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20th Century Boys Ending...or Not?

Mon, 2006-04-24 22:03
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img20th Century Boys, the latest manga from Naoki Urasawa (mankaga of Monster, Pluto), has been serialized in Shogakukan's Big Comic Spirit for 7 years. This month, without any announcements or promotion, the final chapter of 20th Century Boys was suddenly released in issue 21+22 of Big Comic Spirit.

While the ending may be a surprise to many, according to a note in the same issue of Big Comic Spirit, the next part of the series will resume in Spring 2007.

Urasawa says in the note: "Well, I'm going to disappear for a while. looking forward to the day we meet again..." Following it appears the text "this is a lymmeric. Please say it quickly 3 times." (when said out load 3 times, supposedly the text sounds like "2007 Spring Chanson show")

(The following content contains spoilers, proceed at own risk)

Below is a translation of a post from Yamakam regarding the abrupt ending, translated by ocean:

The true identity of "Tomodachi" (Friend) was Fukubee. He was supposed to be killed by Yamane, but when the Pope was about to be assassinated, Friend came back from the dead and protected the Pope. In reality, Fukubee really died, during the Pope's assassination incident, his corpse has already been switched. When Fukubee was Friend, he wore Ninja Hattori-kun's mask, but later on Friend started to wear a mask with the "Tomodachi" (Friend) symbol in the middle, which hints at the fact that Friend has been replaced by someone else.

Another twist - Sadakiyo was also alive. As the story moves toward its climax, a 13th helicopter crashed into the UFO, which caused it to crash. Kenji is still alive, but whether Sadakiyo and Friend is still alive or not is currently not unknown. The story ends as Kanna finally meets up with Kenji.

... Hrmmm?

What happened to the true identity of the Friend? Kiriko? The pregnancy of Takasu? Urasawa-sensei wrote in the ending comments as follows:

"Well, I'm going to disappear for a while. looking forward to the day we meet again..."

... Hrmmm? Hrmmm!?

No way, he'll leave all the foreshadowings and mysteries unsolved like that and end this story!? The sudden ending and "Thank you for reading this for 7 years" makes me ... lose my word.

... Or that's what I thought, until I found this in the end: "Spring 2007, the final chapter will be released!!" True, if he ended the story like this, it'll be the weirdest ending ever since Princess Hao.

Outraged fans have come up with several theories regarding Urasawa's actions:

(a) This is all a big elaborate hoax on the part of Urasawa to play with his readers.
(b) Urasawa has no idea what to do with his ever-deepening plot, so he is just trying to buy some time to sort everything out.
(c) Urasawa gave up and quite literally ran away, so the editors threw in some very vague "coming soon" at the end to appease the readers, and added the lymmeric comment so they could claim "it was all a joke" if they didn't manage to catch Urasawa and "convince" him to finish his story.

*Feel free to take these theories as seriously as you want...or not.

Special thanks to Neuroretardant, ocean, and Floating_Sakura for this story.

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Well, you gotta give it to

Submitted by Floating_Sakura (not verified) on Wed, 2006-05-17 22:31.

Well, you gotta give it to them for creativity of making this whole thing up. I'm sure it makes a lot of reader go :banghead: though.

umm....maybe he wants the

Submitted by mr robot (not verified) on Wed, 2006-05-17 22:32.

umm....maybe he wants the story like Alan Moore's "V For Vendatta" that's no one dosen't known true identity of V...

A guess?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2007-07-23 21:49.

Just my guess. Would it be possible that Sadakiyo has a twin brother and he is the new "Friend"? Kiriko has once met with Sadakiyo revealing his face while there is another kid wearing the same mask playing with Fukubei's gang nearby (see final chapter in volume 20). Just my guess though.

i think in "V for Vendetta"

Submitted by helicopter nature tours (not verified) on Mon, 2008-01-07 14:23.

i think in "V for Vendetta" you don't have to wanna know the true identity. it wouldn't have the same charm.

In any case, with the

Submitted by Eleutheria (not verified) on Wed, 2008-05-28 06:02.

In any case, with the release of the 21st century boys volumes, it appears clear that Urusawa had it all planned out from the beginning.

Not V for Vendetta

Submitted by Nyshantra (not verified) on Tue, 2009-04-21 19:34.

We know who V is - he's the guy that was experimented on - we do not need a name, but we are told who he was and his reason of becoming what he is.

20th CB just didn't end with a good explanation because we were told that he was one of the friends but was never told which one and why he became all evil.