What ?__?

Mysteries and riddle of the series

Robots and Heros in 20thCB The Tower of the Sun The Firefly of the Seas
1970 Universal exposition Paris Motor Show 2004 Genji's Faction

 

As promised in the main page, here comes a page especially dedicated tout all explanations possible and imaginable about your favorite manga

Any suggestion or resquest about this page?  just mail me here

So you're lost? no for long...

 

1 - Who's Friend

2 - What's that mark?

3 - What is the 1970 lie?

4 - What is it, those Predictions Notebooks?

5 - What happened to Kenji's Faction after the 2000, December  the 31rst ?

6 - And to the others?

7 - What happened to Kanna's mother?

8 - Who killed Donkey?

9 - What Happened inside the biology room in 1969?

1 - Who is Friend?

Obviously it's the first big question you have in mind when you read 20thCB : who is Friend, it's really a good one but noone can answer it right now except maybe Urasawa himself. In the series few are those who know the truth about Friend, and most of them pay it with thier life : Pierre the guru, Kenji, inspector Cho, Donkey, Koizumi escape to death from close.

We can take the problem on another side : who is not Friend

                - At the beginning of the story Donkey thought it me be Kenji, but after seeing him working night and days in his convini il give up this idea

                - Then Yukiji and Kenji think it's Otcho, he drew the mark and he's missing for years

                - Along a lot of volumes we think it's Sadakiyo, a kid who was used to  talk to ET and wearing a strange mask. In volume 10 and 11 we learn the thruth : it's somebody else, furthermore Sadakiyo knows him very well, but not us as usual

                - Then in volume 12 we discover that it's not the doctor Yamane but someone we knew very well. We vere lead on the trail of Yamane for his love of biology 

                - From volume 12 to 18 we are sure of his true identity, the problem will lie in his strange ressurection  during universal exposition

                - In the 18th volume Manjume give us a capital information so we can cast away our certitude, the riddle is going on anew

 

2 - What's that mark??

We find that symbol everywhere inside the manga, it's the mark used by Friend for his sect and later for his political party. We can see it on t-shirts, pictures, badges....

Otcho drew it in the 70's, it's smply made of the sybol wich can be find in the bottom of pages insides mangas plus two eyes. Why eyes ? because Otcho was nicknamed by his friends Otcho-big-eyes. That's what we learn in the 5th volume, just before our friends go to chase the giant robot. Since volume 12 it replace Friend's mask on his face, I think it gives him a more frigthenning side.

Basically that mark was used by Kenji and his friends as a uniting symbol. Friend take it for himself to make his sect's symbol

 

3 - What is the 1970's lie?

That's the new series' riddle, one more!!  Takamatsu, the dreamnavigator discusses it with Manjumé Inshu. We have no clue of what they are talking about but it lokk really important

We will have more informations inside the next volumes...

 

4 - What is it, those Prediction notebooks?

The prediction notebook is a notebooks (well, yes..!!) in which Kenji and his friends, in 1969, have written the story of the end of the world. We find there a giant robot, a letal and contagious virus, a serial of dramatic events like the explosion of Haneda airport or the destruction of parliament. It indicate that Kenji and his friends will be the savior of all mankind

We don't know how but Friend took very seriously all that script and decided to make all his possible to make it happen. But the notebook is not in possession of Friend but in Kenji's, maybe Friend know it by heart or has a copy of it.

In volume 9 we learn, by Monchan about the existence of a second notebook. We can't tell who wrote it but it's a kind of sequel of the one written by Kenji. Little by little we learn what lies inside : a meeting in  Shinjunku church, a savior, the Holly Mother, the universal exposition and the world president.

Some of these events occurs in volume 9,10 and 11

We learn all about those two notebook in next volumes...

 

5 - What happened to Kenji's Faction after 2000 December the 31st?

Little by little we learn what happened to all of Kenji's friends :

        - Kenji probably died following the giant robot leand by Friend explosion, but in the last 2/3 volume we begin to have huge doubt about that, because of Joe Yabuki 

        - Maruo : until volume 12 we thonk he's dead, like some others members of Kenji's Faction. He reappears on the side of the universal song singer, thank to him he can discover the true identity of Friend

         - Otcho : We don't know how but police catch him, he spent 14 years inprisonned at the Firefly of the Seas, and 14 years trying to escape from it.

        - Yoshitsune is presumed dead by police. Indeed he gives his identity papers on the corpse of someone who looked like him and became a clandestine. In 2014 he's a dreamcleaner at Friendland, and also the leader of resistance against Friend

        - Fukube had fallen down the top of a roof trying to stop Friend and the giant robot. He falls during his fight against him, unfortunatley he was a fake Friend on that roof, he died for nothing.

    - Monchan survived to that night by became sick, we see him in 2002 giving the second prediction notebook to Yukiji. Few days after his disseapear from hospital and meet Sadakiyo. Took by panic Sadakiyo kills him and stoles monchan notes. He finally give them to Koizumi, who gives them to Yukiji and Yoshitsune.

        - Yukiji too can escape police that night, she hold her promise to Kenji and became Kanna's guardian, when you see how phenomenal Kanna has became you can almost be sorry for her ;o)

 

6 - And to the others?

        - God, from homeless became a bilionair, completely by luck, by speaking with a man on a bench

        - Ichihara, the lawyer, continued all this time her fight against Friend. She has just lost a lawsuit or in fact the victims of Friend were condemned to damages.

        - Kanna is now 17, like all the other girls she goes to highschool

         - and what about Friend?  in 20014 he has become the uncontested leader of Japan and well he has not finished his running for power

7 - What happened to Kanna's mother?

Until volume 11 we had no clue at all, and with the revelations given to us by Urasawa we would rather prefer not to know. We knew that Kiriko had sacrified a huge part of her life because of Kenji, when their father died, she was the one who took the head of the alcohol store. We had completley lost her after she had left her child, Kanna to his mother and brother. Now we know she fullfilled her dream : to become bacteriologist. She made reasaerch in Africa and in Japan. The problem is that she's the one who created (mostly) the virus who killed so many people in Tokyo and a part of the planet in 2000. She's responsible for the death of thousands and thousands persons. But she may have contributed to the creation of the vaccine. She's full of remorses and compares herself with Godzilla

8 - Who Killed Donkey?

Some of followers of the Friend's sect. They disguise the murder into a suicide. One of them took by remorse flee the sect and gave Kenji the lasergun prototype. He confess to him, just before dying, that he's the murderer of Donkey. His death leads kenji to be involved into all this events.

Now the real riddle is no more to discover who, but really Why Donkey have been killed....

 

9 - What Happened inside the biology room in 1969?

We know since the first volume that things that happened that night are very important, and we still don't know why. 11th volume give us a clue but it doesn't solve the mysteries at all. We know that night didn't hesitate to jump from the 1rts floor of the school because he was really scared. We know that it could be linked to Yamane, to the deceaded pupil and to a dead carp. Answer volume 12 and next...