20th Century Boys I: Beginning of the End

In an alternate reality of late 20th Century Japan, a group of elementary-school friends meet at a reunion and reminisce about their boyhood summers spent building forts and creating their own secret society. Eerily, the details of their memories of a prophetic picture book they wrote seem unnaturally close to recent world events and the workings of a suspicious religious cult led by a figure known as “Friend.” Kenji (Toshiaki Karasawa) suspects that there’s a connection between his childhood games, his missing older sister’s work as a scientist and the alarming news that Friend is currying favor with the Japanese government. He sets out with friends Otcho (Etsushi Toyokawa) and Yukiji (Takako Tokiwa) to seek answers, but what they find goes deeper than any kind of childhood game.
20th Century Boys stays very faithful to its origins as a blockbuster manga in its dramatic camera angles and aggressive aesthetics. True to its name, the film weaves in characteristics of 20th Century Japanese cultural history, including drastic political shifts, bubble consumerism and the destruction of nuclear war. This psychological thriller will stay with you days after you watch the finishing credits.

20th Century Boys II: The Last Hope

In 2015, 15 years after the conclusion of the first part of 20th Century Boys, Friend is still at large and more dangerously influential than ever. Kenji’s niece, Kanna (Airi Taira), is determined to continue her beloved uncle’s revolution against the cult leader’s brainwashing of the masses. Spunky teenage Kanna refuses to accept that the allies of Friend are unrelated to the increasingly gruesome string of murders in her own neighborhood and enlists the help of a skeptical cop and her friends in the Tokyo underworld to bring justice to the victims of a corrupt government. Otcho (Etsushi Toyokawa) and Yukiji (Takako Tokiwa) reappear to lend a hand.
This middle chapter of the three-part 20th Century Boys series gives the viewer even more essential clues to this puzzle of a narrative. The surprising conclusion to this heart-pounding series is set to arrive on US shores soon!