20th Century Boys

""This symbol is a symbol of friendship.""

- Otcho in the first chapter of 20th Century Boys

20th Century Boys is a manga series created by Naoki Urasawa, the mastermind behind Monster, and it is widely considered to be his Magnum Opus. The plot of the manga spans several decades, from the 1960s to the 21st century, and involves a large cast of characters and several plot twists along the way.

It's the year 1997, and Kenji Endou's life is going to change forever. As a youth, Kenji harbored dreams of becoming a rock star; now, however, he's stuck working in his late father's convenience store (formerly liquor store). On top of that, his older sister has disappeared and has left Kenji to take care of her infant daughter.

One day, Kenji learns that a childhood friend of his, nicknamed Donkey, has committed suicide by jumping off a roof. Shortly after the wake, Kenji receives a belated letter from Donkey, including a drawing of a strange yet familiar symbol and the question "Do you remember this symbol?" along with a request to get together some time.

The letter convinces Kenji that Donkey's suicide was, in fact, a murder. In his efforts to unravel the mystery behind his old friend's death, Kenji learns of a man known only as Friend who is the founder of a very popular cult. A cult that uses the symbol shown in Donkey's letter, a symbol that was in fact used by Kenji and his friends back when they were kids.

During their childhood, Kenji and his friends played a game in which they imagined the world being destroyed by a group of villains. Now, Kenji must gather his friends again, in order to prevent Friend, the man who took their symbol, from turning their childhood fantasies into a horrible reality. The final 16 chapters were released under the name of 21st Century Boys.

Adapted into a live action film trilogy that is among the most expensive Japanese film projects in history. The films are very faithful to the manga, which has inevitably led to criticism that they're impossible to follow if you haven't read it, due to time constraints forcing some important characters into smaller roles.


 * Abandoned Hospital: Kanna finds out some information about her mother in one. It isn't really a creepy one, though.
 * Amusement Park of Doom: Friend Land. What happens there supposedly pales compared to Friend World, but the audience never sees the latter.
 * Apocalypse How: Deconstructed and Reconstructed. At first, the heroes want to stop the Big Bad from doing a class 3.
 * Apocalyptic Log: Kanna finds
 * Badass Preacher: (Several of the Catholic priests, such as Father Nitani, in the series used to be gang members and drug lords. They might work for Jesus now, but they can still hand you your ass.)
 * The Pope supports an entire bridge by himself, barehanded.
 * Big Brother Is Watching: OH YES. Don't trust ANYONE.
 * Big Damn Heroes: several, but a notable one has Otcho
 * of all people, pulls one of these right at the end by.
 * Big No: Kanna, when she finds out her tape player is broken
 * Bland-Name Product: BBV News.
 * The Blank: Friend occasionally appears as this after the mask is taken off. Justified as it's only
 * Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Two of Friend's followers are a manzai comedy duo
 * Book Ends: The first and last chapter of the series both show the scene where Kenji puts 20th Century Boy on the PA, although in the last chapter you see it from a different point of view.
 * Breaking the Fellowship: After the first major Time Skip / Wham! Episode.
 * Call Back: Loads of them throughout the series. For one thing the sheer amount of characters who're shown early in the series and make appearances in the last arc is staggering: it's clear Naoki Urasawa is not the kind of guy who simply forgets about even the smallest of characters and events.
 * Calling the Old Man Out:  Subverted in that
 * Cast of Snowflakes
 * Compressed Adaptation: The second and third films, due to their having to cover far more chapters of the manga than the first.
 * Cult: Friend builds one up around himself that gradually grows in both size and intensity, up to the point
 * Darkest Hour: Chapter 169: It would be even more depressing were it not for the epic  moment in the next chapter.
 * Deadly Euphemism: Members of the Friend cult always say someone is "banished" (the word in Japanese can also refer to when you stop being someone's friend).
 * "Rejected" in the Viz translation.
 * Decon Recon Switch: A pretty thorough one of pretty much every cliche from kids' comics.
 * Friend himself is a thorough deconstruction of the Evil Overlord character archetype.
 * Defector From Decadence:
 * Did Not Do the Research: Relatively minor example with the Chinese overheard by Bri-chan. She says she overheard the Chinese man in the alley say "罗马法王" (Luómǎ fǎwáng). This is translated by Kanna to mean "Pope." However, this is a meaningless phrase in Chinese; the word for pope is "教皇" (Jiàohuáng). The incorrect translation clearly comes from the Japanese translation of the word, "ローマ法王" (Rōma hōō).
 * Disproportionate Retribution: At the very end of the series, we finally find out that the reason why was trying to destroy the world and it all started when.
 * Don't forget  The reason that   in the first place was to
 * Arguably, Friend was also a victim of this.
 * Driving Question: Friend's identity.
 * Drugs Are Bad: During her Heroic BSOD, Kanna is offered some "Love and Peace", only for flashback!Kenji for remind her that he didn't need drugs to be a great musician.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: And how! So much bad stuff happens not just to main characters in this, but to pretty much which makes
 * The End of the World as We Know It
 * Enemy Civil War:
 * Faux Symbolism: Otcho's explanation of
 * Flash Forward:, which doesn't happen until the penultimate chapter, not counting the two volume epilogue.
 * Go Mad from the Revelation: The reaction to the bonus stage at Friend Land, specifically
 * Gratuitous English: Crops up a few times in the story itself but most notable in the pre-volume title pages. For example:
 * Have You Told Anyone Else? Several times - characters confess their suspicions to a family member, friend, or authority figure, who inevitably turns out to be in league with Friend.
 * He's Back (, and with about ten levels in Badass too.)
 * Hope Spot (The first two arcs are really two long Hope Spots)
 * How We Got Here: The first chapter includes a scene during a UN summit in the 21st Century where several people are introduced as having saved humanity. Subverted in that Also.
 * Humongous Mecha (Subverted in chapter 41. In the slightly exaggerated words of one hostage robotics expert: ROBOTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!)
 * Nonetheless, his creation (an Awesome but Impractical Real Robot) plays a huge role throughout the story.
 * I Just Want to Be Special:.
 * Ironic Nursery Tune (From the first time Kenji sees Friend in the video. You can hear it in all its glory in the movie trailer.)
 * It Got Worse
 * Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: When the story alternates between about three or four time periods, includes the liberal use of flashbacks and flashforwards, has a few timeskips, and is told in only rough chronological order, you know you've got one of these.
 * Killed Off for Real: Plenty of people, including
 * La Résistance
 * Late to the Party (Kyoko, Chouno, and Kakuta)
 * The Law of Conservation of Detail: Of all the people, places, and things in the series, Maruo's son is perhaps the only one that doesn't gain significance later on.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters (To give you an idea how many, the movie trilogy is estimated to include a cast of three hundred named characters...and that's probably less than half the original cast.
 * Loners Are Freaks (Masao and Friend, both to extreme extents. Subverted with  but just barely;.
 * Luke, I Am Your Father:, and also
 * Misfit Mobilization Moment: When Kenji and his True Companions prepare to try and.
 * Music for Courage: This happens pretty much every time plays  song in the final arc. Every time it does happen is extremely awesome, though.
 * My Death Is Just the Beginning:
 * Eucatastrophe
 * Never Suicide
 * No Hugging, No Kissing: The closest that Kanna ever gets to a romance is blushing in while interacting with . Likewise Kenji's relationship with Yukiji has never gone anywhere and despite.
 * To be fair, it's probably hard to think of romance with all the saving-the-world shit going on. Actually seems to be Urasawa's trait to not show romantic scenes on-screen.
 * No Infantile Amnesia: Averted as a constant plot point throughout the story is the cast's imperfect memories of their childhood. Though played straight and Justified in Kanna's case.
 * Nothing Is the Same Anymore: After the series's first major Time Skip, where . See Your Princess Is in Another Castle below.
 * Older and Wiser: Due to the large timeskips in the series, most of the original protagonists become this eventually. Otcho and a few others become this after the first timeskip, and the rest, especially become this after the second. This usually comes hand in hand with them taking a level in badass.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname (God)
 * Friend, for that matter.
 * Opt Out: doesn't show up at all for the Bloody New Years' Eve. Years later, he regrets this fact and Jumps at the Call when he stumbles onto leads to Kiriko.
 * Pensieve Flashback:
 * The Power of Rock : plays a massive part in the final third of the series.
 * 'GUUUTAALAAAAALAA SUUUUDAALAAALAAAAA!'
 * Power Walk: Kenji and co. do one in a manner most baddass when they head off to In fact, the image of them   is one of the most iconic ones in the series, leading to it being duplicated almost perfectly in the movie adaptation.
 * Psychic Powers
 * Psychopathic Manchild: Many of Friend's followers come off as this. The scene where they're arguing over how to build their Humongous Mecha  demonstrate it best.
 * Friend himself shows shades of this as well. Enacting a doomsday scenario dreamt up by grade schoolers  certainly doesn't help his case.
 * Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: ("I said, I'm singing a song. And when someone's singing a song, YOU. DON'T. SHOOT THEM.")
 * Also doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome
 * Putting the Band Back Together
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
 * Redemption Equals Death:
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kyoko and
 * Refuge in Audacity: Friend basically uses this trope to take over the world.
 * Retcon: After Friend dons the iconic "eye-symbol" mask, the old "hattori" mask is replaced with the new mask in flashbacks.
 * The Reveal: (Friend's identity,, what Donkey saw in the lab room, and plenty more.)
 * Room 101: Friend Land is halfway to this trope, and Friend World is all the way there.
 * Rousing Speech: Yoshitsune attempts one in the second arc.
 * Scare Dare: School after dark.
 * Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The only reason the events in the Book of Prophecy are happening is because Friend is making them happen.
 * Sequential Artist: Quite a few characters.
 * Simulation Game:
 * Shaggy Dog Story:
 * Shout-Out:
 * Yoshitsune said 'seven of us is enough", but Kenji disagreed.
 * Ochanomizu Engineering.
 * When Chouno and meet Ichi The Spade, Ichi gives Chouno a disguise so he won't be recognizable: a ankle-length poncho and a wide-rimmed hat.  even lampshades it, saying "It's Three Nines."
 * There's COUNTLESS direct references to other classic manga: Astro Boy, Phoenix, Gundam, Tetsujin 28...
 * When comes back, he temporarily uses the nickname of Yabuki Joe.
 * There's even some Thunderbirds toys in.
 * The title itself! "20th Century Boy" is a song by T. Rex, which has been covered by at least one very iconic Japanese rock band.
 * The crossdressing prostitutes comment that Chouno's dancing looks more like judo, a reference to Urasawa's previous work Yawara, where the protagonist's judo was said to look more like dancing.
 * The holographic Bland-Name Product version of Street Fighter.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal: does an epic one of these to  late in the story, where he calmly makes him completely breakdown when he exposes his Card-Carrying Villain persona as being merely a facade. What makes it more epic is the fact that he's facing down the barrel of a gun the whole time he does it.
 * Square-Cube Law: Specifically mentioned by Shikishima as the reason Friend's Humongous Mecha can't work the way he desires it to.
 * Storming the Castle: Happens three times in the final arc: firstly when and co storm the 'castle' of  and twice when the resistance storm Friend's tower. The second time is much easier for them seeing as how
 * Stylistic Suck: Kenji really doesn't enjoy the 169th Friends Concert, even apart from the need to keep an eye out for the Big Bad.
 * AI ROCK YUU!!!
 * Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom
 * Super Window Jump: Otcho does a great one (through a stained glass window, no less) when he tries to save
 * Taking the Bullet:
 * The Alcatraz: Umihotaru.
 * Title Drop: (.)
 * Plus the title is based off of the T-Rex song "20th Century Boy", which is played a couple of times over the course of the manga. And it is, as the final reveal shows us, very important to the plot.
 * Took a Level in Badass: (most of the protagonists, with Yoshitsune being perhaps the most striking example)
 * Don't you mean ?
 * Don't forget Kanna.
 * Otcho too. From salaryman to in a couple of years.
 * The Un-Reveal: About a dozen characters get to see Friend's real face before the readers ever do.
 * Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Young Kenji and his friends write a story about supervillains conquering the world. "So what's gonna get hit first?" "Tokyo?" "That's last. The important stuff has to happen in Japan, so if they start here, it'll be all over already." Much later, the story starts coming true.
 * True Companions: (There's only one reason for full-grown level-headed adults to literally put their lives aside and travel back to their hometown, from as far away as Germany in one case, just because of one cryptic note saying 'let's take this symbol back.' In Otcho's case, knowing it was Kenji did it for him.)
 * Twin Banter: Yanbo and Mabo.
 * Un Entendre: a Crowning Moment of Funny involving
 * : after the first arc. Gets much worse after the second.
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody really seems to care all that much about gas mask-wearing businessmen carrying suspicious briefcases, especially
 * Virtual Ghost:  in the epilogue.
 * We Are Everywhere
 * Wham! Episode: There are quite a few throughout the series. Most notably is when . The chapters surrounding and  also qualify.
 * The final twenty or so chapters are just full of nonstop wham. To be expected with the Grand Finale, really.
 * The Kenji Faction marches off to the big climactic showdown with Friend. Cue
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Moving a mouse 5 pixels to left and pushing the left button has never been as awesome as in the second live action film.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: The series's "no name wasted" policy made the fact that  never came back from his bus ride quite bewildering...or sad...really sad.
 * Where It All Began
 * Written by the Winners:
 * X Meets Y: The Stand meets IT with a dash of Left Behind, minus the religious/spiritual elements.
 * You Can't Thwart Stage One
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: It initially seems like the series is going to end when . However, as you can probably tell from the chapter count, that it is most definitely not the end. It turns out that  Suddenly,  Oh Crap.
 * X Meets Y: The Stand meets IT with a dash of Left Behind, minus the religious/spiritual elements.
 * You Can't Thwart Stage One
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: It initially seems like the series is going to end when . However, as you can probably tell from the chapter count, that it is most definitely not the end. It turns out that  Suddenly,  Oh Crap.