Yukihiko Tsutsumi, the director of a trilogy of live action films based on Naoki (Monster) Urusawa’s manga 20th Century Boys, told a Taiwanese newspaper that “The manga was so good that I figured I'd be better off duplicating it rather than changing anything.”  Working with a budget of 6 billion yen (approx. $60 million) and with Urusawa as a screenwriter, Tsutsumi is fashioning what might just be the most faithful live action movie adaptation of a manga ever, by using, as he told the Taiwan News, “manga pages as storyboards.”

The first of the three 20th Century Boys live action films was just released in Japan on August 30th.  Viz Media plans to release the first volume in Naoki Urusawa’s 20th Century Boys manga ($12.99, rated 16+) in February.   The 22-volume 20th Century Boys manga series, which deftly mixes science fiction and mystery elements with a large dose of nostalgia for the author’s adolscent years in the 1970s and 1980s, ran in Japan from 2000 through 2006.  Urusawa requested that Viz Media not release 20th Century Boys in North America until it had published all 18 volumes of Monster.  Numerous retailers have told ICv2 that the tightly-plotted serial killer saga Monster was the one manga that they continually recommended to comic book readers who were unfamiliar with manga.

If 20th Century Boys receives the same sort of reception that Monster has earned here in North America, perhaps Viz Pictures, which has released numerous live action adaptations of manga already, will bring the 20th Century Boys live action trilogy to these shores.