Astro Boy
Astro Boy, known in Japan as Mighty Atom, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's Shōnen from 1952 to 1968, with its 112 chapters collected in 23 volumes by Akita Shoten. Dark Horse Comics published an English translation in 2002. The story follows the eponymous Astro Boy, an android young boy with human emotions who is created by scientist Umataro Tenma in the likeness of his son Tobio after the latter's death in an accident. Eventually, Astro is sold to a robot circus run by ringleader Hamegg, but is saved from his servitude by Professor Ochanomizu. Astro becomes a surrogate son to Ochanomizu who creates a robotic family for Astro and helps him to live a normal life like an average human boy, while accompanying him on his adventures.
The series has been adapted into three anime series produced respectively by the first incarnation of Mushi Production and its direct successor Tezuka Productions, with a fourth in development. The manga was originally adapted for television in 1963 as Astro Boy, the first popular Japanese animated television series, which pioneered and embodied the aesthetics that have characterized anime in general. After enjoying success abroad, Astro Boy was remade in the 1980s as New Mighty Atom, known as Astroboy in other countries, and again in 2003. In November 2007, the titular character was named Japan's envoy for overseas safety.
In 2009, a Hong Kong-American computer-animated film based on the original manga series by Tezuka was released. In March 2015, a trailer was released announcing a new animated series. The success of the manga and anime series led it to becoming a major media franchise consisting of films including a major motion picture, a number of soundtracks and a library of video games. The series was also among the first to embrace mass merchandising, which includes action figures, collectible figurines, food products, clothing, stamps and trading cards. By 2004, the franchise had generated in merchandise sales.
Astro Boy is one of the most successful manga and anime franchises in the world and has become Tezuka's most famous creation. The combined 23 tankōbon volumes have sold over 100 million copies worldwide, making it Tezuka's best-selling manga and one of the best-selling manga series of all time. The 1963 anime series was also highly successful in Japan and the United States. Astro Boy has been praised for its importance in developing the anime and manga industries. It has been featured on numerous lists of the greatest manga and anime of all time and has inspired numerous manga creators.
Plot
Astro Boy is a science fiction series set in a futuristic world where robots co-exist with humans. Its focus is on the adventures of the titular Astro Boy, sometimes called simply Astro, a powerful android created by the head of the Ministry of Science, Doctor Tenma, known as Dr. Astor Boynton II in the 1960s English dub, Dr. Boynton in the 1980s English dub.Dr. Tenma created Astro to replace his son Tobio, 'Astor' in the 1960s English dub, 'Toby' in the 1980s English dub and the 2009 film, who was killed in a car accident. In the 2003 anime, Tobio is shown as having run away from home before the accident. In the 2009 film, Toby's death was caused by an incident with the Peacekeeper, a weaponized robot. Dr. Tenma built and adopted Astro in Tobio's memory and treated Astro as lovingly as if he was the real Tobio.
Dr. Tenma soon realized that the little android could not fill the void of his lost son, especially given that Astro could not grow older or express human aesthetics. In one set of panels in the manga, Astro is shown preferring the mechanical shapes of cubes over the organic shapes of flowers. In the original 1960 edition, Tenma rejected Astro and sold him to a cruel circus owner, Hamegg, the Great Cacciatore in the 1960s English dub. In the 1980 edition, Hamegg kidnapped Astro while Tenma was trying to find him.
In the 2009 film, Tenma rejected Astro simply because he could not stop thinking about Toby, but later during the film, Tenma realized that Astro made credit to replace Tobio. As a result, Tenma decided that he would readopt Astro. None of these events about Astro being rejected or kidnapped in both the 1960 and 1980 anime and in the 2009 film occurred in the 2003, as Astro's birth was given by Professor Ochanomizu.
After some time, Professor Ochanomizu, the new head of the Ministry of Science, co-head of the Ministry of Science in the 2009 film, notices Astro Boy performing in the circus and convinces Hamegg to turn Astro over to him.. He then takes Astro in as his own and treats him gently and warmly, becoming his legal guardian. He soon realizes that Astro has superior powers and skills, as well as the ability to experience human emotions.
Astro then is shown fighting crime, evil, and injustice using his seven powers: 100K horsepower strength, jet flight, high intensity lights in his eyes, adjustable hearing, instant language translation, a retractable machine gun in his hips, and a high IQ capable of determining if a person is good or evil. Most of his enemies are robot-hating humans, robots gone berserk, or alien invaders. Almost every story includes a battle involving Astro and other robots. In one manga episode, Astro takes on the US Air Force, and stops it from bombing innocent Vietnamese villagers. This was a time-travel episode, in which Astro went back from the 21st century to 1969.
Production
The Astro Boy series consists of several storylines. In April 1951, Atom, known as Astro Boy or just Astro in English, originally appeared as a supporting character in the Tezuka comic Atom Taishi, which appeared in Shonen, a monthly magazine for boys. Tezuka then created a comic series in which Astro was the main character. According to Schodt, Tezuka created Astro to be a "21st-century reverse-Pinocchio, a nearly perfect robot who strove to become more human and emotive and to serve as an interface between man and machine."As Tezuka's art style advanced, Astro Boy "became more modern and cute" to appeal to his audience of boys in elementary school. Schodt added that the page layouts used in Astro Boy episodes "became more creative." When designing supporting characters, Tezuka sometimes created characters that were homages to Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse and Disney Princesses, Max Fleischer, the producer of animated shorts featuring characters such as Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, and Superman, and other American animators. In several of the Astro Boy stories, the first few pages were in color.
Tezuka had a "Star System" of characters, in which characters from his other works played roles in Astro Boy. Similarly, several characters in Astro Boy appear in his other works. Tezuka developed "a type of dialog with his readers", since he developed so many stories during his lifetime. Tezuka also had a habit of introducing nonsensical characters at random moments in order to lighten a scene which was becoming too serious; he sometimes felt trapped by the need to satisfy his young male audience's desire to see battling robots.
Astro Boy was described by Schodt as an "analog", a world where humans and advanced technology coexist. As a result, the plots of the Astro Boy stories often involve issues that stem from this idea. At the time of Astro Boy's creation, Japan did not have the reputation for science and technology that it gained by the late 20th century. This made the "analog" nature of Astro Boy unique.
The manga was originally published by Akita Shoten in format; 23 volumes of paperbacks were printed. The stories do not appear in order by publication date, but in the order that Tezuka and the collection editors considered most appropriate. The collection begins with The Birth of Astro Boy, an episode that Tezuka wrote in 1975 to make the collection of stories easier to understand. The first Astro Boy story ever written, first published in April 1951, is in volume 15. Tezuka often re-drew chapters that he had created earlier. Schodt explains that this is the reason some may appear "more modern" than others. For many of his older stories, Tezuka added introductory pages where he himself was portrayed as the narrator. The color pages were reprinted in black and white for the inexpensive paperback versions.
English-language version
The English-language version of Astro Boy is an adaptation of the Akita Shoten published works by Osamu Tezuka. The artwork was flipped from the original Japanese version so the books could be read from left to right. Frederik L. Schodt translated the English-language version of Astro Boy and for most of the characters, he used the original Japanese names. Schodt believed that it was necessary to retain the Japanese names wherever possible, as the story was set in Japan. Schodt translated the nickname "Higeoyaji" to "Mr. Mustachio", and decided to use Astro Boy's English name. He explained that "Astro" is close to the Japanese name "Atom", an English word. Schodt believed that using "Atom" in an American edition of the story would be "going too much against the history".Occasionally, names of Japanese characters had double meanings that were impossible to convey in the English-language translation. Schodt decided that keeping the sound of the names was important, especially when the names were famous. In those cases, Schodt tried to use the double meaning elsewhere in the translation. When dealing with minor foreign characters with humorous-sounding names, Schodt used equivalent English puns wherever it was possible.
The editors of the English-language Astro Boy book did not remove content that could be perceived to be racially insensitive. They explained that in some cases, people may be portrayed differently from how they actually were in 2002, the year of publication of the English version. The editors said that some readers may feel that the portrayals contribute to racial discrimination and, while that was not Tezuka's intent, the issue needed to be explained as some readers may feel offended or insulted by the depictions. They felt that it would be inappropriate to revise the works, because Tezuka had died and there was no way to reverse what he created, and revising his works would violate his right as a creator. They also expressed the belief that editing or stopping publication of the work would "do little" to end racial and ethnic discrimination throughout the world.