eight came out, the publisher originally planned to discontinue 20th Century Boys due to poor sales. At 20th Century Boys they tested a print-on-demand process beforehand , which was successful with volumes nine and ten and was decisive for the further publication of the series.

In March and August 2010, Panini also released the sequel, 21st Century Boys , in two volumes.

Movies

The first real film by 20th Century Boys premiered on August 21, 2008 in Paris. Production cost $ 55 million. The Japanese band Nightmare had a small guest appearance in the film . The second and third parts of the film trilogy were released in Japanese cinemas the following year.

Success and reception

The first 18 anthologies of the manga had sold around 13 million times in Japan by spring 2005.

Urasawa received some of the most prestigious Japanese comic awards for 20th Century Boys . In 2001 he won the Kōdansha Manga Prize in the His category, the Excellence Prize at the Japanese Media Arts Festival in 2002, the Shōgakukan Manga Prize in the main category in 2003 and the Seiun Prize in 2008 . At the prestigious French comic festival in Angoulême , the manga won 2004 in the category Best Series and was able to prevail against the other nominees, including Donjon by Lewis Trondheim and Sambre by Yslaire . The manga was nominated in the category Best Manga for the German Max and Moritz Prize in 2006, but could not prevail against Barefoot by Hiroshima by Nakazawa Keiji .

The German trade magazine Funime writes of 20th Century Boys as an interesting glimpse into modern Japan and the subject of reflecting on childhood memories. Despite the many levels, the plot is not confused and the style is appropriate, as is the tidy layout . The basic idea is not new, but refreshingly different and more comprehensive. The identity of the friend would be quite easy to guess, but overall the work was very successful. According to Splashcomics, the reader can empathize with the characters and the drawing style and the narrative are fresh and pleasant to read. The plot is designed to be exciting and the characters are believable. The manga is one of the most sophisticated, complex and demanding on the German market.

Despite many good reviews, the series found only relatively low sales in Germany and was included in the program by the publisher mainly for image reasons.

Web links

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  1. ↑ a b c Article in Funime No. 31 p. 35
  2. ↑ Review by Splashcomics for Volume 2, by Brigitte Schönhense
  3. ↑ Interview with Urasawa at the Tōkyō Walker ( Memento from June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Anime Nes Network on the premiere of the film
  5. ↑ cd journal
  6. ↑ Review by Splashcomics for Volume 1, by Mario Vuk
  7. ↑ Review by Splashcomics for Volume 5, by Brigitte Schönhense
  8. ↑ Review by Splashcomics for Volume 7, by Brigitte Schönhense
  9. ↑ Bernd Dolle-Weinkauf: Fandom, Fanart, Fanzine - Reception in Germany in Ga-Netchuu! - The Manga Anime Syndrome p. 219. Henschel Verlag, 2008