This was a paper I submitted for my Japanese Literature class. I thought of sharing to people what I have learned about 20th Century boys using the fantastic theory in Japanese Literature.

It was at the summer of 1969 that Kenji, Yoshitsune, Maruo, Otcho, Keroyon, and Donkey made a pact of true friendship. In an open grassy field, the boys built their secret base. They tied leaves together and set traps along the way. In it, they shared mangas, music, jokes, and dreams. In crumpled papers, they drew fantasies of saving the world from a giant robot as well as saving the world from a deadly virus. They were nothing but children’s dreams, foolish childish dreams. In that base, they explored a world outside their limited reality. They had their own world inside that fortress. Anything of their world remained in that fortress and that very base protected the boy’s dreams of the future. At their hideout, they held a sign which became a symbol of their true friendship. Anyone who knew that sign was a true friend. Little do the boys know that 30 years after, the sign would haunt them again. A ‘true friend’ appears and asks the boys to play a little game — a game that would bring their dreams into reality.

In his 10th work, Naoki Urasawa explores the relationship of 7 boys and how their dreams and their realities all intertwine to create a new world, to the benefit of one, and to the horror of the six. 20th Century Boys (二十世紀少年, Nijuu Seiki Shounen) is a brilliant tale of how our actions in the past can completely change the future. Change is even an understatement. Change in 20th Century Boys brought about a complex revelation of how a forgotten face makes himself present by creating into reality the utopia that a band of boys created. It is this alienation and utopia that we will explore in this paper. Through the eyes of 20th Century Boys, we hope to see how modern writers today envision their utopian future. Could there be really a utopia? Or is one’s utopia another’s nightmare?


The Alienated Friend
20th Century Boys began its story by naming its first chapter and first volume as Friend (ともだち, tomodachi). In this chapter, Urasawa showed his readers two dimensions of Friend. The first dimension was a friend created by deep and immense bond of brotherhood and camaraderie. He showed this through the institution of the secret base that the main characters in the story, Kenji, Otcho, Maruo, Yoshitsune, Donkey, and Keroyon, created . The second Friend was the friend seen in the next few pages.

He is referred to as Friend, a leader of a cult-like group who listened to his wisdom and witnessed to his miracle. Friend and Kenji’s friends have something in common. It is the sign of friendship, a sign that was drawn by Otcho in their secret base and was a sign of their friendly pact. In 1997, it was being utilized by Friend as his logo. Kenji and his friends are completely unaware of Friend’s existence, and yet Friend will play a significant role in their future. This interplay of friendship, the friendship that Kenji and his friends shared in their youth and the friendship Friend and his cult will continue for throughout the series. It will show parallelism of Kenji’s past as well as the present endeavors of Friend’s cult. You will see the deep connection between Friend and Kenji through these parallelisms.

The concept of Friend came unto Naoki Urasawa when he attended his high school reunion. In an interview in the Tokyo Walker website, Urasawa was overwhelmed with all of the people in his high school reunion. On one hand, there were good friends that he remembered, and yet there were many who knew him but he didn’t know. This familiar anonymity gave shape to the character of Friend, someone familiar to Kenji’s past whom he just can’t remember.

True enough, Friend represented the anonymous friend in Kenji’s youth. Revealed in latter chapters, it seemed that Friend was actually a classmate of Kenji named Fukubei. Fukubei was an outcast in their class. He was found quiet and too mature for his age. The only friend he had was the boy who wore masks, Sadakiyo. In those youthful days, it turned out that Fukubei longed to play with the vibrant crew of Kenji. Completely unaware of Fukubei’s longing, Kenji and his friends played in their secret base without care. This carefree and unconscious alienation became the motivation for Fukubei to gain Kenji’s attention. In his obsession, he has constructed the ultimate playground for his friend Kenji, the Armageddon which Kenji thought he would save. In fulfilling Kenji’s utopia, Fukubei hoped to be Kenji’s friend.

However, there are more dimensions to Friend other than that of the alienated friend. If we expound further on the word ‘alien’, we too will see more dimensions in Friend’s identity. Friend’s identity can also be akin to Susan Napier’s definition of an alien. Napier defined an alien to be a character that had liberties and powers that was outside reality. The alien was much like the woman in Japanese fantastic literature. The alien can do whatever he wanted because he was beyond man’s laws. In the case of Friend, he too represented this foreign alien.

Friend’s alien characterization begins with what we could consider more as a gifted human being. In the series we see how Friend achieved miraculous feats as a human. He had the ability to bend spoons and he had the ability to float. Friend also had the enormous capability to gather enough resources to construct the cult which was destined to bring forth the destruction of the world. Lastly, he also managed to make predictions of the future. These supernatural abilities marked Friend as an alien-like creature. However, in lieu of a more prophetic light, Friend was no alien but a god. In his cult, his wisdom and miraculous powers, gave him a godly status among his followers. When he was resurrected from his death, this definitely embedded Friend to a divine status. This formation of a god-like aura placed Friend above men. What was once a cult leader suddenly became a world icon. However, this changes at the moment when Friend has already achieved his own personal utopia. Kenji and his friends bring Friend back to the reality. By foiling Friend’s identity and his intentions, Kenji and his friends manage to peel off Friend’s god-like identity, layer by layer.

This peeling of Friend’s alien identity is perhaps Urasawa’s answer to the idea of supernatural beings. In humanizing the god-like friend, Urasawa also shows us that there is always a human aspect to even the most fantastic of people. He gave a very concrete manifestation of that through Friend. He managed to write the human identity of Friend by managing to craft human memories that created the character of Friend. In the end, Urasawa showed that Friend was no god. He was merely a lonely man.

He also showed this supernatural aspect in the identity of some characters. For example, he showed Kenji as the Prince on white horses, a stereotype that most girls believed in. However, even if he has used the narrative phrase of a prince, he shows a young Kenji wearing a cap and his rugged undershirt . It doesn’t necessarily mean that only Friend had a mythical status. Even a wrinkled old man may achieve a godly status (and yet this character which has been called by many as god, blatantly denies that he is one). No one is spared from becoming a supernatural being as anyone can be as great as the other.

This breaking of the fantastic was Urasawa’s response to the idea of supernatural as something beyond of human reach. The prevalence of this fantastic alien during the literary times of the Meiji and early Showa showed how writers have placed the ideal in supernatural. Hence, Urasawa responded, with great sarcasm and cynicism, towards this old post-modern point of view. If back then the fantastic alien is capable of doing things that others cannot do, Urasawa shows that the fantastic alien is merely pulling some cheap trick in order to bring out this illusion of supernatural. In latter volumes, as he peeled the mystical layers of Friend, we realize that his supernatural abilities were all but a magician’s trick. There was no magic involved. Urasawa had the tendency to pull the reader back to reality. Even if he had created the most far-fetched vision of the future, Urasawa placed great priority in bringing back the characters of reality. We could see this closer in the creation of the utopia by Friend and Kenji’s battle in saving the world.

In the year 2000: Armageddon and Friend’s Utopia

At that summer of 1969, Kenji and his friends talked about world conquest. Upon Otcho’s suggestion, the idea of world domination suddenly felt nice. They could read all the manga that they want to read and be on summer vacation for a long time. Kenji was completely against the idea; nonetheless, they plotted on how germ warfare would begin and how they would think of a way to defeat it. It is from these boyish plans that Kenji’s Armageddon begins. And this is where Friend begins with his utopia.

There is an interplay of utopia and dystopia in 20th Century Boys. The book begins with the dystopia of normal society, Kenji’s world, at the same time there is a building of a new world, Friend’s utopia. It is quite interesting to point the interlacing of these two movements. One is the directive cause of another. Utopia didn’t just appear in the story nor did the dystopia of another just came out of the blue. Perhaps, you might say, that this is quite unique to 20th Century Boys. For this series, one brings forth the birth of the other. Utopia brings forth dystopia and dystopia brings forth utopia. This is a rather contemporary view of fantastic literature as this no longer just show us what is ideal to us but also what is real to us.

We first begin to see signs of dystopia through the imaginings of Kenji’s friends and their secret hideout. In volume 1, we see a spread of various things that the boys envisioned of the future: World War III, air pollution, giant meteor strike, robot invasion, and germ warfare. These are all the typical dystopias based on the effects of modernization, World War II, and industrialization . It was but natural for kids to imagine this as they have not thoroughly reflected on the events, hence the idea of dystopia was pure in nature and not something particularly well thought of. However, it takes a different definition once the Bloody New Year’s Eve was about to take place.

The Bloody New Year’s Eve was the culmination of Kenji’s plans. It is the day when a giant robot invades the earth and he used his laser gun to destroy it. In the year 2000, a giant robot launched a virus that would cause blood to erupt out of people’s bodies. Kenji gathered his friends who knew of the Book of Prophecy in order to stop this giant robot. The Bloody New Years Eve happened on the last day of the 20th Century. There have been previous attacks on other cities such as Osaka, London, and San Francisco. However, as Kenji had placed in the book in dreams of a romantic ending, Tokyo would be the last city as this was where the final battle will be. It was an eventful night that began with the bombing of the National Diet Building. Afterwards, the giant robot came to spread the virus all around Tokyo as well as to other major cities in the world. Kenji and his friends made a full effort in trying to stop the main robot in Tokyo, however this ended in a major explosion that almost took the life of Kenji and Friend. It was after this event that Friend and his cult decided to push their power to the extreme. Friend’s apparent heroism in trying to stop the bomb placed him in a situation that allowed him to establish a new society, one that was dependent on his whim, one that made him a part of their group. This in turn launched a utopia for Friend, at the same time, this also marked the beginning his own Armageddon, an unstoppable downward spiral that would eventually lead to the fall of Friend’s empire.

Friend’s idea of dystopia in 20th Century Boys on the onset of the Bloody New Years Eve contains elements of political discontent and at the same time acceptance of a necessary destruction of society. There was political discontent as politically, Friend’s political party in the Japanese Diet was taken for naught, and the idea of blowing up the National Diet Building was symbol of breaking the long tradition of political monopoly by the current leaders of Japan. The idea of the virus spread all over the world was the necessary fear that Friend had to establish in order to bring forth his own utopia. By showing his apparent moment of heroism, just by appearing in front of the robot just minutes before Kenji blew it up, he managed to convince people that indeed Friend was a messianic leader who could lead them to safety. Naturally, in times of great trouble, people would lean towards those who could guarantee their safety. Friend too uses another big event, a new World Expo in Tokyo, an event that promised people safety from the virus through the distribution of a vaccine. It is after his valorous save of the Pope that made him the president of the world. Now, the entire world was his utopia. It is a utopia that envelops him with wide acceptance. Little do people know that there was a great conspiracy at hand in lieu of Friend, that he was behind all these just to achieve this fame, what he considered as something better than his budokan performance.

On the other hand, there is the broken utopia in the lives of Kenji and his friends. Many of them have lost their belongings, their families, and their friends during the Bloody New Year’s Eve. Many of them, convinced of Friend’s crime, lived underground and sought ways to bring Friend down. This world breakdown after the Friend’s utopia is a clear sign of the effect of things. Naturally, as one happened, it affected another. In this case, Friend’s control of the world has made Kenji and his friends terrorists. Their life under surveillance and hiding was difficult, nonetheless it was again, the endless battle of good over evil. As Kenji’s battlecry, “Let’s take this symbol back.”

In saying this, Kenji’s battle to bring back his own utopia became the theme of the greater part of the series. It symbolizes the aim to return to normalcy, a world where they are no longer controlled by the lies that have been crafted by Friend. In essence, 20th Century Boys is a tale of struggle for how the new century should be. It is a satire on the struggle of powers, what it means to dominate the world, and at the same time, what it meant to live on the margins. Kenji and his friends may appear as heroes to the readers, but in a world where Friend’s will always be true, they are threats to this apparent utopia. This is no black and white tale. It is a tale that shows realities of two people in a struggle to achieve utopia. Utopia here has lost a mythical aspect. In fact, the definition of utopia here became more personal, the reconnection of people’s relationship as well as the return of the virtuous truth. Unlike other tales of dystopia in the past, this tale sends little political statement but rather a social statement of peoples living in the 20th Century. In our lifetime, we cross many people in our lives, and yet we do not share meaningful experience with them, leaving them forgotten in memory. In 20th Century Boys, Urasawa urges us to make meaningful relationships in order to stop the alienation of others. In this, true social harmony is achieved, wherein everyone is truly a friend.