An impressive and colossal endeavour to make a three part Live film out of Naoki Urasawa's manga series
published in 1999-2007. So, did the filmmakers succeed ? Yes, i liked it a lot, a Sci-Fi with a mystery and
where the main plot have a lot of small side-plots (obviously shortened or with some excluded to fit it all
in a trilogy film). Also, the role list is very long, there are a ton of actors.
There are a lot of jumps in time, back and forth, and the construction of 20th Century Boys is quite intricate.
To watch the whole trilogy it plays for over 7 hours and i binge watched it over 2 days.

Chapter One starts in 1973 with a boy who loves rock music, Kenji (young Kenji played by Jun Nishiyama)
and Marc Bolan - T. Rex's 20th Century Boy is played (a super tune and the music theme for the series).
Then a jump to 2015 (when Japan is a dictatorship) and one prisoner talks to another about a hero rising
to fight evil, a champion of justice, and says that he once knew such a man.
Another jump to 1997 and to our main protagonist in Chapter One - Kenji Endo (Toshiaki Karasawa).

Kenji is an ex-rocksinger who works in a food store and takes care about his sister Kiriko's child, Kanna.
He visits a school reunion and this evokes a flashback to 1969, when he and his school pals were the
Kenji Gang. He, Yoshitsune, Otcho, Yukiji the girl, Maruo, Fukube et. al. They had a secret symbol with
an upwards pointing finger and Kenji had written The Book of Prophecy (sort of a manga where there are
attacks against humans and the earth by some villain entity).
Back at the class reunion in 1997 they talk about a popular Cult leader "Friend" who abducts people and
talks to hos worshippers with a face mask on and using the Kenji Gang's childhood secret finger symbol.

Soon Friend has millions of followers and members of the Sect says he's the Prophet, the Chosen One
and that he wants to destroy the world, and this in a way that mirrors what Kenji once wrote in The Book
of Prophecy. But who's Friend ? He must be one of the old school gang as he knows about the secret
symbol and about the book.
The next time jump is to 2000 and Kenji, now a wanted terrorist by the regime, and his gang fights Friend
and tries to stop Friend's plan to murder all the people of Tokyo on New Years eve by a poison gas attack

Film presented in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 with japanese audio PCM 7.1, DTS-HD MA 7.1 or DD 6.1
and with english subtitles, trailers - Please Note: Region A bluray edition

(The 20th Century Boys saga continues with Chapter Two and Three)