Customer Reviews

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 1

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In a world where robots and humans work together and robots are treated (by most) like sentient beings comes a world where the planet has robotic heroes and even police squadrons of human and robot partners.

Of course, it's not an all perfect world as there are humans who rather not co-exist with the robots. And someone makes their agenda known when someone has decided to disrupt that peaceful coexistence by destroying the great robots and possibly murdering those who protect the rights for robots.

With only several of the great robots left, one of the great robots from Interpol must protect the other living great robots from destruction from a mysterious murderer/destroyer who may be human or robot.

This is the basis of the story "PLUTO", a reimagining of "Astro Boy - The Greatest Robot on Earth" written by manga great Naoki Urasawa ("Yawara", "Monster", "20th Century Boys" and many more titles) and co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki. The Astro Boy or Tetsuwan Atom stories are based on the popular works of Osamu Tezuka and with cooperation from Tezuka Productions, this manga project is managed by Makoto Tezuka.

The ongoing award winning manga series debuted in Japan back in 2003 and has captivated readers but now the popular manga arrives in the US courtesy of VIZ Media.

The first volume of "PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka" features the first seven acts and ends with a several-page discussion between Naoki Urasawa and Makoto Tezuka plus a postscript by Takayuki Matsutani, Presiden of Tezuka Productions, Inc.

"PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka" vol. 01 was definitely an enjoyable first volume. One of the biggest differences from Osamu Tezuka's artwork and Urasawa's is the fact that Urasawa tends to go for a more realistic approach and also adding quite a bit of detail from surrounding objects or shadows.

There is a side of darkness that Urasawa has with his work. From "Monster" to "20th Century Boys", you get a good balance of innocence and purity but also a side of darkness which makes his works so appealing.

In this case, for "PLUTO", the storyline is so unique. Sure, we have seen robots become problems for humanity in anime and manga series such as "AD Police" but to find a storyline where robots are revered for helping humanity and living lives like humans and almost be treated like equals was quite intriguing.

So, far the pacing of the series in the first seven acts were well done and captivating.

With great storytelling by Urasawa and Nagasaki, it makes you wonder what will happen with the remaining five great robots. I'm definitely hooked and I know you will be hooked once you finish the first volume. "PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka" is highly recommended!

This manga heavily reminds me of the books "iRobot" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" but in a good way. I love tales where technology has advanced to the point where there is a fine line between between cyborgs and humans in terms of their abilities to feel emotions. This manga has a few interesting small stories in just the first volume and I LOVE manga series that string along a lot of relevant smaller stories to make one grand story. I have no idea if this series will continue at this pace but I'm already hooked, volumes 2 and 3 arrived on my doorstep yesterday and I plan on reading them as soon as I can!

Pluto is one of the best sci-fi comics produced in a long time, good enough qualitywise to be adapted into live action. It'd certainly make a great TV series for Syfy. Who'd imagine Tezuka's material, including an appearance by Astroboy at the end of volume 1, could be reimagined and drawn with such seriousness? :)

Isaac Asimov invented the three laws of robotics, which have come to be accepted as a given in most stories that deal with robots. The first and most important law being that a robot may not cause harm to a human through action or inaction. This is often an important point in robot stories, including Pluto.

Based upon Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, Pluto reinterprets the story "The Greatest Robot on Earth," expanding it into a futuristic murder-mystery. The action centers around Gesicht, a humanoid detective robot in a future world where robots live alongside humans and some are even national heroes. At the beginning of volume one, we learn that the Swiss mountain guide, forest protector, and war veteran robot, Mont Blanc, has been completely destroyed while battling a forest fire. The next day a robot rights defender is found dead in his apartment, and his body has been set up so that he appears to have huge horns on his head. Confusingly, only another robot could have killed the extremely powerful Mont Blanc, but a robot could not have killed the human (because of the first law). Gesicht is assigned to the case by Interpol and he tries to make sense of the strangely connected murders. A pattern emerges as more robot deaths occur: someone is killing the seven greatest robots in the world, of which Gesicht is one.

Pluto is award winning for a reason: it's an excellent comic series even without it's connection to Astro Boy (also awesome!). Naoki Urasawa's art is complex but not confusing. It's also much more realistic than most Japanese comics, making it a perfect introduction to manga. I love his style - the big noses especially (no idea why, I guess because so often people in comics are too perfectly proportioned). I loved this entire series, and I'm sad that it's ended, but very happy that it introduced me to Urasawa.

Apparently to honor Astro Boy and his creator, Tezuka, a up and coming artist, Urasawa, wrote a manga title Pluto. The official title is Pluto - Tezuka X Urasawa. It a murder mystery/action manga about a high tech android police agent, seems similar to robot FBI. This manga is based around the investigation of the recent death of the world renowned robot Mont-Blanc, that might be by foul play.

The art reminds me of Full metal alchemist. It was well drawn and very detailed. It is seriously drawn during story progression, cartoony during comic relief, and sketchy/artsy during high emotion. I think this is a perfect flow of artwork.

The manga veers off to a side story for a couple of chapters about a combat robot turned butler named North #2 that is a tad dry and predictable, but it holds strong to the end with the final frame being the re-introduction of Atom, "Astro Boy". My favorite part of the manga was the short side story about the death of a normal police robot and how the main character, Gesicht, has to tell the robot wife of the police robot's dead. It was like a robot version of the cliche "police drama doorstep death confession to the wife scene".

It's a great read for anyone that likes robot manga, murder mystery manga, Astro boy, anyone that liked the artwork of Full metal alchemist, or anyone that read classical manga.

In the 1980s, re-imagining superheroes was all the rage in the West. Starting with Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns, Marvel and DC began taking the most beloved comic book characters of the previous decades-- Superman, Batman, Daredevil, and all the rest-- and re-telling their stories in more mature, realistic, and adult ways. Once begun, the trend never stopped.

It's taken thirty years, but now Pluto has done the same thing to manga, with comparable goals and ambition to the great re-imaginings by Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

Pluto began running in Japan in 2003, where it is still being serialized but nearing its conclusion after 60+ chapters and 7-odd volumes. In short, it's a more realistic re-telling of "The Greatest Robot on Earth," a cartoony, book-length Astro Boy children's story by the great Osamu Tezuka, collected in Astro Boy (Volume 3). It's darker, more adult, and more complex than Tezuka's original parable of war and peace, and expands on its characters and universe.

Reams are starting to be written about Pluto as it receives award after award, but suffice it to say that any lover of intelligent comic books should give the series a try. It's one of-- if not THE-- most ambitious and intelligent manga of the last decade.

Pluto Vol. 1 is a good manga, but that's it. Those who swallow all the "groundbreaking" hype might be disappointed. If the only manga you've ever read before is Love Hina then yes, this will rock your world. Otherwise, it's a good start to a story that increasingly fails exactly because it doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done to death already.

Nostalgic readers tuning in to see Astroboy again need to wait until volume 2 for his story. Buy that one too, then quit while you're ahead. That's where the series peaks, then it's all downhill from there. The storytelling quickly gets politicized and commandeered by surprisingly trite and omnipresent messages about prejudice (Guess what? It's bad.) and an embarrassingly naive straw-man argument against the Iraq war (Guess what? Starting a war solely to murder innocent women and children is also bad.) -- he's not exactly going out on a limb to take any controversial or enlightening stands here. If that's what passes for deep and groundbreaking for you, then I'm sorry, but the Older Teen rating means you're probably not old enough to read this series anyway.

The Pluto universe, with it's inconsistent use of technology and intelligent machines, is inevitably more a facade of convenience than a good sci-fi universe. This is fine at first, but it starts getting silly after a while when the rules keep changing to fit the preaching.

Your money is better spent on Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys. It's extremely long-winded but a lot more fun.