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)
