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Reviewed by David Rasmussen This collaboration is like the ultimate pairing of talent. Urasawa, preeminent manga artiste, inspiring long-time plot collaborator Takashi Nagasaki, and bring forth onto the world (with the help of Osamu Tesuka’s son Macoto Tezuka) a “daring” revision of Osamu Tesuka’s classic Astro Boy... Oh-kay, not to cause a major uproar in the manga community but... I see this is important, but as of this day and age, it’s not groundbreaking or innovative. Right now, just about everyone is going back to the wellspring on their classics and revisioning them in some way. The most recent example is Star Trek. It just got a fresh revisioning at the hands of J.J. Abrams in the eleventh Star Trek movie (just called Star Trek, of course). So yes, this is important, and yet... and yet I can’t say it’s innovative because, well, it’s a common thing. Everyone is trying to see the classics in bold new ways (which will also cover Astro Boy sooner or later). In this new world, a world with humans and machines co-existing, there’s a lot of hate going on towards robots. There’s a robot killer on the loose, hunting down and killing those who aren't human by nature, then (later in the volume) a KKK kind of robot hate group surfaces with their own anti-robot agenda... Oh, and Astro Boy? Totally human-looking… he’s not supposed to be totally human-looking, right? I remember that much... Hmm… well, anyway, people are driven to hate by what robots did to their families. For instance, one man driven to hate when a robot falsely accused his father of theft, which drove him to depression and later suicide. Or those driven because of war in which robots fought, and killed many, leaving the survivors with horrific memories of the inhuman things that killed in the name of another country’s false sense of patriotism or a 9-11ish fear of violence against them if they do not do unto others as done unto them. In fact, a great deal of the volume covers just this one hate group and their members, which includes what drives some of them to hate so and why they feel that that hate is justified. Uran has a moment where she befriends a homeless amnesiac robot with a penchant for artistry and bringing flowers back to life… too bad he also seems to be a ghost in a borrowed shell burdened with much too much for his story to be a happy one… oh, but on one ominous note, he knows the name of a mysterious mega war machine that seems to haunt the memories of a survivor of a village massacre, a thing called “Bora”… oh, and in the end of the volume, Pluto, namesake of the lord of the Underworld, arises with orders to put Astro down once and for all. And that's your cliffhanger ending, folks. Tune in next time with Volume 4. Overall, it’s a finely-written piece of manga that's a must have for any Astro Boy fan. The world of Astro Boy couldn’t be more relevant and pertinent now in our time. Finely crafted storytelling with beautiful artwork, a fine edge of character creation of development, and an overall solid performance combine to give you a title that should (if you are like me, a newbie to the works of Tezuka’s Astro Boy) want to dig back into the original series and really get to know about it first hand. I’ll say it one more time just to clear the air: this revisioning is unique, but these days even I can’t say "innovative," because everyone is doing the whole revision thing. But still that doesn't make it bad... A really nice page-turner, and if you can, don’t forget to snap up the first two volumes... Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka gets an A for being all that and a bag of cybernetic wafer chips. Comment on this review of Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka v3 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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