20th Century Boys vol. 11

In case anyone was wondering whether or not my favorite comic from last year has lost a step, let me assure you that it hasn’t.  Mangaka Naoki Urasawa (with Takahashi Nagasaki in tow) continues to spin an absolutely riveting tale as he slowly parcels out information about the conspiracy at its heart.  Things kick off in high gear as Kanna is still reeling from the shock of finding out that her father is actually the Friend while Koizumi and Sadakiyo find that The Friends have already made their move and encircled the retirement home they’re currently at.  From there, we get some more shocking revelations about Sadakiyo’s past, see how it ties into the fate of one of Kenji’s friends, and then watch as his tale winds up with about as happy an ending as it could’ve received (read:  not very).  Then Urasawa dials things down a notch as we see Kanna pursuing a lead about the fate of her late mother and things are set up for the next arc involving another old classmate of Kenji’s.  I won’t lie you — I wish I was reading the next volume instead of writing this review.

The only dark cloud to hover over my opinion is the lingering feeling that all of the efforts of Kanna and her friends are playing right into the Friend’s plans.  Stories like that drive me nuts since it represents the laziest kind of storytelling to me.  I’m sure that Urasawa is smarter than that, but I want to find out now rather than later.  Still, he does give us a few scenes with the lead dream navigator (turns out her name is Takasu) and public face of the Friends, Manjome Inshu, that humanizes them to some extent.  Up until now they’ve been nothing but soulless ciphers designed only to drive the plot, but the scenes here show that they have more depth than that.  I’d like to see their characters explored in greater detail now, and that’s just one more reason that I can’t stop reading this series.