An End to All Things - 20th Century Boys

Touted as the Japanese equivalent to the original Star Wars trilogy or the Lord of the Rings saga - a closer trilogy metaphor is the Matrix. A series of three movies are filmed in one go with a significant amount of praying done during the first movie's showing to see if the whole series will fly, box office-wise.

It is assumed that most Western audiences have never heard of it, as unless you were a big fan of the original manga by Naoki Urasawa the amount of time duration the live film had was relatively short. Part one was shown in August 2008, the second in January 2009. But as of August 2009 the series draws to a close.

Taking its title from the T-Rex song, story line-wise it's comparable to It by Stephen King. In part one, four young boys form a secret club complete with a mythical apocalyptic prophecy of the planet that they write themselves aside from the usual things like playing games, talking shit and viewing porn. Oh come on - for all those pre-adolescents who played D & D, who hasn't come up with the ultimate nightmare scenarios to pass the time? In part two, they eventually they grow up incredibly banal and meaningless lives as adults, such is the fate of most Japanese citizens. However, as one friend mysteriously commits suicide a doomsday cult starts to arise and events that were written in their silly book of prophecy begin to take shape. A masked demagogue with a very cool and creepy looking head dress named Friend starts to create more influence for himself as he saves (we think) Japan from the increasing amounts of horrors that start to occur, including saving the Pope from assassination. Friend's influence become so great that the naming of the days are in reference to himself (eg., 3rd year of the Friend Era). The remaining group try to figure out who he is and how to stop the prophecies from coming true. The third part firmly takes place in the Friend Era, with an Earth Defense Force in preparation for an alien invasion. The children of the original group now form the resistance to his rule of zealotry.