At mangascreener.com, I've been keeping up with Naoki Urasawa's Pluto. Unfortunately, they're not translating it anymore.

The story was originally an Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) story by Osamu Tezuka called "The World's Strongest Robot". As summarized by Amazon.com:

A wealthy sultan creates a giant robot to become the ruler of all other robots on Earth. But in order for that to happen, he must defeat the seven most powerful robots in the world, including Astro Boy, who must have his horsepower raised from 100,000 to 1,000,000 to face the challenge! And his sister, Uran, also flies in to lend a helping hand!

It's in the Astro Boy vol. 3 collection.

But Pluto takes those ideas and puts an adult spin on it. It deconstructs the Astro Boy world. Much like Watchmen, it took these childish ideas and made them mature. For example, the Sultan in the original story is now, basically, Saddam Hussein. The ideas of robot prejudice are further fleshed out by Uraswa. There's this great concept: robots don't forget, in fact they remember everything with precision. There are a lot of robot war veterans in this story, and their sense of regret is beyond human imagination.

There's a touching scene when the robot wife (she kind of reminded me of Rosie from the Jetsons) of a robot police officer is told that her husband has been killed on duty. Although her character design shows no emotion, the story and pacing is done so well that you can feel what this robot is thinking. You get a sense that she might not feel things like a human being, but she still mourns for her mechanical husband in her own way.

Also, there's a great scene where Dr Tenma's love/hate for Atom (Astro Boy) is sort of explained but in just a few pages. And the way Astro Boy was interpreted in this story is just brilliant! The concept of a robot having 1,000,000 horsepower is updated to robots having advanced Artificial Intelligence. This advanced AI makes them capable of mass destruction, but also near-human emotion. And, what was originally a minor character in "The World's Strongest Robot" is the main character. And he has a bad ass missile hand!

When I compare the original "The World's Strongest Robot" to its contemporary "Pluto" it's like I'm being told the same story, except one storyteller is ten-years-old and the other is forty. It's a good story, no matter who tells it, and I regret that I didn't grow up with Astro Boy as a kid (I had to settle for Garfield).

Fortunately, Viz Media will be translating this manga and it will be released in February 2009.

Labels: anime, comics, manga, Osamu Tezuka