NAOKI URASAWA’S 20TH CENTURY BOYS, VOL. 6 (VIZ MEDIA): For me, the biggest comics discovery of 2009 was Japanese Manga creator Naoki Urasawa. Actually, that’s not totally fair. Throughout 2008, I slavishly waited at the comic book shop for the next volume of Urasawa’s Monster, completely addicted to this morality play slash thriller in comic book form. Though the final volume wasn’t quite as satisfying as I perhaps wanted it to be, the previous seventeen were good enough that it knocked Death Note off the top of my “Best Manga of All Time” list.

However, it wasn’t until last year that I completely fell in love with the dude. I knew he was good based on Monster, but the double hit of Pluto and 20th Century Boys made me realize that Urasawa was a rare talent, creating complex, character driven manga that stacks among the best works of fiction in any field. Basically, dude’s a genius, and I realize I’m pretty late to the party on that, especially as the Manga loving world has been reading his books for years, and we’re only just getting translations now, thanks to Viz Media.

So, to that point, how does the latest volume of 20th Century Boys stack up to the rest? And from this point on, there be spoilers:

Well, I mean, it’s great. I’m totally biased at this point, as Urasawa has the unique ability to completely suck you further and deeper into his complex stories, while continually pulling the rug out from under his main concepts, whether it’s killing the main character in Pluto, or twisting just who the monster really is, in Monster. Here, as we saw at the end of the last volume, not only have our heroes completely failed to save the day on New Year’s Eve 2000 and prevent the cult-like Friends from releasing a deadly giant robot on the world, but the Friends have completely taken over.

Not only that, but we’ve jumped forward fourteen years semi-permanently, and are now following Kanna, the “hero” of the story’s niece, who had previously been a mostly silent baby. We only get intriguing glances backwards at what went wrong on New Year’s Eve, but it isn’t until the latter half of the book, when a familiar face returns, that we realize just how wrong things must have gone.

Urasawa clearly has a thing for all powerful cults, a theme that shows up in all of his work, but perhaps most strongly here. Fear of conformity, not standing out, and not making your mark is a theme throughout this book, and continues to be hit strongly with new characters, like two on the run drag queens, and a Manga artist imprisoned for accidentally drawing a story that was a little too close to the truth. It’s heavy stuff, richly explored, but at its base, 20th Century Boys is still a scifi adventure thriller, and there as well, it works swimmingly.

The volume ends on a high note, with the heroes poised to come back (hopefully) in a big way; though at this point, it’s unclear if they can ever win. I’d imagine that the outcome on this conflict will be Urasawa’s definitive statement on 20th Century life: does it belong to the individual? Or the faceless masses?

Here’s hoping this individual talent delivers a rollicking ending in the next few volumes.