20th Century Boys ChapterTwo: The Last Hope
(20-seiki shonen: Dai 2 sho Saigo no kibo, 2009)

Hong Kong Kam & Ronson DVD edition - Region 3




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 Two starts with a 1969 intro where one of the kids writes "The New Book of Prophecies" describing
more attacks on humanity. Then we jump to 2015 and find out that the prisoner no.3 chained to a wall in an
isolation cell is Otcho (Etsushi Toyokawa), an enemy to the "Friend" regime. He later escapes along with his
prison mate Kakuta, a manga artist.

The child Kanna (Airi Taira) has now grown up to be an about 20 year old woman, and her uncle Kenji Endo
who led the heroic rebellion against "Friend" died at New Years Eve in 2000 when fighting the regime's giant
killer robot. Kanna, the child of Kenji's sister Kiriko and a father that may be "Friend" goes to school and
works extra at a restaurant. She and her classmate are invited to "Friendland", a mix of a Disneyland type of
amusement park and a correction camp for brainwashing.

There are a lot of parallell storylines going on, as Kanna's friend Koizumi using the Friendland's Time Travel
Virtual Reality unit to go back in time and to see the face of the boy who became "Friend", as Kenji's friend
Yoshitsune (Teruyuki Kagawa) disguised as a janitor at Friendland, and leading the rebellion against "Friend".
Kanna is looking for her virologist mother Kiriko and "Friend" is shot and killed, resurrects, becomes a God.

Film presented in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 with japanese audio DTS ES or DD 5.1 EX and with english
subtitles, trailer

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

 

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