The story begins in the summer of 1969, when Kenji and his friends are sitting in the middle of the field hut, where their own version of "the end of the world". They end up making a book that tells you how the world is destroyed in 2000. In order to keep outsiders outside, the boys come up with a symbol, a sign that is "true friend".
About thirty years later, Kenji takes care of his sisters daughter at family-owned store while listening to his mother complaining. Kenji is a failed musician and spends a few days off drinking in the same block of old living with his buddies. Then one of the gang members dies by dropping from the roof couple of days later and Kenji receives a letter from her in which she asks Kenji still remembers the old symbol. Kenji begins to sniff and runs into a strange neo-religion, which is led by his face that covers the "friend". "Friend" begins to take on terrorism just the same way as Kenji once "predicted". This raises doubts, whether the "friend" is one of the gang they had as kids.
As The series progresses, the plot jumps time between 1970 and 2015 quite frequently. But everything has a meaning later. It is this highly addictive story-telling that raises 20th CB in its own heights. It shines with its characters when the plot does not progress as fast, and it contains references to the old rock classics and the history of manga. Urasawa's style has a great and extraordinary humor to help the reader to focus on the narrative sections. Some of the flashbacks are often presented at previous times in more depth and accurate reader learns to pick up soon the purpose behind them.
I'd say that art of the 20th century boys is decent, but for it's defence I have to say that it's a very story driven manga. As for the characters I'd say that no one really sticks out and this manga's style honestly is one of those that I'm not quite fond of. I believe that if you like monster then you will most likely like 20th century boys.
The story of 20th century boys is the series' strongest side. The preset is very interesting and manages to hold the reader on to it for several chapters, but I recall getting a bit too bored by the slow progress of the story after several chapters.
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