ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two popular Japanese films: Twentieth Century Boys and Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: 'The Adult Empire Strikes Back'. It shows that particular film is that it attained an exceptionally high reputation among film critics, although its targeted audience was young children. The chapter suggests that Twentieth Century Boys is a film based on Urasawa Naoki's manga works. Urasawa Naoki repeatedly points out during media interviews that the major theme of Twentieth Century Boys is a critical examination of the positive and negative aspects of the twentieth century. Urasawa's comments explain that the inserted historical mise-en-scenes in Twentieth Century Boys were not impromptu pastiches; they are meaningful symbols consciously woven into the storyline by the manga artist. In Twentieth Century Boys, rock music was not treated as an abstract idea; it is a specific image directly connected to 1969's US Woodstock Music and Art Festival.
