20th Century Boys

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This is my favorite manga so far

20th Century Boys is incredibly good, everything about this manga is incredible, from its story, characters and its art. I have never experienced this kind of story before and was absolutely amazed when I finished reading this manga.

Story: 10
the story is amazing, every time I finished reading a chapter the only thing I want to do is to continue the next chapter. The story is filled with mysteries and slowly but surely the manga tells you little by little a bit of its mystery until finally all the dots connect and you are hit with this insane goosebumps and ... felt this shocking feeling in your spine. By the end of this manga I was left speechless with its ability to tell a story and how it keeps you on the edge of your chair with every chapter that passed.

Characters: 9
The characters of this manga are very good, they all have their of very realistic personality that makes you think of them as a real human in very dangerous and confusing situations. I love how each characters have their own role in the story so there are no pointless characters. Its amazing how each characters have their own reasons to be in the story and is not just some random npc.

Art: 10
The art of this manga isn't some crazy hyper realistic art with insane details, I just love the artstyle of this manga that really enhances the mystery feel to the story.

Overall I give this manga a 10/10 for its insanely good story and mystery.

This is a typical Urasawa manga, meaning it starts off great, introduces engaging characters and weaves an intriguing mystery with great care and skill. And then, when it comes time for him to end it and resolve the various plot threads and mysteries... he doesn't.

Instead of a satisfying ending you are treated to multiple masturbatory volumes of the author self-insert becoming a wandering musician while the entire plot up to that point just collapses in on itself with the carefully characterized cast members suddenly acting out of character, chapters ending in increasingly nonsensical cliffhangers that never get resolved satisfactorily and shifting focus to the ... boring messianic musician subplot as Urasawa desperately tries to drag this shit on for as long as he can before his audience loses interest.

Objectively there is a lot to like about this manga. The art is great and most of it is a real page-turner. I will however never read it again: it's not clear whether Urasawa ever had a satisfying ending planned or whether he was just making it up as he went along but in any case what a waste of potential.

TL;DR For something that is hyped up so much it's painfully mediocre. Don't waste your time.

There is no witty social commentary, no moral takeaway, no compelling character development , and no gripping conflict. There is nothing of substance in this manga. There is absolutely no reason to read this except to say you read 20th Century Boys since it seems to be a hot topic amongst manga elitists.

20th Century Boys struggles with two main points throughout the story; keeping itself serious while maintaining mystery, and creating compelling engaging plotlines that won't put you into comatose. For a manga that is serialized in one of ... the biggest names in seinen, you would expect a level of quality right? Wrong. whichever executive over at big comic spirit that greenlit this childish 70s nostalgia jerk off for an entire 249 chapters was either half asleep or tweaking, which I don't blame them anyone would want to fall asleep after reading a single page of this piece of garbage.

20th Century Boys suffers from Naruto syndrome; it has a tendency to repeat itself with tons of flashbacks without adding anything of substance in each iteration. This means you will read the same flashback except with the tiniest change that doesn't advance the plot in any significant way. It will feel at times that absolutely nothing changes for entire chapters and once the plot does tediously advance it is not satisfying in any way.

However, the absolute worst part of 20th Century Boys is the mystery present in the manga. To sum it up, the way the manga attempts to uphold a coherent element of mystery gets very comedic and childish at times because of how egregiously drawn out it gets. Most of the mystery is chasing after the identity of an individual but they do it in the most comical way possible. It's hard to take the story seriously when the main conflict is finding out which of the prepubescent boys is behind the plastic martian mask.

If you are interested in Urasawa Naoki's storytelling and art style Monster is a significantly better manga to read.