20th Century Boys/Characters

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Kenji and his former classmates

Kenji Endou

• Action Survivor
• Adorkable
• Anti-Hero: Starts out as Type 1, a former rock guitarist now living with his mother and working at a convenience store. He later starts La Résistance, and finally becomes a Rock and Roll Messiah!
• Badass Biker
• Badass Pacifist: He managed to bring down the murderer of his sister's fiancee, an Evil Overlord of sorts at the time, simply by talking.
• Cool Shades
• Decoy Protagonist: Once the first story arc finishes, the story stops focusing on Kenji to shift to Kanna for most of the remainder of the series.
• Determinator: His main trait, even noted as such in Friend's virtual reality game.
• The Hero
• Messianic Archetype: Finds self in the desert, spends three days simply grieving, seemingly dies and comes back to save the world?
• Nice Hat: Eventually gives it to Kanna as a memento.
• Our Hero Is Dead
  • Not Quite Dead
• Took a Level in Badass

Otcho (Chouji Ochiai)

• The Atoner: See Parental Neglect below.
• Badass
  • Badass Beard: After the timeskip.
  • Badass Longcoat
  • Badass Long Hair
  • Badass Nickname: "Shogun"
  • Badass Grandpa: After the timeskip.
• The Berserker: In Friend's virtual reality game, and occasionally in real life.
• The Lancer: Both in his childhood and as an adult in the La Résistance.
• Parental Neglect: Since he didn't spend much time with his family, he blames himself for his son's death.
• Salaryman: Originally was one, but quit after he realized the effect his workaholism had on his family.
• Simple Staff: He's skilled with a bo, but usually uses a pipe instead of a wooden one.
• Training from Hell

Yukiji Setoguchi

• Closer to Earth: A subversion when younger, being a rather fiery Cute Bruiser, but sort of grows into the role post-timeskip.
• Cool Bike
• Cool Old Lady: after the timeskip.
• Cute Bruiser: as a child.
• Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: Ages very well post timeskip.
• Heir to the Dojo
• Parental Substitute: For Kanna.
• Old Maid

Yoshitsune (Minamoto)

• The Chains of Commanding: He really didn't want to be leader after being separated from the rest of the group, especially since the job requires a great deal of pragmatism he's frankly too nice to be comfortable with.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: At first it's just regular Self-Deprecation but as time goes by and he reluctantly becomes leader of the heroes it turns into this.
• Rebel Leader: After both timeskips.
• Reverse Mole: Infiltrated Friend Land by working there as a janitor.
• Salaryman
• Took a Level in Badass: After the timeskip he becomes legitimately badass in his own quirky way.

Maruo

• Big Eater
• Eyes Often Shut: More so as a kid.
• Flashback Echo: He seems to develop post-traumatic stress disorder after the Bloody New Year's Eve.
• Taking You with Me: Comes very, very close to doing this with Friend and a bomb. But remembering Kenji's words about not hurting innocents convinces him not go through at the very last minute.

Mon-chan (Masaki Shimon)

• Famous Last Words: "I just want to live as long as possible!"
• Secretly Dying: Until Bloody New Years when he reveals his illness to Yukiji.
• Your Days Are Numbered

Yamane

• Creepy Child: When he was a kid, of course.
• Mad Scientist: He considers it a game to make as terrible a virus as possible to see how long it will take Kiriko to develop a vaccine for.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction to finding out Friend planned to kill 99% of the world's population.
• Redemption Equals Death

Keroyon

• Animal Motifs: With the frog, both in looks and name ("kero" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a frog's croak)
• Badass Normal: Lacks the kind of training that Otcho has, but still rushes into a burning factory to save lives regardless of his burns.
• Gonk: Sort of. Keroyon isn't hideous, but he has a very froglike visage.
• Refusal of the Call: Ignores Kenji's request to stop Friend, and terribly regrets it.

Fukubei

• Big Bad
• The Bully: He was quite a jerk as a kid.
• Dead All Along: Turns out Friend did die before things started falling apart.

Donkey (Saburou Kido)

• Agent Scully: Even as a child he firmly believed in science over superstition.
• He Knows Too Much: What ultimately leads to his death is the fact that he happened to witness Fukubei's faked "miracle," and would know that any other resurrection he would have as Friend would be fake as well.
• The Pig Pen
• Posthumous Character: Him dying starts the story.
• Massive-Numbered Siblings
• Never Suicide / Starts with a Suicide: His, to be precise. It is, of course, not a suicide and Kenji looking further into it is precisely what kicks off the plot.

Sadakiyo (Kiyoshi Sada)

• The Faceless: He always wears a mask and can't even remember what he looked like as a child.
• Heel Face Turn
• Heel Realization
• Go Out with a Smile
• Redemption Equals Death

Yanbo and Manbo

• Fat Bastard->Bishonen->I Was Quite a Looker: Hilariously, they go from portly in childhood, to slim in attractive in adult-hood, back to fat and ugly when they become elderly.
• Heel Face Turn: Originally sold Kenji's group out to Friend but eventually turned against him.
• Hidden Depths: They started defecting against Friend after a longtime employee of their company died from The Virus.
• Jerkass
• Single-Minded Twins: Up until they grew very old, they acted entirely as one.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: They don't even realize they were bullies.
• Wrestler in All of Us

Katsumata

• Creepy Child
• Dead Person Impersonation: Takes up the mantle of Friend after Fukubei dies.
• The Faceless: We never actually see his face before he underwent plastic surgery to look like Fukubei. In the virtual reality game, he simply has no face.
• Freudian Excuse: Despite being even worse than Fukubei as Friend, he actually has one.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: And how. In fact, it is because he was almost literally nobody that he became a nightmare.
• Start of Darkness: Several factors lead to him to becoming the second Friend.

Other good guys

Kanna Endou

• Action Girl: Sort of.
• A Father To Her Men
• Almighty Janitor: waitress in a crappy restaurant who breaks up mob gunfights.
• Cunning Linguist: Dealing with various mafias has given her a command of Thai and Chinese.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The unnamed girl in the very first volume reacting in horror to Friend's robot is her post-timeskip.
• Guile Hero
• Heroic BSOD: Twice. First when she finds out that Friend is her father and again when Friend succeeds in killing 90% of the Earth's population and scattering the main characters again.
• Like Uncle Like Niece
• Luke, I Am Your Father: She's Fukubei a.k.a Friend's biological daughter.
• Messianic Archetype: Unites enemies, has unique abilities born to a "holy mother". In a subversion her father would be "the devil" in the situation, so this overlaps a bit with Anti-Anti-Christ.
• Nice Hat: She got her cap from Kenji as a memento.
• Parental Abandonment
• Plucky Girl
• Psychic Powers: Specifically precognition, and more rarely telekinesis and mental communication.
• Rebel Leader: In the final arc.
• Tagalong Kid: On the Bloody New Year's Eve

'God/Kami-sama' (Kamigama Kyutaro)

• Bunny Ears Lawyer: A homeless man with psychic powers and obsessed with bowling. He eventually uses his precognitive abilities on the stock market to become one of the richest men in Japan.
• Cool Old Guy
• Crazy Homeless People
• Insistent Terminology: "Don't call me God."
• Mad Oracle: He loves to use bowling metaphors left and right but most characters acknowledge his intelligence and insight. Being an actual psychic helps too.
  • Though he himself casts some doubt on his powers, attributing them instead to the The Power of Trust. It is left ambiguous.
• Rags to Riches: Goes from homeless man (with psychic powers) to self-made millionaire and the first Japanese person to go into space.
• Serious Business: takes bowling very seriously.
• Wisdom from the Gutter

Shouhei Chouno

• Adorkable
• Butt Monkey
• By-The-Book Cop: Was one until he discovered Friend control most of the police force.
• Early-Bird Cameo: An off-screen example, but he's the young grandson who's birthday party Chou-san is supposed to attend.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "Chou," pretty much the equivalent of Butterfly.
• Ensign Newbie: A detective, but incredibly inexperienced and living in his grandfather's shadow.
• Ship Tease: With Kanna.

Chou-san

• Great Detective: So great that he found the complete answer to the Driving Question of the series 21 years before anyone else.
• Retirony
• He Knows Too Much
• Married to the Job
• Memetic Badass: Invoked among the police force.

Kiriko

• The Atoner: Spends all of her time trying to treat people for the virus she created.
• Chekhov MIA
• Expy: Possibly of Dr. Tenma, as the two of them both travel around trying to stop an evil that they helped gain power.
• Missing Mom: Left Kanna to Kenji shortly after she was born
• Professor Guinea Pig

Kyoko Koizumi

• Break the Cutie: Her experience at Friend Land. Slightly subverted in that, traumatic as that was, she seemingly remains as adjusted as ever after her ordeal.
• Butt Monkey: Provides most of the comic relief in the seriously dark series.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Well, not exactly a Badass, but she did some very important things in the series.
• The Ditz
• The Gift: For... bowling, which she doesn't really like and mostly just gets her pestered by an old man.
• Girlish Pigtails
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Sadakiyo. This is actually one of the reasons he has a Heel Face Turn in the first place.
  • She also has one with Yoshitsune, both the adult and the virtual version of him in the Bonus Level.
• My Name Is Not Durwood: Her name itself isn't generally mistaken, but she's often annoyed by people claiming the "kyo" in her name means "misfortune/disaster" instead of "echo/reverberation".
• Resigned to the Call

Father Nitani

• The Atoner
• Badass Preacher
• Tattooed Crook: Back when he was a criminal.
• Turbulent Priest

Father Luciano

• The Atoner
• Badass Preacher
• Tattooed Crook
• Turbulent Priest

The Pope

Shikishima

• For Science!: One of the primary reasons for making his giant robot: he thought the fake one was such a piece of crap that he felt obligated to make a real one.

Haru Namio

• Chekhov's Gunman: Appears early on as a successful enka singer who works with Friend, Later revealed that he's protecting Maruo and helping the La Résistance covertly.
• Stepford Smiler: Subverted when he turns out to be one of the good guys. Then you realize it's probably necessary to get close to Friend.
• The Atoner: Left Kenji's band to join another and felt obligated to help him when the time comes.
• Reverse Mole

(Other) Members and Allies of Friend's Cult

Friend^[1]

• The Antichrist
• Big Bad
• Big Bad Friend
• The Chessmaster
• Cool Mask: No, the fact that it's a cartoon monkey mask does nothing to stifle it. Probably because it's really a Ninja Hattori-Kun mask.
• Dark Messiah: "Our Friend! Our Friend!"
• Disproportionate Retribution
• Evil Counterpart: He lives in the past, unlike Kenji.
• Hidden Villain
• Legacy Character:
• Luke, I Am Your Father: The first Friend is revealed to be Kanna's father
• Manipulative Bastard
• Omnicidal Maniac
• Plaguemaster: His main method of mass-killing, though mostly the first one.
• Psychopathic Manchild
• The Sociopath: Especially Fukubei, who was manipulative, callous and egocentric ever since childhood.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has a pretty epic one when Kenji apologizes to him at the end, which makes him decide to speed up his plans to kill everyone out of spite.
• Villain with Good Publicity: And HOW! He managed to become World President and got every leader in the world eating out of his hands. Willingly.

Police Officer Assassin

• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: He has a mole on his face.
• Eyes Always Shut
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: He had incredibly narrow eyes.
• The Mole

Prisoner #13 (Masao Tamura)

• Ax Crazy
• Bald of Evil
• Career Killers: Hitman for the Friend group, though he's in it for loyalty rather than money.
• Heel Face Turn: Unclear exactly when it started, but he ended up helping the heroes in the very end.
• Psycho for Hire
• Redemption Equals Death: Dies in the process of killing the second Friend.

Manjoume

• Beard of Evil
• The Dragon
• Dead All Along: His mind was stuck in the virtual reality game and didn't realize he had died until Kenji came in and told him.
• Faux Affably Evil
• Go Out with a Smile: His Virtual Ghost self fades away after he finally does a good deed. It's surprisingly moving considering what a dick he was for most of the series.
• I Hate Past Me / My God, What Have I Done?: Only really sees the whole nature of his actions in the story when he watches his past self as a Virtual Ghost.
• Virtual Ghost: Becomes/makes one of these when killed while in a virtual reality game.
• Villain with Good Publicity

Takusugi

• Bifauxnen: At one point, two characters confuse her for a man.
• Faux Affably Evil
• Lady Macbeth: Tries to be one of these to Manjoume after the first Friend dies, but he doesn't show much interest. So she eventually kills him and takes the power for herself.
• Slasher Smile
• The Starscream: To Manjoume.
• Stepford Smiler: When acting as a "Dream Navigator".

Moroboshi's killer

• Blond Guys Are Evil
• Card-Carrying Villain: He is very insistent that's he's evil and even compares himself to many famous anime villains. Then subverted when Kenji gets him to admit he's full of it.
• Career Killers
• No Name Given
• Smug Snake
• Villainous Breakdown

1. ↑ To avoid spoilers, this will be listed separately from any other characters he may secretly be.