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The Greatest Robot on Earth: Astro Boy and Pluto Part II
Part I is here. This side-by-side continues in part III here, or you can read the whole thing on Ao3.
Side-by-Side Comparisons
“The Greatest Robot on Earth” and Pluto
The best place to start in comparing these series is their summaries. This summary for “The Greatest Robot on Earth” comes from the 2002 Dark Horse release:
“In the novel-length "The Greatest Robot on Earth," 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!”
Well, besides the fact that Uran doesn’t actually fly, I suppose that’s true enough. Gotta love marketing copy.
And here is Viz’s summary for Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka, vol. 1:
“In an ideal world where man and robots coexist, someone or something has destroyed the powerful Swiss robot Mont Blanc. Elsewhere a key figure in a robot rights group is murdered. The two incidents appear to be unrelated...except for one very conspicuous clue - the bodies of both victims have been fashioned into some sort of bizarre collage complete with makeshift horns placed by the victims' heads. Interpol assigns robot detective Gesicht to this most strange and complex case - and he eventually discovers that he too, as one of the seven great robots of the world, is one of the targets.”
An ideal world, eh? Well, I’m all about subverting surface appearances, so I like it. Anyway, right off the bat, we can tell that these two series aren’t the same genre, aren’t using the same principal characters, and aren’t concerned with the same stakes. They seem to only have one thing in common: the word “robot”.
The following pages for “The Greatest Robot on Earth” are from the Dark Horse Omnibus. In most cases, I have used pages from Viz’s Pluto: UrasawaXTezuka, but there are a few pages from the fan scans. Why? Because I own the physical manga, didn’t want to pay for all the volumes again in a digital version, and realized that the images in the fan scans were cleaner and bigger than most of the ones I could get from cracking the spine of my books and mooshing them on the scanner.
Pluto at Its Most Faithful
Mont Blanc died first in “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, and in Pluto he fares no differently. Of course, in true dramatic Urasawa fashion, Pluto chooses to begin with the fiery discovery of Mont Blanc’s head tucked within his killer’s calling card to establish the mystery and suspense of this work rather than start with a quaint lumberjacking-scene-turned-robot-fight like the original.
Urasawa and Nagasaki’s choice to include human victims in Pluto also immediately raises the stakes in a way that “The Greatest Robot on Earth” never did or would. It also immediately changes the type of exploration within the world that the series would do, given that the robots of the extended Astro Boy universe are believed to follow Asimov’s Laws.
Greece’s Hercules, spelled Heracles in Pluto’s English translation, is a straightforward warrior-type in “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, and he sasses the crap out of Epsilon when he shows up to speak with him just as he does in Pluto. He then gets trounced by Pluto after a drawn-out fight.
In Pluto, Hercules still fits the original warrior archetype, but with the addition of his very own character arc! His rivalry and friendship with Brando is new and refreshing, and his blooming respect for Epsilon pairs nicely with his own discovery of his humanity and personal beliefs as it relates to combat, war, and victory.
They called him the god of victory, after all, not necessarily bloodshed. He may have lost his fight with Pluto, but he went down believing he won and with a newfound appreciation for life and the bravery it requires to not fight. His manager Al Haft(a) is an easter egg character.
In real life, Greece participated in the Gulf War, but disagreed with the 2003 Iraq War and did not participate. Meanwhile, Australia participated with the goal of growing closer to the USA. In Pluto, these stances were swapped in their representative robots.
Personally, I think Epsilon (sometimes called Photar in the Astro Boy anime adaptation dubs) is the most surprising figure in these page comparisons if only because he didn’t actually change that much between works. Instead, it is Wassily who exploded onto the Pluto scene with his very own expanded story and Bora trauma. Yes, the disembodied hands scene is in both.
Pluto’s Epsilon looks just like Monster’s Johan, which is funny—Urasawa seems to use Tezuka’s Star System method across his works. In English, Johan and Epsilon are voiced by the same guy, too.
Speaking of, Bora is native to “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, and he is still a bomb. In “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, his creator takes the time to tell the sultan that he created him just to beat Pluto and, by extension, the sultan. In Pluto, Bora’s existence and purpose is to exact vengeance on a broader scale.
Uran’s changes between series are actually really straightforward. In the postscript of the physical Pluto manga’s volume 6, essayist and critic Gorot Yamada laments the fact that Urasawa avoided the “ero-kawaii” of Uran confronting Pluto in nothing but Atom’s briefs and calls it a “minor weakness” since it is representative of Urasawa’s relatively gentler hand in showing “cruelty or eroticism” when compared to Tezuka.
I can’t begin to tell you how funny I think this criticism is, although I do believe that Urasawa does have, overall, gentler sensibilities than Tezuka. But still. I don’t think we’re missing much by keeping Uran in her clothes. She’s still a snot, she’s still a braggart, she’s still good-hearted, and she still makes her big brother look like a square and a stick-in-the-mud. Writing precocious little girls and sweet stories of unlikely bonding moments are a few of Urasawa’s specialties, so I don’t find it surprising that he took the Uran by the hair-horns and maximized her existing character traits.
Spiritually, she feels consistent to me, though her basic actions are decidedly different: Pluto’s Uran doesn’t fight or try to fight Pluto, doesn’t want Atom to fight Pluto at any point, doesn’t ever hate Pluto, and has empathy-based powers (separate from that, she may just be smarter and more emotionally intelligent than the original Uran).
However, the sequences in the park and the underpasses where she befriends Pluto strongly resemble Uran’s near-naked adventures in the streets of “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, and that’s fun.
Abullah is where things get spicy, and that’s mostly because the only real change to his character was the addition of his human backstory and discovery of hatred. In Pluto, he is Tenma and Abullah’s science project who believes he is a human scientist (which he isn’t), but he’s actually also got a split personality! That’s a lot. There’s just so much going on with that. But still, where Pluto’s twist falls on the scale of wild twist bullshittery lessens considerably once you know how this character is portrayed in the original, I feel.
In “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, Abullah is a robot butler disguised as a scientist disguised as another scientist. Not to pooh-pooh the original’s Scooby-Doo antics, but, by comparison, Pluto’s reveal is actually quite nice, logical, and thematically consistent. It also gives Tenma a chance to look cool and not just pathetic.
Professor Ochanomizu is the best character. Don’t argue with me. In Astro Boy, he has a big heart and a big temper to match, and he gets knocked around more than Wile E. Coyote in a Looney Tunes segment. He spends most of “The Greatest Robot on Earth” being kidnapped and hanging out with the sultan, but Pluto spreads the wealth by letting the other roboticists be the damsel in distress throughout the plot.
In Pluto, he’s mostly characterized by doing kindly old man shit (do you recognize that robot dog and how it definitely influenced Ochanomizu’s design for Bobby?), but it is absolutely the kind of stuff the original Hiroshi Ochanomizu would do. He gets treated with more on-screen respect in Pluto than in Astro Boy, but only because he isn’t as cartoony. The animation team made damn sure to have the physics of his stomach work not like those of an innocent-at-heart anime girl’s titties when he’s enthusiastically running to the next big important thing, and that’s exactly the right spirit for a creator to have towards this character. A+ job, M2.
Also, in the manga only, Ochanomizu is the facilitator for the single most entertaining referential gag in all of Urasawa’s works: the police dog car diagram. This was cut in the anime.
In the postscript of Pluto: UrasawaXTezuka volume 5, manga critic and lecturer Tomohiko Murakami observes that “Urasawa’s depictions of Professor Tenma and Professor Ochanomizu almost appear to be [his] perspective on two different aspects of Osamu Tezuka’s character.” I don’t necessarily disagree, especially given the commentary Tezuka gave regarding Atom’s status as a “monster”, but I think that Ochanomizu and Tenma also more generally represent the “dark” and “light” side of progress and science. This is likely what Tezuka intended for them, too, back when he was writing the series.
But Tenma is just a hot mess. For the duration of “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, he was more or less emotionally stable up until the “death” of Atom (and guess what? He totally enabled Atom’s increase in strength to 1,000,000, despite Ochanomizu constantly advising Atom not to do), though his general moodiness and instability is a defining character trait for much of the series. He gets better over time, but make no mistake: he is an eccentric, reclusive, and vain disaster man.
In Pluto, Urasawa lets Tenma’s disaster qualities shine alongside his signature ego, moodiness, cynicism, and destructive tendencies. This man self-sabotages like it’s his job. He also flings his creations around willy-nilly and never thinks about the consequences, and that’s why he has a hand in a significant number of the most harmful and destructive events in the extended Astro Boy universe somehow, including in Pluto.
Tenma’s rejection of Atom at the dinner table in Pluto is way classier than his breakdowns in the original Astro Boy manga, but I liked the gravitas of the scene and the over-the-top vibe of the fancy dinner in the sunset. Tenma’s portrayals throughout different series run the gamut from “frenetic cartoon maniac” to “vanilla un-stellar dad” to “Phantom of the Opera”, and this is a nice lean towards the latter end of the scale.
His constant contest over ownership of Atom/influence over Atom with the Ministry of Science (and specifically one Hiroshi Ochanomizu) extends beyond “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, though, and I think elements of their more direct conflicts are very present throughout Pluto. I love an old man fight, and it seems Urasawa does, too.
But goddamn is it satisfying to see Ochanomizu tell Tenma to shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Apparently, their dynamic is so popular that it inspired a completely new series set in the alternate universe where they not only go to college together, but are best friends. If you want something fluffier than Pluto where the old men aren’t old, go read Atom: The Beginning, I guess.
And, like, sure. This is all great. But sans the extended old man drama, many of these side-by-sides have been pretty faithful to “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, and that is NOT what Makoto Tezka asked for.
Pluto as a Remix of Astro Boy
North No. 2, called Monar in “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, is generally the same robot as in his original portrayal, but instead of just going to fight Pluto, he stars alongside new character Paul Duncan in a brand new story about pianos and music and being blind and growing past trauma to accept others into the heart. Tezuka’s Kuroo Hazama (Black Jack) was even there in Paul Duncan’s memories. It had everything: crying old people and kids, medical drama, orphan trauma, mama trauma, prostitution implications, castles, the emptiness of fame and fortune, singing, an android dreaming of more than just electric sheep, long monologues, and an emotional goodbye where one character stares longingly (even if he can’t actually see anything) at the other knowing they shall never return.
I’ll just say it: Turkey’s Brando is a total red shirt in “The Greatest Robot on Earth”. Meanwhile, Urasawa gave him a family, a love of Turkish drinking culture, a friendship and rivalry with Hercules, and a penchant to dabble in illogical forces like luck, and a classic tearjerker death. Urasawa gave him the world.
In the anime, Brando is among my favorites. Y’all can swoon over your twink Epsilon or whatever, but it’s Brando over randos for me!
Chochi Chochi Ababa transformed into Saddam Hussein—er, Pluto’s King Darius XIV. One is a cartoon villain who provides an opportunity to learn a basic moral lesson, and the other is a motherfucking war criminal. I think that's a sufficiently mature new twist on an old concept.
Of all the characters present in Pluto, Atom himself is likely the one that gave Urasawa and Nagasaki the most grief, if only because he is the one and only Astro Boy, hero of justice, and if his portrayal wasn’t popular, they’d probably be sent to manga hell forever.
For me personally, one of the most gratifying details regarding his portrayal is how quickly he will lie while maintaining the lie that robots can’t and don’t lie. This line of thinking, as well as the implication that Atom follows Asimov’s Laws more because he wants to, not because he has to follow his programming, is something that became more and more apparent the longer the original Astro Boy ran even if none of the other characters directly said anything about it. Speaking as a fan, I also think it’s nice that Urasawa makes the most of upholding Atom’s observed personality traits throughout adaptations. That he made Atom a deeply curative flavor of an insect kid is a grounded, but nice touch.
(It may also be worth noting that Osamu Tezuka had a known fascination with insects. The “Mushi” in Mushi Productions means “insect”. I don’t know how intentional that was, but it seems Pluto’s Atom may have been intended as a chip off the ol’ Tezuka block whether he was his “monster” or not.)
But as lovely and detailed as Urasawa’s embellishments on these characters is, this is still not what Makoto Tezka asked of him. So far, these characters are strikingly similar to the existing “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, and apparently, if Tezka’s interview in the postscript of Pluto: UrasawaXTezuka volume 2 is to be believed, he told Urasawa multiple times to keep revising until he made it his own! It seems Atom really became Urasawa’s monster, too!
The Greatest Robot on Earth: Astro Boy and Pluto Part I
So you’ve just watched Pluto on Netflix, but you didn’t know that it is the best Astro Boy fanfiction ever made. Great! Or maybe, hypothetically, you’ve read classic Astro Boy but don’t know about Pluto, or, as it was called for the Viz release, Pluto: UrasawaXTezuka. Well, awesome, because I’m about to give you all the details behind their creators and creation and give you a side-by-side of the classic Astro Boy and this new(ish)-fangled Pluto.
C'mon. Look under the read more line. You know you want to.
If you want to skip to the manga side-by-sides, check out part II and part III. Or, you can read the whole thing in one go on Ao3.
Context and Background
Tezuka, Urasawa, and the Showa Era
So, let me start with the basics: What is Astro Boy? What ain’t Astro Boy?
Tetsuwan Atom, known in the west as Astro Boy, is the most well-known manga created by the “Godfather of Manga/God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka in the 1950s, but it metastasized into multiple anime series, games, merch, spin offs of various types, and that one CGI movie in 2009. The series follows the adventures of robot hero Atom (called Astro in the west) as he fights for the benefit of humans and robots to create a harmonious future for both.
Here’s a timeline of Astro Boy- and Pluto-related events to help you visualize what came out when and why there were multiple runs of the Astro Boy manga. For our purposes, the most important thing to understand is that, even though Astro Boy was a kids’ series, its attitude and themes, as written by Tezuka, reflected the incredible shifts in Japan after World War II and the ever-present shadow of it still left in the minds of its citizens.
But before we get into all that, let’s talk about Osamu Tezuka himself.
Osamu Tezuka's Legacy and His Monster
If you, sweet reader, are a self-appointed weeb and you don’t know the name Osamu Tezuka, I’m personally scandalized. Still, here’s the short version: he was a workaholic mangaka that many hail as the creator of modern shonen manga (historians get heated about when, how, and if Japanese comics made the jump to modern manga, so do your own research, but Astro Boy is definitely the most famous worldwide contender for this title instead of, say, Tezuka’s first work Shin Takarajima/New Treasure Island), and he’s the guy who created the world’s first serialized made-for-TV anime with a sequential plot and sold it as a loss leader to get it on the air.
Arguably, the precedent he set in order to get the anime-ified Astro Boy to screens everywhere is a major reason that the anime industry is so unsustainable, but we’re not here to talk about that.
Tezuka-sensei was a prolific, passionate, and deeply beloved artist from Osaka who tackled damn near every manga genre and arguably created some of them before he died of stomach cancer (and overwork, if we’re being honest here.) I’ve only shown a few of the 400-plus titles he created to give a brief overview of the scope of his work. Since I’m talking to you as a fan, not a historian, I specifically chose titles I own or have read most closely.
Message to Adolf, which was also published as Adolf, is about Nazis. Okay, that’s only part of what it’s about, but we’ll revisit this one in more detail later.
Black Jack is probably Tezuka’s second most famous work, and yeah, it’s broadly categorized as a shonen. It follows the adventures of underground doctor and genius surgeon Kuroo Hazama who dresses like a vampire, acts like a black-hearted and preachy douchebag, and endears himself to everyone who interacts with him.
Dororo is a historical fantasy thriller about a guy regaining parts of his sacrificed-upon-his-birth body by slaying demons and uncovering the mysterious past of his companion, the child thief Dororo.
On the flipside, Princess Knight is a shojo for younger kids about a princess with the heart of a boy and the heart of a girl who uses her two hearts to genderbend as needed to maintain her claim over her kingdom and keep it out of the hands of the wicked.
Meanwhile, Ode to Kirihito is an extremely mature medical fantasy drama that questions when and how a person still maintains their humanity and when they become a beast in their own eyes and the eyes of others. As I’m sure you can tell, such themes exploring what humanity means are almost as common to Tezuka’s works as a medical professional featuring as a main character. He needed to use his degree for something, I suppose.
In fact, the common conflict between Tezuka’s bright, young, optimistic, passionate, independently-minded, and opinionated doctor main characters and the corrupt, constricting, slow-moving, old-fashioned medical institution probably offers the most insight as to why Tezuka chose to pursue manga over medicine. I don’t think this was the only reason, but from reading his manga, I feel founded in asserting that the stifling status quo of established medicine was a contributing factor.
Tezuka never made any bones about putting himself and his feelings directly in his work. He spoke what was on his mind throughout his manga, and his introductions to various Astro Boy stories are no exception. He was also transparent about his struggle to make sure his works maintained popularity even when he resented any changes others suggested he make in pursuit of this goal. In general, Tezuka-sensei didn’t take kindly to the idea of others influencing the direction of his creative visions basically ever, if the story of the Jungle Emperor: Onward, Leo! anime is any indication. (He’s just like me for real.)
If Tezuka-sensei wanted to write about war, he did. If he wanted to write about rape or trauma or abortion or racism, he did. He jumped on the chance to write about sex ed and, well, several of those other topics in Apollo’s Song.
If that scares you, don’t worry. Most of the time, Astro Boy was usually about the nature of war, human rights, the nature of humanity, and robots. It was also written for grade school kids.
Tezuka’s penchant for frank honesty wasn’t limited to commentary made within his manga, but also about his manga, and his statements on Astro Boy are some of his more standout claims on that front. That he called Atom a “monster” and said he created him “for the exposure and the money” doesn’t paint a flattering picture of his attitude towards his most famous work.
But, in truth, his distaste for compromising the truth of his characters at others’ suggestions probably betrays his real feelings about Atom. As much as he may be Tezuka’s monster, he is also his pure-hearted hero of justice and beloved creation. And, by his own admission, his feelings towards his work during the creation of “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, the Astro Boy story on which Pluto is based, were distinctly positive (even if at one point the background characters remark that Atom is a monster!)
The readership’s opinions on “The Greatest Robot on Earth” were likewise pretty positive. Among those readers was Naoki Urasawa, who credits the story with inspiring his deep love of manga. (His recounting of the impression the story left on him in this interview with Netflix Anime is incredibly sweet.)
Naoki Urasawa and His Monster
Who is Naoki Urasawa, besides the guy who co-wrote and illustrated the 2003 Pluto manga? Well, Urasawa-sensei is my favorite mangaka, so jot that down, and he’s known for his suspense thrillers, layered narratives, melodramatic showstopper moments, and also stories about cute girls doing sports. He is also a musician and guest professor alongside his editor and Pluto co-writer, Takashi Nagasaki.
20th Century Boys, named in part for a T.Rex song, is arguably his most famous work and it is heavy on the 1960s-1970s nostalgia, but in a good way! The inherent optimism, kindness, hope, and passion (and sometimes outright cheese) of every Urasawa character and title never feels insincere. The series is a seinen with the heart and whimsy of a shonen (and personally, I feel like such a description holds true for even Uraswa’s darker works.)
If you don’t want to read 20th Century Boys or its sequel, 21st Century Boys, you can watch the live-action movie adaptations.
Meanwhile, Monster is my favorite manga and anime. Herr Doktor Tenma (yeah, like Astro Boy’s Tenma), a Japanese brain surgeon practicing in 1980s Germany, saves the life of a little boy only to learn years later that the kid is a mass murderer, his murdering ways continue into his adulthood, and he will likely never be caught. Only Tenma knows the truth, so he embarks on a quest to stop the “monster” he revived.
I have less familiarity with Yawara! and Happy!, but the first is a sports comedy about a girl struggling to balance an athletic career and a normal life, and the second is a sports drama about a girl pursuing tennis to avoid becoming a prostitute.
Pineapple Army is about an ex-merc’s adventures working as a self-defense instructor. Urasawa illustrated this one, but did not write it. I suppose I could have included Billy Bat as a representative work instead, but I honestly didn’t want to start unpacking that—though I will say that Billy Bat is probably the closest answer Urasawa has to Tezuka’s Message to Adolf since they both spin around the concept of a rumor or idea causing the world to lose its collective mind.
So what motivated Urasawa to add Pluto to his body of work? Mostly his editor/producer and co-writer, Takashi Nagasaki, probably. Er, that’s not very flattering. Let me try again.
Japanese media loves to emphasize passing its passions and convictions to the new generations (source: have you ever read or watched a mainstream action shonen in your life? If you’ve been paying attention to anything I’ve written about My Hero Academia or read the manga itself, I’m sure you think as much as I do that pointing out such a thing feels like beating a dead horse), and Urasawa’s (and later, the M2 team’s) motivation in creating Pluto is no exception. As Urasawa put it in his Netflix interview, “It’s like we received the baton from Tezuka-sensei, and would pass it on to the new generation."
And Osamu Tezuka-sensei’s son, Macoto Tezka (who probably spells his name that way so people don’t get him mixed up with his dad) let Urasawa and Nagasaki do it so long as they made sure the new retelling was something new, exciting, and unique when compared to the original! And while the pressure to succeed in this endeavor probably damn well near killed Urasawa-sensei, I think Tezka made the right call!
But if the goal was to pass on this Astro Boy story, which was written by a REALLY old dude, beloved by kinda-old dudes to the new generation, and practically unheard-of by today’s anklebiters, what kind of direction was the damn thing meant to take?! And why was the answer “fantasy Gulf War Astro Boy fanfiction”?!
Astro Boy in the Eyes of the New Breed
Astro Boy may be a series meant for younger kids, but it didn’t exist in a vacuum separate from the climate of the world from which it came. Tezuka would probably roll over in his grave if it did. The work, its messages, and its sensibilities were grade-A, postwar Showa stuff—particularly its reflections on pacifism, war, and power.
Nagasaki’s summation from the postscript of Pluto: UrasawaXTezuka volume 8 sums up Tezuka and his generation’s outlook pretty handily, but I think it’s helpful to show exemplify this outlook and contrast it with the outlook of Nagasaki and Urasawa’s generation through manga!
Please observe this key moral-of-the-story panel from “The Greatest Robot on Earth” published in 1964 alongside this panel from late-1980s Dragonball featuring Muten Roshi stating the core idea of his series. I’ve chosen Dragonball as a point of comparison not just because of its notoriety as a big shonen title created for a similar audience as the original Astro Boy, but because creator Akira Toriyama was born in 1955 and, much like his contemporary Urasawa, who was born in 1960, “The Greatest Robot on Earth” left a deep impression on him. (Despite what the caption implies, the photographed page in this tweet actually features Toriyama’s admiration of Tezuka, though I don’t doubt the article from which it is pulled also includes Tezuka’s feelings about Toriyama. I ran it through Google Translate a few times and then laughed when I realized Toriyama made a self-deprecating joke about his poor reading skills, since he points out that he was in third grade when he read “The Greatest Robot on Earth” in the magazine Second Grader.)
To Astro Boy’s Ochanomizu, strength ain’t all that great, and strength for strength’s sake is foolish and vain. In fact, Professor Ochanomizu, who is the moral compass for most Astro Boy adventures, doesn’t value the pursuit of strength the way modern shonen, and several other characters within his own series, do. Hell, he doesn’t give Uran any superpowers even though Atom, the robot boy with nuclear power fueling his 100,000 horsepower (later 1,000,000 horsepower) and seven special powers is her brother!
At the time of Ochanomizu’s creation, real-life Japan still freshly remembered World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; no the fuck Ochanomizu (and Tezuka, through him) wasn’t about to endorse or create robots that doubled as weapons. That nonsense was for other, “more violent” robot manga, or the slew of other misguided and corrupt roboticists within the Astro Boy canon.
Well, except there was that one time Ochanomizu helped create the artificial sun, but he didn’t ever intend for it to become a weapon.
Meanwhile, while Roshi also does not believe in strength for strength’s sake, he absolutely pursues it and encourages his pupils to do the same while fostering their awareness of the hardship, dangers, and fun of their path. Even with his warning, the Dragonball cast’s pursuit of strength is portrayed as alluring despite the double-edge, much like promoting national pride (and power) increases a nation’s convictions in its unity and identity but also draws the negative attention of other, possibly more powerful nations. Andy Yee succinctly frames this still-impending crossroads about how Japan might use its nationalism—its “pursuit of strength” in Dragonball lingo—in his 2013 article “The Twin Faces of Japanese Nationalism”. In it, he quotes this 2012 Project Syndicate article by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. pointing out that nationalism could be a force for positivity if tempered with reform and control, but could also cause the country to start conflict with its neighbors and shit the bed if left to run wild. (The conversation surrounding the topic of Japanese nationalism continues beyond 1980s manga or the 2013 socio-political scene, of course.)
Unlike Atom or Ochanomizu, Dragonball’s Goku finds such attention alluring: his heart’s desire is to fight strong opponents. It is his ikigai (“reason to live”) and at the end of the Cell Games, it becomes his, uh, shinigai (“reason to die”), if you will.
Did I lose you? I just asserted that the messages in these shonen about acquiring strength = messages about acquiring national pride and power. At its best, the Dragonball-esque attitude towards increasing national pride (and combat strength) is empowering, inspirational, and bolsters the good-hearted. At its worst, it could feed into a cycle of toxicity, unproductive self-importance and, ultimately, flat-out Japanese nationalism and war (and at its stupidest, it just becomes Let’s Fighting Love. Protect my balls.) Since classic Dragonball is a gag manga, I doubt Toriyama was ever thinking this hard about the messages of his work in regards to world history, but that’s sort of the point: Toriyama and his generation likely weren’t thinking this hard about it. Dragonball’s authorship lacks the crushing, firsthand memory of the consequences of unbalanced and misused power that the authorship of Astro Boy has.
In other words, Astro Boy’s cast pursued scientific advancement while lamenting the inevitable folly and destruction mankind brought forth with it so that Son Goku could fish naked, kick ass, get his ass kicked, meet god, kick ass, ghost god, ghost his family and friends, come back, kick more ass, repeat this cycle like twice, and get everyone to thank him for it. Dragonball’s more optimistic, power-fantasy-ish outlook broadly categorizes the outlook generation of New Breeds (shinjinrui) born around the 1960s like Toriyama, Urasawa, and Nagasaki before the reality introduced in their emerging adulthood hit them like a fucking truck.
The New Breed generation earned its name because their outlook and values, which were developed during a time of economic plenty and peace, seemed totally divorced from the values of the generations that lived during or immediately after World War II.
“They might as well be a different species,” snarked their elders, probably, though not necessarily out of bland hatred—Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Gundam series portrays his Newtypes, who are meant to be at least somewhat analogous to the real-life shinjinrui, in a generally more sympathetic light and occasionally a positive one (if they aren’t being used by someone else, that is.)
Tomino, who was born in 1941, also worked on Astro Boy at Mushi Pro.
Baggage between generations is not unique to any one country, obviously. But in this case, it seems Urasawa and Nagasaki decided to tap into it and incorporate the core beliefs, hopes, and grief of their generation and those of the generations before them into Pluto.
Taking this approach was also the perfect excuse for Urasawa to distill everything he knew and loved about Tezuka’s works into one transformative manga. And don’t just trust Tomohiko Murakami on that—trust me as a fan of both Tezuka and Urasawa. It’s very noticeable that Urasawa and Nagasaki pulled from all things Tezuka to create Pluto even as it incorporated new ideas, including criticism of the Gulf War.
…So it’s probably a good thing I took the time to explain all this stuff to you so that you can now start to see it too! You can thank me later. Let’s see how the classic “The Greatest Robot on Earth” compares to Pluto.
The Greatest Robot on Earth: Astro Boy and Pluto Part III
Part I is here. Part II, where the manga comparisons start, is here. The entire set of slides and text is also available on Ao3.
Pluto as Urasawa’s Own Work
Given Tezka's core instruction, I don’t find it surprising that Urasawa Urasawa’d the ever-lovin’ shit out of Atom, because I’d recognize the similarities between Atom’s snail scene and Monster’s moth scene all the way from outer space! But where Milos chose to crush the moth in his despair and disillusionment regarding the nature of new life and procreation and how his mom never wanted him, Atom controlled his hatred and comforted Ochanomizu despite his own agony. (Note to the Monster fans: Wolfgang Grimmer's contrasting attitude towards the moth is analogous to Atom's in that he makes the choice not to lose his interest in the things that make him human like Roberto/Adolph Reinhardt, his friend from Kinderheim 511 who loved insects, or destroy it in fury like Milos.)
Atom’s furious anti-proton bomb equation and breakout followed by his swift internal denial to give into his violent urges isn’t just a callback to “Astro Reborn” wherein Tenma “turned Atom evil”—it’s a dramatic way for Urasawa to assert that, while he does have it in him to become one, Atom is not a monster.
Grimmer’s rediscovery and acceptance of his own humanity in this scene would also allow him to be right at home with the ennui of Pluto, too, I must say.
It shouldn’t even be a little bit surprising that Urasawa chose to have Gesicht, called Gerhardt in “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, feature as the initial primary character. His detailed research and love for Germany begged for new life after Monster, and dear Gesicht and his beautiful wife Helene are the perfect outlet.
“The Greatest Robot on Earth”’s Gerhardt made a house call to visit Atom, was made of a zeronium alloy, and shot special bullets, it’s true, but I think anyone who asserted that he is identical to Pluto’s Gesicht would be kidding themselves.
In his postscript essay, Murakami posited that, as a counterpoint to Tenma and Ochanomizu reflecting two sides of Osamu Tezuka, Atom and Pluto embodied Urasawa’s push-pull struggle with his feelings towards the late master and his work. Well, I think if that can be true, so can the notion that Gesicht is the closest thing Urasawa has to an embodiment of his own adult self’s creations and work while Atom is the echo of Tezuka as he exists in Urasawa’s perceptions as well as the the avatar of what inspired him to pursue manga.
Gesicht may have died in the story, but not before imparting the core of his being to Atom in order to reach a new level of mutual understanding and revive the then-out-of-commission Atom with a fury and passion so strong that it could not be ignored. Atom with the memories and heart of Gesicht is Urasawa and Tezuka both existing as one, and blasting off towards the future.
Or maybe I’m just waxing poetic. We could cook this tomato using multiple methods, but it would still come out as the same kind of pasta sauce in the end.
Adolf Haas is a particularly interesting Tezuka case study because he doesn’t really have anything to do with the original “The Greatest Robot on Earth”. Instead, he and his brother appear to be the product of putting all the primary characters from Tezuka’s Message to Adolf in a blender. See? I told you I’d get back to Message to Adolf.
Message to Adolf, considered Tezuka's last complete long-running work, is the story of how the existence of documents supporting a particular rumor—that Adolf Hitler has Jewish blood—tears the lives of Sohei Toge, a Japanese sports reporter who finds himself with a target on his back while investigating the murder of his communist brother; Adolf Kaufmann, a Japanese-German boy born in Japan who begins the series pure and heroic but is corrupted by the indoctrination of the Third Reich; and Kaufmann’s childhood friend Adolf Kamil, an Ashkenazi Jew living in Japan who later joins the Israeli-Lebanese Conflict and perpetuates the story’s cycle of vengeance and violence, into itty, bitty, bloody pieces. Only Toge survives to the end.
The story of Adolf Haas’ bid for vengeance in Pluto touches on details from all these characters’ stories, but unlike the Adolfs in Message to Adolf, he has a chance to put his hatred to rest and continue to live on with his family. He even has top-secret information about a dictator on his computer that he didn’t initially realize was crucial to maintaining or destroying the political status quo.
Adolf also gets his very own Monster-esque, “Whatcha gonna kill with that gun?” moment, which I find incredibly funny.
But the character that Urasawa arguably most made his own is Pluto (sometimes called Bruton in certain dubs) himself. At first, he is hidden throughout much of Pluto like a monster or serial killer in any self-respecting thriller/horror while in Astro Boy, the audience meets him right off the bat and learns that a sultan built him to kick the metal butts of the world’s seven most advanced robots. But Pluto’s Pluto isn’t just hiding his monstrous form—he is also hiding the fact that he isn’t really Pluto, but Abullah's robot son Sahad trapped in a new body.
If you’ve read Monster, you likely noticed immediately that Sahad is Monster’s Karl Neumann/Schuwald (make his nose smaller and Japanese-ify him, and he’s suspiciously similar to Billy Bat’s Kevin Yamagata!) For those that don’t know Karl, it’s his lot in life to be totally caught up in daddy angst until an ethereal blonde or silver-haired guy reaches out to him and knocks over the dominoes to allow change into his life one way or another.
In Monster, Johan is favored over Karl by rich sunuvabitch Hans Georg Schuwald, Karl’s (unknowing) biological father, and it is assumed he sees Johan in more of a son/heir capacity than the fuck-up Karl. Shit ensues, Johan dramatically eliminates the possibility of him becoming Schuwald’s son or heir, but he lets Schuwald live so that he and Karl can reconcile.
In Pluto, Sahad is only able to destroy Epsilon because Epsilon basically forfeits. This does not solve his problem, but Epsilon manages to see him for who he is, communicates this with Atom (sort of), and opens the door for Sahad to regain his sense of self and shake free of his father’s will. Yay!
Ok, so Brau-1589 is the most fun Easter egg in Pluto. He’s a Hannibal Lecter-ified Blue Knight. His open bloodthirst has increased tenfold in comparison to his Astro Boy portrayal, but that’s definitely the shape-shifter Blue Bon lying there in ruins.
Finally, the last big, giant, and noticeable new thing Urasawa added was the United States of Thracia’s open, by-name involvement in the story’s plot and conflict. Personally, I think it was rather gentle of Urasawa to not just blast the USA by name, but I suppose as a monolith, USAmericans are fragile and sensitive and Tezuka Productions still wanted to sell this manga in the states.
Dr. Roosevelt, as well as the teddy bear face and mouth for the supercomputer may actually be an Umataro Tenma creation. The Pluto manga began serialization in 2003 as part of a concentrated “birthday celebration” series of reworks of the original Astro Boy—you see, in-story, Atom was “born” in April 2003 (source: I know this as a fan.)
The 2003 Astro Boy anime, produced by Tezuka Productions (which I mention only because it means that Makoto Tezka likely knew all about the details of the series throughout planning and production), premiered on April 6, 2003. The series introduces the cute and manipulative bea-chan, or micro bears, one of many Tenma-adjacent creations (Tenma’s robot clone made them using plans originally created by Tenma, okay? It’s complicated) used for nefarious purposes, in an episode that premiered in Japan on September 21, 2003. These bears’ MO is basically to manipulate and socially isolate people and get them to do whatever they want, which is basically the same thing Dr. Roosevelt does.
Pluto’s first chapter came out in Big Comic Original on September 5, 2003, but its story was completed well in advance under supervision from Makoto Tezuka. The Dr. Roosevelt supercomputer and bear may be related somehow to the micro bears, which are a known Tenma creation in the extended Astro Boy universe.
What I’m saying is that Tenma was so sloppy that he caused the Gulf War. Look at the red string on this corkboard. I’m not crazy.
Beyond Pluto
What’s Next?
Nothing! Go read Monster or something!
Anyway, here are the sources for the stuff on my slides in case you need them.
[IMAGE ID: three seven-striped horizontal flags. the stripes vary in sizes; large, large, small, medium, small, large, and large. the first flag's colors, from top to bottom, are as follows: deep dark blue, bright cool purple, bright light blue, medium green, pastel orange, light brown, and dark warm brown. the second flag's colors, from top to bottom, are as follows: dull blue, dull purple, bright light blue, medium green, cream, light brown, and dull brown. the third flag's colors, from top to bottom, are as follows: dark purple-grey, cool grey, light cool grey, dull seafoam, green off-white, medium green, and dull brown-grey. each flag has a heart in the middle. the first and second flags have slightly edited versions of the mars symbol, and the venus symbol in front of the heart. the second flag has the planet pluto's symbol, and a stylized icon of a sloth in front of the heart. END ID.]
bright4hen: a flag for those who identify as bright/a hen who prefer, prioritize, or have exclusive relationships (of any kind) with other individuals who identify as a hen/bright.
pluto4sloth: a flag for those who identify as pluto/a sloth who prefer, prioritize, or have exclusive relationships (of any kind) with other individuals who identify as a sloth/pluto.
