Personally, I seem to prefer the scenes when the boys are young, rather than the more important adult moments. The flashbacks, I guess you could call them, seem to have this whimsical wonder to them. The whole, making secret bases and hiding in them with your close group of friends, away from mom's watchful eye is extremely nostalgic for me since, even though I am only 20, those are things that me and my friends did.
When we look at the other side of the story, the adults combating this unknown presence that is 'Friend' is an incredibly written mystery, as is pretty much everything by Urasawa. I get great satisfaction from watching/reading/experiencing seemingly invincible forces that dictate everyone's lives be taken down. It's a special kind of freedom that you get from that that just makes me feel good, I love it. I don't like a force that controls fate of others, I like to see them fall. The whole theme of rock music also adds to the feeling of freedom you get by defeating 'Friend', as one of the core ideas in rock is freedom and anarchy.
Naoki Urasawa's art is really nothing too special. He has a very recognizable art style, you know, I could look at anything drawn by him and immediately point to it, which is important for art, but it is still kind of basic. The characters tend to look fairly similar. One thing I also noticed is that he rarely draws a character with a straight nose, a lot of his characters just have big, curved noses, it's not a downside, a lot of people in real life are like that, it's just something that I noticed. He goes for realism but it tends to be lacking in variety.
I enjoyed 20CB more than both Monster and Pluto, just because I could relate more to the characters than in the other two, and while the story might not be as quality as Monsters, or the pacing might not be as good as the much more, compact to say, Pluto, but the overall experience just surpasses those two in my eyes, and by a decent bit at that.
I see 20th Century Boys as Urasawa at his best. It combines his masterful story writing, with a good mystery that surprises you with unexpected plot twists and a core theme that fits incredibly well with the premise of the story. A masterpiece in my books.
