what do i even say

If you make a wish from the bottom of your heart, a real wish, it will come true.

-Billy Bat

I just finished reading Billy Bat by Naoki Urasawa. It is one of those series that seem really simple at first... only to spiral into something massive (Gurren Lagann!!!). It is a mystery-thriller manga with twists and turns at every corner. The early volumes might feel overwhelming; you’re thrown into different places, different times, different people, and you don’t fully understand where Urasawa is going with this. But once the threads start tying together, the payoff is crazy. The setting of the story spans over multiple time periods ranging from the 1st century all the way to the 21st century.

The story begins with Kevin Yamagata, a Japanese-American mangaka. He's drawing Billy Bat which is loved all over America. However, he soon learns that he may have copied the bat character in his manga unconsciously from a drawing in Japan. He decides to travel there, in hopes of finding answers and meeting the author.

And that decision completely derails his life.

What begins as a question of plagiarism spirals into murder, secret organizations, political manipulation, and a mysterious entity that seems to appear at major turning points throughout history. Before long, it becomes clear that Billy Bat is something far beyond Kevin, and he’s now trapped in a mystery that stretches back millennia and how since the beginning of time it has influenced the history of the world.

The main question is: what exactly is Billy Bat, and why does it keep appearing at turning points in history? Is it good? Bad? A curse? A god? A reflection of humanity’s own nature? The way it keeps resurfacing across centuries just makes it feel that much more threatening.

Like Urasawa's other works, the cast is impressively massive. The story jumps in and out of different time periods and into the minds of many different characters. Despite covering numerous time periods and perspectives, I rarely found it confusing. You'll also find many familiar faces in the form of characters based on actual history such as Albert Einstein, JFK, the Charlie Chaplin guy, and many more. The existence of these real-life characters gave me this unsettling “what if this was happening behind the scenes?" vibe that blurs fiction and reality in the best way.

All the characters stay parallel to the main story, and I found this very interesting as we see the actions of a character in the present really affected the course of history. They're driven by clear motivations, they feel like real people making the choices they believe in, even when said choices are morally questionable. Nobody exists just to fill empty space. I even found some of the morally questionable decisions they made human.

Another thing I really want to talk about are the themes explored in this manga. They include, but aren't limited to: racism, police superiority and corruption, art, Nazism, and time travel. The themes aren't explored REALLY thoroughly but they get mentioned a couple of times, and it's cool to read I guess...

Like for example how Einstein explains how time travel works to Zofuu — if you have two twins, one leaves the Earth at the speed of light, and comes back. The twin that went to space will be of the same age, but the twin that stayed on Earth will be a rotting old geezer.

Some other examples of these are: Diane and Tony almost not getting wed because they're not of the same race, or how nothing is "original." Zofuu explains the latter to Kevin by saying that the first person who drew something probably copied it from somebody else, and that somebody else probably copied it from somebody else, and then that person also... you get the point.

The ending was really good. I especially liked Billy Bat and Kevin's conversation. The part where he said "Humans are foolish" is so fucking peak.

Overall, Billy Bat is probably my favorite Urasawa work. The way everything connects together at the end is just so fucking amazing to me. Billy Bat is ambitious, it’s weird, it requires some patience — but it definitely rewards you for sticking with it. I love ts so much. This guy Urasawa just can't fucking miss.

TLDR: peak fucking fiction