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Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム, Tetsuwan Atomu^?, "Mighty Atom," lit. "Iron Arm Atom") is a Japanese manga series first published in 1952. The story follows the adventures of a robot named Astro Boy and a selection of other characters along the way.^[2]
Astro Boy was adapted into the first popular animated Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiar worldwide as anime.^[3] It originated as a manga in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka, revered in Japan as the "God of Manga."^[4] After enjoying success abroad, Astro Boy was remade in the 1980s as Shin Tetsuwan Atomu, known as Astroboy in other countries, and again in 2003. In November 2007, he was named Japan's envoy for overseas safety.^[5] An American computer-animated 3-D film based on the original manga series by Tezuka was released on October 23, 2009.

Production

The Astro Boy series consists of several story-lines, some more than others. Many of which are self-contained. Frederik L. Schodt, who wrote the English language adaptation of the series, said that as Tezuka's art style advanced, Astro Boy "became more modern and 'cute'" to appeal to the audience of boys in elementary school.^[6] Schodt added that the page layouts used in Astro Boy episodes "became more creative."^[6] When designing supporting characters, Tezuka sometimes placed homages of Walt Disney, Max Fleischer, and other American animators. In several of the Astro Boy stories, the first few pages of each one were in color.^[6] Tezuka had a "Star System" of characters where different characters appeared ; several characters in Astro Boy appear in other works written by Tezuka. Schodt explained that Tezuka developed "a type of dialog with his readers" since he developed so many stories during his lifetime.^[7] Tezuka often had a habit of introducing nonsensical characters at random moments in order to lighten a scene that he believed was becoming too serious. Tezuka sometimes felt trapped by the need to satisfy the young male audience's desire to see battling robots.^[7]
Tezuka used "Astro Boy" to entertain, in a 1950s perspective described by Schodt as "analog," a world where man and advanced technology coexist and the issues stemming from this fact. At the time, Japan did not have a reputation for science and technology that it had gained by 2002.^[7]
The Novels were originally issued by Akita Shoten that were printed had 23 volumes of the paper backs. The stories do not appear in order by the date of creation. Instead, they appear in the order that Tezuka and the collection editors believed was the most appropriate. The collection begins with "The Birth of Astro Boy", an episode which 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 he had created earlier. Schodt explains that therefore, when comparing two episodes written at the same time, one may appear "more modern" than another because Tezuka revised the art. For many of his older stories, Tezuka often added introductory pages in which he himself was portrayed as the interlocutor. The color pages of the "Astro Boy" stories were re-printed in monochrome for the inexpensive paperback versions.^[6]

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 robot created by the head of the Ministry of Science, Doctor Tenma (aka Dr. Astor Boyton II in the 1960 English dub) to replace his son Tobio ('Astor' in the 1960s English dub; 'Toby' in the 1980s English dub and the 2009 film), who died in a car accident (ran away in the 2003 anime; vaporized in the 2009 film). Dr. Tenma built Astro in Tobio's image and treated him as lovingly as if he were the real Tobio, but soon realized that the little robot 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 '60 English dub).
After some time, Professor Ochanomizu, the new head of the Ministry of Science, noticed Astro Boy performing in the circus and convinced Hamegg to turn Astro over to him. He then took Astro as his own and treated him gently and warmly, becoming his legal guardian. He soon realized that Astro was gifted with superior powers and skills, as well as the ability to experience human emotions.
Astro then is shown fighting crime, evil, and injustice. Most of his enemies were robot-hating humans, robots gone berserk, or alien invaders. Almost every story included a battle involving Astro and other robots. Once, Astro actually took on the US Air Force, stopping it from bombing some peaceful innocent Vietnamese villagers (this was a time-travel episode, in which Astro went back from the 21st century to 1969).^[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy