Naoki Urasawa - 20th Century Boys Volumes 1 - 4

I really enjoyed the first four books of this manga series. I could tell they were good as I rushed through them in excitement to try and find out what was going to happen next. I’ll have another read of them soon and try and look at the art this time too! They are very gripping and dynamic.

The hero is Kenji, who owns a failing convenience store. He gradually finds out that a cult is trying to destroy the world and he is the only one who can stop it. The cult’s plans are based on stuff he and his friends made up when they were little kids. Is one of his childhood friends now the sinister leader of the cult, who is known only as ‘Friend’?

The best thing in the drawing is that the kids are easily recognisable as their adult selves, which must be very difficult to pull off. They all have very different faces so they are easy to tell apart and this helps the story run very fast adding to the excitement of reading it. There are lots of flashbacks and flash forwards showing glimpses of what is to come…