Headscratchers / 20th Century Boys

• What are Kanna's supernatural powers?
  • An odd kind of sixth sense
  • But wasn't she able to bend spoons?
  • She also had telekinesis and mind communication, but had so little control of the former that it was largely useless: the only time she managed anything bigger than spoon-bending was beating up the teacher who tried to kidnap her.
• Can Friend do physical harm? If so, what methods?
  • He's pretty much an average man, so yes, he can.
    • An average man with lots of financial resources, important political connections and a a HUGE workforce. A bit like Trump, just less douchy
• Does the series ever make clear exactly why everybody followed Friend? All of his speeches seemed to just be complete nonsense.
  • It's because he fooled people with stage magic that he pretended was miracles.
  • Plus, as you might expect from a cult, brainwashing was probably involved for a lot of them, with the main goal being "make them have to think so hard they can't think of anything again" (and thus why they'll readily accept anything he does as a miracle and anything he says as meaningful).
  • Most bogus religions can brainwash their followers to do just about anything. Aside from that, in the manga it shows how there are so many people who will follow a religion merely because they need to believe in something. The church of Scientology has often made its subjects steal money for the church leaders and yet they never question these orders.
• Why was the Bonus Stage something each person went to their own copy of the first time we saw it and something everyone who went in a shared version of after?
  • It was never said that it wasn't shared the first time, it's just that they never met.
    • Yet the other two participants killed themselves, supposedly for the same reason the survivor was in a halfway catatonic state for more than a day.
• A question about the virtual reality (Tomodachi Land). The characters talk to their childhood selves in the past hoping to change the future. Kenji tells virtual Sadakiyo he is a part of their friend group and real life Sadakiyo smiles in his death bed. Kanna communicates with childhood Kenji in the hologram through her ESP. BUT IT ISN'T TIME TRAVEL. IT'S LITERALLY A SIMULATION. At some point Yoshitsune and Kanna glitch out the system and you can see them in a grid like computer designed environment. The characters in the simulation aren't real so how do the protagonists influence the outcome of events in the story by interacting with these characters?
  • The events in the simulation never influence any future events (except that those who have been in the simulation remember what they saw there). Sadakiyo is told that he is part of their group at the very end during Kenji's real-life confrontation with Friend, and Kenji never shows any sign of being aware that Kanna met him in the simulation.
• How did Fukubei survive falling from the building when he was knocked off by the Friend decoy in 2000?

---