20-seiki shônen: Honkaku kagaku bôken eiga

Could 20th Century Boys be the Japanese Watchmen? Like in the case of Alan Moore's masterpiece, Urasawa's sprawling story covers the cultural myths and obsessions of the past century: from the nuclear catastrophe following the war to the western cultural influences, conformism and totalitarian tendencies, the demilitarized, defenseless Japan, the economic boom of the sixties . Even a touch of mecha and the pervasiveness of media in society.

Judging the movie, however, can be more difficult: its competently shot and acted, but like most transpositions, it makes its manga origin very clear, which can be appalling for the manga-illiterate in the audience, which at the projections I was sighed, left early or giggled in all the wrong places. Sound editing was awful, but it might be a result of the copy I saw.

Where the film could use some help is in the editing. Fans will appreciate the attempt to be faithful to the original source, but movies simply work in a different way: act II is too long, and the final climax and resolution is reduced to a few choppy scenes. It might definitely look better when parts 2 and 3 are released.

The story is interesting to begin with, with a bunch of kids creating an "end of the world" story and then watching it made come true when they are adults. They embark on a mission to save the world, as their original story prophesied.

However, the plot is really weird. There is a virus that kills people by making their blood explode, but it seems it is not contagious, it needs to be sprayed on. A giant robot smashes through Tokyo and the police stop in front of it to shoot guns. The leader of a hypnotic cult becomes the leader of the most important party in Japan, and so on and so on.

Then, as world saviors go, the heroes are the most inept I have ever seen. The movie is very long, at 142 minutes, and it is only the first part of a three film story. The acting is pretty bad, too.

Bottom line: it seems this is a failed attempt to mix the success of the Death Note franchise (I don't know what that thing was successful either) and the comic book/manga craze that is taking over the movie world in the US and the rest of the world. There is a feel reminiscent of Watchmen in the film, but only a trace. I am not saying that it is not worth watching, but I can't say I liked it.

I had earlier written about comic books being rich material for filmmakers to raid and adopt them into a cinematic version, and with the success of the Death Note franchise, it's more than apparent that such movies will have its built in audience, and in this case, to skyrocket the movie to box office success.

Depending on how the story is adapted, some will take liberties to gear the material for non- fans, to introduce it to a new audience. Death Note for instance, does this quite perfectly, drawing those unfamiliar with its mythos, and at the same time entertaining the fanboys. Mushishi on the other hand, assumed that one goes in with a bit of background knowledge, as it doesn't dwell too long, if at all, on the character backstory. 20th Century Boys however managed to take the middle ground, though I felt its presentation was somewhat left wanting.

We're introduced to Kenji (Toshiaki Karasawa), a supermarket manager who's about to be thrown into the adventure of his life. In a school reunion, he gets acquainted with his old pals, most of whom he already cannot recognize, before they launch into a discussion of a strange series of happenings which involve the emergence of their secret logo created during their childhood. As they catch up with one another, we also learn that collectively amongst the group, they vaguely recollect their 9 members, and hence sowed some suspicion as to the identity of who the new cult leader is, one who always hide behind a mask and calls himself Kira, oops, wrong movie - "Friend".

Throw into the plot yet another device in the form of a book called the Book of Prophecies, which Kenji is chief author, in somewhat of a create your own adventure with his pals, as they dream of the world coming to an end at the turn of the millennium, what with strange plagues, terrorist attacks, and a giant robot taking the place of the stay puff marshmallow man. They realize that world disasters are unfolded as per the sequence in their childhood book, and thus, with their sense of responsibility, work to try and put an end to the madness.

For the first half of the movie, the story really plods on, as it took great pains to try and introduce to us the array of characters important to the series, including an infant heralded as the Chosen One. While most of the characters remain rather one-dimensional with nothing much revealed about their background despite the frequent flashbacks (some which do get repetitive), Kenji is the focus of this installment, as we see an emergence of a resistance fighter from within a mild and meek, and often clueless supermarket manager. He doesn't really strike you as charismatic or well skilled to lead a group of do-gooders, but the second half would address all those concerns.

In wanting to remain unconventional, the story moves forward and back so frequently, that it'll give you a headache. It seemed to be wanting to shovel down character backgrounds incessantly, as every opportunity found to go into flashback mode, will be utilized, so much so that it becomes mentally tiring after a while to keep track of current time. Time plays an important part in the story as it hinges everything on D-Day of 31 December 2000, where a foretold apocalypse is expected to happen.

And here's where it really shines, even when the arrival of D-Day involved plenty of droning pep-talking. Looking at the locations, sets, and big action sequences throughout the film, it's indeed a relatively big budget production with no qualms about throwing money to achieve some form of visual perfection. The finale is nothing short of breathtaking, and with well filled tension, though if you're not expecting this to be the first episode of an franchise, you'll find yourself swearing at its cliffhanger ending. It's not a complete story per se even though it managed to remain self-contained, as it retains just about as much mystery as it did from the onset, with nothing much revealed or addressed.

For those looking into something more, I thought it had drawn some interesting parallels about the dangers of cults, and how enticing the promises made by preacher could be, with the followers blinding adhering to every word like it's the gospel. There are enough false prophets in the world, but those who can command a huge following, could grow and if their aspirations do find their way to the political arena, then just as how a manga-turned-movie would have its ready audience, then these political parties would already come with their congregation as ready supporters and voters.

For the eager beavers, it's not until January that you can watch the next part, so do remember to stay until right after the end credits roll for the trailer to Part 2.

Good, strange film this.

it's tongue in cheek, live action straight out of the manga comics. You don't need to have seen any of the Manga series to tell where to origins of this film come from.

the flashbacks are done well, the story is strange but flows nicely, and there is a great soundtrack.

Looking forward to the next two films, as anyone who has seen this will confirm, it would have been a very annoying ending had this not already been planned to be a trilogy.

This film seems to have had a relatively big budget, according to IMDb and wiki, for the type of film it is, which is good to see.

The sheer scope or this production alone deserves an applause. Having read the 20th and 21st Century Boys first, as said by Etsushi Toyokawa in his interview "I attempted to emulate the expressions in the Manga" (some creative license with the translation). Such attention to detail again deserves yet more respect. These things aside i appreciate this trilogy more as the Japanese Matrix if it didn't become as up-itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed this series and found the conclusion to be pleasantly conclusive, though something of this magnitude is difficult to draw together, but i feel the memory-machine wrap-up was a brilliant way of concluding a magnificent series. The series was done as accurate to the manga, in many cases down to the very character type cast, as i wish Battle Royale was replicated to.

So heavily recommended i am steps away from handing it out on the street as well as bowling ball lessons, please watch.