Reviews for Pluto

Pluto is a story that really shows its age, is a statement that best describes this experience. It's the equivalent of playing an old game in todays standards and you're just left thinking that we've just improved so much on the formula. It's a story with a pretty weak premise, weak setting, and weak characters. Flash backs are very poorly inserted that you often don't even realize you're in one until ten minutes later because you're constantly jumping around between characters who are robots with rockets for legs. There is a lot of nonsensical behavior due to over use of unwarranted empathy that goes beyond alllogic, which is ironic because they're robots. I haven't read or watched Monster yet so maybe I haven't been sipping on the koolaid that bolstered this type of rating. I was just left very disappointed in the story and it just felt like the author was writing this with some sort of god complex (he'll save humanity and give robots empathy with this nonsense) in hopes that when AI does advance far enough they'll go learn about this and think, "wow this was a story that took no risks and was as bland as white bread."

Only saving grace is that the production value on this was crazy, so it wasn't terrible to look at, other than the first episode where they had some weird frame issues making it really difficult to watch because it hurts your eyes.

Pluto is a mature adaptation of one of the most iconic arcs of Astro Boy. The manga, by the same name, is widely considered a masterpiece and is a deep passion project for the writer. I want to keep this mostly spoiler-free. I would highly recommend going into this blind, and if you love Seinen anime/manga, you will have an absolute blast here. Pluto comprises some of the most well-written and heartfelt characters whose story reaches a perfect end. Every single character from the original arc in Astro Boy has been given justice in this remake. Atom (Astro Boy Himself) and Gesicht are the mainleads of this show and both of them never fail to keep me engaged. The suspense is all very well done and the conclusion to it all is personally among my favorite endings in fiction. Pluto, isn’t just any story focusing on humans and robots, it is THE story focusing on humans and robots.

Going into Pluto I knew we would get a brilliant adaptation because the project was led by Masao Maruyama. He founded Madhouse and MAPPA, who specifically founded this new studio to adapt extremely well-deserving and overlooked mangas akin to Pluto. The animation is stellar for the most part, but at times some special effects don’t go too well and make the scene look weirdly blurry. Overall, they have done justice to the source material and it is as good of an adaptation as any fan could’ve asked for, 10/10.

Moreover, some of the other masterpieces he produced are Monster, Perfect Blue, Death Note, Hunter x Hunter (2011), Nana, Trigun, Hellsing Ultimate, Paprika, Kids on the Slope, and Tokyo Godfathers, among many others, the guy has been the driving force for masterpieces left and right. Also, the music composition is being done by Yuugo Kanno, who is well known for his extremely popular JoJo opening themes.

The Mangaka Naoki Urasawa is well known for his genius in developing murder mysteries or suspenseful tales that get increasingly interesting as you read. He has genuinely created some of the most masterful stuff in modern entertainment, and to finally see this manga by him get such a phenomenal and passionate adaptation feels so good; I waited for so long to get one. I hope that Pluto is successful enough that we get one for 20th Century Boys, which is another manga by Urasawa.

Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto – A Post-Mortem I know most people who watched this show probably don’t care about this detail, but it’s one that I’m going to use a lot in this review, so I’ll get it as a starting point: Pluto isn’t just based on the manga of the same name by Monster’s author Naoki Urasawa, it’s also a remake of the “Greatest Robot in the World” arc from the Astro Boy manga by “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka. Because of this, I’m going to compare Pluto to its original material a lot, as while I believe there’s aspects it improved from the classic storyarc, it mostly doesn’t reach its level.

From the most obvious difference between both stories, Astro Boy focuses on Pluto going to challenge the seven most advanced robots in the world one by one to claim himself the greatest robot in the world, almost in a tournament arc kind of vibe, while Pluto moves the focus away from the action and instead delves on a minor subplot about robot detective Gesicht investigating the murders knowing he could become a victim of them. Because of this, I’m not going to compare the stories, as they’re completely unrelated, and thus judge purely the fact that Pluto tries too much in too little time to an even greater degree than the original. While the original story feels rushed for the first part until reaching a more natural flow in the latter part, Pluto has so many subplots and side characters all happening at the same time that it’s very hard to tell what even is the point of it all beyond finding who Pluto is (an answer that at best works like Titanic in being a forgone conclusion), with characters coming in and out with no rhyme or reason.

The reason Pluto reaches this level of over-stuffing is actually pretty simple: the other six robots that serve as Pluto’s targets have little character in the original arc, with only Epsilon having a full character, the rest are mostly one-note traits. To amend this, Pluto places heavy focus on them, with Gesicht straight up replacing Astro as the protagonist, so you have large amounts of screen time dedicated to developing doomed characters. Indeed, Pluto can be described as “the cryporn of the hour”, as every episode puts a lot of effort into making you feel for a character who’s going to die, something that didn’t affect Urasawa’s manga as there was a greater gap of time between each death, and of course doesn’t affect Tezuka’s because he didn’t try to get emotional response of every single character who died.

Speaking of emotions, the themes in Pluto and Astro Boy for this story are something I want to address, as Astro Boy simply comes across as having more mature and meaningful ideas despite being the version aimed at kids. The original is an anti-war story, dealing with the sorrow of soldiers who’re forced to wage war against their will, as well commentary on how technology that could be to help people is being misused for power hungry goals, both reflected allegorically on the challenges posed by Pluto towards the seven most advanced robots. Pluto isn’t that, instead seems to ironically enough be written by a robot who has no idea about human emotions, because it posits the thesis that hatred is the source of all human evil and that we need to erase it in order to reach a better world. Anyone who’s actually human can tell the issue here: hatred is a part of human nature, you can’t “cure” it, and acting as if that was possible is incredibly childish. On that note, I want Urasawa to share with me the computer code for hatred, as apparently, it’s something that can be programmed into machines here (never mind the fact they explicitly say early on that not even Astro’s immensely advanced AI is still only imitating human feelings rather than actually having it as presented later).

Now I may be coming across as very negative here, but there’s one aspect of Pluto I really want to praise: the characters. As said before, Tezuka doesn’t actually develop five of the most advanced robots in the world beyond one-notes, and that’s the part where this series actually surpasses Astro Boy. Gesicht appears for a whole of 2 scenes in the original, so of course he’s massively expanded compared to his counterpart and made into a compelling figure, all while maintaining his original presentation intact, a feat I’ll openly praise given how hard that must’ve been. The two characters that already had a lot of material to work with, Astro and Epsilon, are mostly left intact, as there’s really no need to do anything with them but what Tezuka set, but everyone else from the group who didn’t gets a glow up that helps make the cast far livelier and more memorable than the original, with each having its own story, personality and goals clearly set here. The only characters Urasawa fails with are Pluto himself, ironic considering he was the most developed of the original and this new version is named after him, as he loses almost everything that made him interesting and relevant to the story’s themes in favor of more cryporn, and Bora, mostly because of the reasons explained on how he missed the themes of the original meaning he’s filler now.

Mostly unrelated note: There's this incredibly contrived scene where a kid is inexplicably surrounded by tigers and lions, who just stare at him until Uran calls them away, and they just seem to understand her somehow and it's all solved with no further mention, which I have no idea how to take as there’s no explanation how she can do this given how much focus is taken away from her here.

An aspect of this anime that makes me split is the visual department, and I’m going to touch both sides of the issue there. The traditional art is nothing short of great, being always on-model, detailed and fluid, all of which are so rare to find in modern anime, I’d have to conjure something from the OVA era like Macross Plus to compare how well it looks. And just like Plus, the actual issue with Pluto is the digital aspect, not just the CGI, but everything that would normally belong the digital processing like the effects look off, with the storms/tornadoes Pluto creates being a particularly jarring example given we also see a traditionally animated one in the show that doesn’t look like a PS2 monstrosity, and that’s not even getting when the backgrounds become the digital and the characters look photoshopped over them. Reading Twitter comments from an animator who worked on the series before COVID, they explained that all these effects were added without him and the other animators knowing, which explains why the entire show looks like it was handled by two completely different teams, because it was. Also, while I’m not a fan of Urasawa’s character designs (the only characters that have designs escaping his trappings are the ones who are modernized versions of Tezuka characters), I can respect his art, and having cross checked the manga as I watched the anime, I can firmly say they screwed what looked good in his manga with this anime.

In general, I think that Pluto is a good remake, as it expands greatly on the weakest aspect of the source it’s taking, but it fails to work as a standalone story, as its themes are weak and the story is so padded beyond what it needs to, both are which are issues plaguing his previous work Monster as well, but hey, this is still much more tolerable than that one. Also, I know this is a nitpick, but why does every translation of this series I can find call Astro by his Japanese name Atom? Seems like a weird attempt to try to distance yourself from the most important anime ever made.

Thank you for reading

Beautifully animated utter nonsense. Make no mistake, I absolutely enjoy many of the themes "Pluto" spends much of its runtime on. The "humanity" of robots, the meaning of "family", the vicious cycle of hatred - the show (and likely the original manga) has a lot of interesting things to say about them, and if you can turn off your brain (not unlike how the robots in the show can take out their "artificial intelligence" units from their bodies), you can definitely enjoy what it has to offer. The gorgeous visuals certainly help as well. Unfortunately, the show requires way more willing suspension of disbelief than I cangive it, to the point that I feel that its writing is an insult towards the viewers' intelligence. The plot doesn't really advance - instead, "things happen", then some other "things happen", and finally the show just stops. (No, seriously, the ending is jarringly abrupt.) There are a few interesting twists here and there, but they feel utterly unearned, because the events leading up to them tend to seem so incoherent and nonsensical. Many of the characters' decisions make no sense, or go against what has been revealed to them mere minutes ago. Everything is subordinated to "where the story needs to go", regardless of whether that direction fits what's been established about the characters or the setting. And sadly, this only gets worse the closer we get to the end.

Many people here seem ecstatic because of the visuals and the overall "hate is bad" message, but I think this show would have worked so much better if there was an actual, working plot to underpin it all. Such a good-looking, meaningful series deserved better than this.

So, I took several days to cool down and now I'm ready to talk about Pluto calmly. I'll preface it with my thoughts on Urasawa. I've read 20th and 21st Century Boys and watched Monster. I had problems with all of it. Generally speaking, I don't like how unfocused his story can get, how some characters get enough development to become proper characters but not enough to do anything worthwhile with them. Most of his stories could be significantly trimmed down to focus on what matters. The degrees to which these problems manifest themselves in his works vary a lot as well. There is alsoa question of realism and plot holes. Urasawa writes stories that want to be taken seriously but all of them have elements that rip you out of the story, be it military personel not shooting a terrorist because he is is playing his guitar really well, a pregnant woman about to give birth climbing through ventilation shafts and over fences or a robot dog having a hearbeat.

However, despite my problems with Monster and 20th Century Boys, they both have something to offer. 20th Century Boys has good character chemistry and a generally interesting story with nice atmosphere (until 21st Century Boys ruins most of it) and the art is pretty good as well. Monster has some phylosophical questions that, while not perfectly explored or presented, are interesting and the character of Johan is... Well, a double edged sword as he is is the biggest selling point and the biggest problem of Monster. Pluto though...

Pluto has all the problems of Urasawa's writing in one messy package. There are no plot holes, there are plot craters. The whole technical aspect of the show is utterly nonsensical. Watching it made me angry. Despite Pluto being 8 hours it barely develops any characters beyond the basics. The story is simple and would've been enough in some battle shounen but is woefully basic and unfit for a show (I haven't read the manga, I'm only talking about the adaptation) like Pluto that is trying to be something serious, intellectual and profound. Pluto could've told a story of robots and humans, of how artificial differs from real or how close they can get, of what it means to be human, it could've been filled with political intrigue, sharp twists and mystery, instead Pluto does a bit of everything which amounts to nothing in the end. It has one main message of "Hatred is bad", barely any interesting characters, no intrigue, no logic, no point. And I have to mention that I was gonna give it a 6 but the last episode was such a dumpster fire I had to lower it. I wanted it to be over with so bad and it ended so unceremoniously I literally went "That's it?".

Long story short, Pluto is a waste of potential, animation and setting. The only value it has is production value. I would only recommend it to people who can "turn their brains off" while watching.

This is the golden standard for what a Netflix original anime should be, the best I have ever seen Netflix put out and story created by none other than the legendary Naoki Urasawa. Amazingly complex story about robots that gives you so much emotions, everyone put so much passion into this project from the animation to the voice actors. Definitely a must watch for anyone looking for mystery genre. Astro boy is a legendary manga and anime, Naoki urasawa was a huge fan of it and wanted to make his own spin on one specific arc. This anime is loosely based off the Pluto arcin astro boy. while respecting the source material, Naoki does his own thing with Pluto and it’s a worthy successor

Netflix figured out a formula for an excellent anime adaptation of a manga. All it took was to make a movie length episode of each graphic novel volume and use the existing storyboards that are the manga panels by Urasawa Naoki. Pluto is modern retelling (and a love letter to Tezuka, see if you can spot the major Black Jack reference) of a Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) story by Osamu Tezuka. Urasawa turned what was basically a robot beat-em up into detective story about serial killer of robots and humans, and touch into international politics, racial discrimination, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. The story may bealready great, but it needed time and talented animators to bring this to the screen, and fortunately, this production had it.

I really like how the entire series was a rising crescendo that culminated into the events of the last episode. Pluto the robot was mostly concealed in the early episodes to build the drama and tension. Its full reveal with the battle with Epsilon had impact because of it. This way, it managed to sell the massive stakes of the last episode.

Seldom could an anime production team being able to be in sync with the vision and intention of the original author. This time they nailed it. They even stuck the landing. This was enough for me to turn an easy 9 rating into a 10 because this is a masterpiece.

It's bad, really bad. The world was intriguing at first, society where robots blended in but not fully, and that creates some conflict But they thrash it completely: robots can't lie, but actually they can, robots can't kill, but actually they can, robots don't have emotions, but actually they have. Robots here basically humans, sometimes with abilities, like x-mens. or tosters. And I expected to be sad because kid toster is "destroyed", but there was zero attempt to build any interest to said toster, so I don't care. Episodes are long and all over the place, they could change the pacing in the middle of episode andmove it to completely unrelated direction. And honestly, they simply boring most of the time, IMO only detective story is interesting somewhat.

Episodes mostly has no logic, characters can teleport whereever they needed by plot, make decisions that completely illogical, find out or forget their abilities.

The ending is boring, pointless exposition dump, and main villain just meh

Picture is nice though, the only positive thing here

Succeeding at realizing and utilizing their parent's story's potential, Pluto aims even higher than any height Astro Boy could ever fly into. But can they also be humbled down at the same low Astro Boy had fallen to be so relatable for all of us? I don't think so.. This is easily one of the matureest anime i've ever seen. The concept itself shouted loudly to let everybody know that we should take them seriously. But this seriousness could be very deceiving, because it makes some people overlook the conveniences that they took, and then easily throw 10/10 just because it's different. There are some glaring issuesregarding the amount of suspension on disbelief that we would need to compromise in order to agree with the premises. There are too many robotic variables, like: for some reason, a robot has the same vulnerability as a human, and can't be revived even though their memory chips are easily extracted and preserved. There are set rules like robots can't feel and can't kill, but there's no prevention, academic proof or any failsafe being presented to us to back-up the said claim, they just use exposition to explain the effectiveness of it, while the first real proof we got is actually some robot breaching those rules instead!

And there's the issue I have with Naoki Urasawa, which also steams from my experience watching his other work, Monster. Which is both feels too long. Ngl, he has some of the best premises and intricacies at the start of every story, but it takes so long and it goes through an exhausting route to just stick the landing.

If you were to ask me, what is my main takeaway after completing two of his works? My answer would be: watching Naoki Urasawa's works, makes me realize again how much I adore a thriller-mystery that reflects on our darkest desires, but wrapped in a compact and contained format that doesn't overstay its welcome. That's why David Fincher is the best at it for me. But then again, maybe this is just me?

,,Nothing will be born from hatred." Another masterpiece from the mangaka Urasawa Naoki. Pluto is not your basic mystery anime, the story starts of as a weak breeze, and becomes a huge hurricane at the end. The characters are well written, and we can see some HUGE character development during the episodes, which is kinda familiar for those, who already met previously some of the mangaka's work (Monster, 20-21th Century Boys). The soundtrack just fits perfectly into the picture, and perfectly emphasize the mood of the current frames. Everyone should give this show a shot, even if they are not a fan of the genre, because it willbe a heart melting memory to remember, and every minute of the show is totally worth the investment.

Great Job, Naoki, Great Job, Studio M2

A potential masterpiece flawed by tonal inconsistency Pluto has an interesting premise, set in a world where robots and humans coexist after 39th Central Asian War. But the writing was very messy. It never seemed to find its rhythm, jumping erratically between locations, themes and sub plots. I enjoy complex anime but Pluto feels more like a simple story made unnecessarily complex by a poorly written, unfocused story. Characters - 8 The character design was pretty solid, especially Gesicht and Atom who were my favourites. I liked the way that certain character dynamics were used to influence how viewers interpret the relationship between humans androbots. For Monster fans like myself, there were plenty of identically designed characters which was fun to see (Johan, Dieter, the professor etc.). I believe the sub is the superior mode to watch with slightly better voice acting especially for the younger characters.

Story - 5

As stated previously, the story was highly convoluted which made it a disorienting watch all the way until the final episode when things finally came together. I think they would have benefitted from giving more time to build a foundation to establish the atmosphere, themes and setting - one minute the anime takes place in Germany with a deep thriller / psychological feel, then it jumps to Australia and becomes an action/adventure. What made Monster so special (and a far superior product btw) was the atmosphere - it was so immersive, tense and intoxicatingly dark. Pluto felt like it struggled to form an identity and instead collapsed into the cliche tropes of mecha anime. The hour long episodes were a good idea because they created a more cinematic experience, however I believe there were pacing issues that may have come as a result. The story felt fragmented and lacked the 'flow' that the best quality always have. The second half of ep. 4 was exceptional but it lost its rhythm quickly after

Music - 6

The music was not a big part of the show with not many memorable tracks but it was seamlessly integrated which was commendable.

Art / Animation - 8

The art style followed Urasawa's uniquely realistic style and was quite enjoyable to watch. I wasn't a fan of the CGI and backgrounds though - it felt very artificial and was even a bit distracting in some of the scenes where it was heavily relied on. The production value was very high though, typical of a Netflix Original series, but there's something about the less 'touched up' style (90s anime demonstrates it best) that just can't be beaten in my opinion.

Overall a solid watch with all the ingredients to create a legendary masterpiece, but failed with execution and flawed storytelling. It's very overrated on this site so far, probably because of all the excitement from manga readers waiting for the adaption and off the hype from Monster. If you're looking for a mecha anime I would recommend Ghost in the Shell Neon Genesis Evangelion or Code Geass over this, but it was definitely a unique anime worth a watch.

Pluto was my 2nd favorite anime of 2023 falling just short of Vinland Saga S2. I really love this anime, but I’m not just going to be gushing praise nonstop in this review. Pluto is a beautiful, passionate work of art that comes straight from the heart, but it also has some flaws. Of course, having flaws and imperfections doesn’t suddenly make a work of art “bad” by any means. Art is created by human beings and humans are imperfect creatures. One reason I want to have a full, honest discussion on Pluto is that the internet tends to oversimplify things. The internet and reviewculture in general doesn’t like nuance and complexity. Everything is either “OMG AMAZING!” or “THE WORST FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT EVAR!!!” Sometimes, an anime starts out being viewed as the first, then some anitubers point out some obvious flaws and then suddenly, everyone jumps on the hate train, and it becomes “that piece of shit that idiots used to think was good!”. Pluto does NOT deserve such a fate. I don’t really think it’s in too much danger, but let’s have this discussion so we can appreciate Pluto blemishes and all and talk about the context in which it was made and what it wished to accomplish.

Pluto started out as a manga by the great Naoki Urasawa in September of 2003. It is a dark, more adult oriented reimagining of the most famous arc in the original Astro Boy manga called the Greatest Robot Arc, which ran from 1964 to 1965. Pluto as a manga has 2 main objectives. The first is to bring the creative genius and warmhearted brilliance of Osamu Tezuka to a modern audience. Tezuka is incredible when he’s at his best, but he also tends to mix in some very silly gags that don’t always pair well with the more serious scenes. There’s a segment of Astro Boy that Tezuka wrote to oppose the Vietnam War where Astro/Atom fights off some very cartoonishly stereotyped American soldiers with machine guns that come out of his butt. That’s just mild Tezuka silliness. It can get WAY worse. Apart from the odd tonal issues, Tezuka could get very heavy handed at times. This is to be expected when he’s trying to preach against racism and imperialism to an audience of children in the immediate aftermath of WW2. It’s also only to be expected that some of this hasn’t aged perfectly and can at times be a little cringe inducing to a modern, adult audience. Given, most of Tezuka’s stuff has still aged better than a lot of the American comics from the 40s-60s. Well…Kimba is kind of bad, but nobody bats a thousand. Tezuka was also heavily influenced by American cartoons of the early 20th century, so he loved comedic exaggeration. This can lead to some ridiculous looking stereotypes. Anyways, Urasawa wanted to take Tezuka’s strengths and refine his work to remove the weaker aspects.

Urasawa’s other goal in writing Pluto was deeply personal and political. It was created in direct response to the US invasion of Iraq in early 2003 and can’t be separated from that context. Pluto was written in 2003 and holy shit is that obvious! Urasawa like many in Japan was horrified that Japan’s closest ally launched a bloody, pre-emptive invasion on false charges and this ally wanted Japanese troops to join the war effort in support roles. Urasawa felt helpless to stop what he was seeing on his TV and listening to on the radio every day, so Pluto was born as Urasawa’s personal protest to at least try do something to impact Japanese public opinion in whatever small way he could.

Now that we have a little background on the manga, let's talk about the anime production. Pluto the anime took over 6 years to make and was a passion project by Masao Maruyama, one of the founders of Studio Madhouse and MAPPA. Pluto looks absolutely gorgeous and Studio M2 did an incredible job bringing Urasawa’s manga to the screen. The production value is off the charts since Pluto cost over 2 million US dollars per episode. The series is 8 episodes long with each episode lasting roughly an hour and each covering 1 volume of the manga. Let’s start this review off on a positive note and cover some of the things I really liked about Pluto.

1. The characters. One of Urasawa’s greatest strengths is character writing. Specifically, he’s REALLY good at fleshing out supporting cast and side characters and making them feel like fully realized, three dimensional human beings, even when they don’t have a lot of screen time. In Tezuka’s manga, a bunch of robots are introduced and rapidly killed off and the reader has zero reason to care. Pluto is going to make you care about each and every robot in this series. In the first episode, you have this robot named North #2 who was built as a weapon of war but suffers trauma from how many of his fellow AI he’s had to kill. He wants nothing more than to abandon his role as a weapon and start a new path, but this is easier said than done with all the guilt he feels for his past actions. He ends up discovering a deep love for music and bonding with a grouchy, aging composer suffering from a creative block. I personally got more both emotionally and intellectually out of this segment than the entirety of Violet Evergarden…and it’s only half of the first episode! That’s just how good Pluto is.

2.I mentioned that the production values were sky high, but this extends even beyond the incredible animation and detailed character art. The soundtrack by Yuugo Kanno is quite potent. This is the same guy who did the OST for most of the JoJo seasons, Psycho Pass, and a number of other high-profile anime. It’s good stuff. The English dub was also a treat. Easily one of my favorite dubs that I’ve seen in years! Not only does it have some very emotional and incredible voice performances, but I love the eclectic mix of the casting. You have Funimation veterans who have been in tons of modern anime, some old school anime voice actors from Central Park Media and the early days of dubbing, and actors like Keith David who have never been in an anime before. This led to the hilariously surreal situation of listening to Keith David act across Mike Pollock. Dr. Facilier vs. Dr. Robotnik. Hollywood actor who went to Juilliard vs. guy who was so desperate for work between 2005-2015 that he starred in all the straight to DVD Brazilian mockbusters like Ratatooing.

3.Pluto is able to succeed as an anime purely through great storytelling, character psychology, and drama. It doesn’t want to glorify violence, so it goes out of its way to not actually show the fights. It doesn’t want to rely on action scenes to make the audience invested. Pluto doesn’t feel the need to insert Marvel humor to break up the serious scenes and try win over audiences the easy way. Pluto has one tone and that tone is dead fucking serious. The entire anime. No fanservice. No comedy gags. None of that. I honestly appreciate just how hard Pluto commits to this. Usually, the more money something costs the make, the more it tries to pander to the lowest common denominator. When you spend an amount of money that could result in your studio going under if it’s not a hit, you REALLY don’t want to risk alienating the average viewer. You want to play it as safely as possible, but Pluto completely resists the urge to do this.

4.Pluto is an emotionally powerful drama that also serves as a powerful anti-war anime. It’s very, VERY rare for an anime to make me tear up or almost tear up and Pluto was able to do it in just the first episode and then multiple times afterwards. That’s honestly quite impressive.

Now, let’s cover some of the issues I had with Pluto. As you’ll see in the following paragraphs, some of Pluto’s greatest strengths are also a double-edged sword.

1.Remember when I said that Pluto’s only tone was dead serious? Well…this can cause some issues when you’re adapting a very heavy-handed children’s comic from the 1960s. Like Astro Boy before it, Pluto is a work all about empathy and the dangers of what can happen when we fail to do this and demonize entire groups as “other” and “lesser”. The robots in Pluto operate as a stand in for marginalized groups within society. This can be different religions, nationalities, etc. Unlike in Astro Boy, the robots aren’t just a 1:1 metaphor for racial minorities…even though you do get a side story about a man named Adolf who joins the anti-robot KKK. They’re literally just the KKK only they hate robots. This part was taken directly from Astro Boy and yeah...it’s a little silly for a highbrow, adult work that’s taking itself 100 percent seriously. It also must be mentioned that the Iraq War metaphor throughout the anime is SO blatant that it’s hard not to laugh sometimes. There’s an old episode of The Boondocks in which the rich villain’s idiot son “W” is misled by his nefarious friend “Rummy” into robbing a gas station while lying to everyone and claiming to have a noble motive for doing this. Oh, and the gas station owner is drawn to resemble Saddam. That super obvious political allegory in Boondocks was of course played as a satirical joke. It’s hard to create a political allegory THAT obvious and take it seriously, but that’s exactly what Pluto does. In fact, Pluto is even LESS subtle than the allegory I just described!

2.Ladies and gentlemen…Dr. Teddy Roosevelt. This one character creates a number of issues. Firstly, he’s an evil supercomputer who secretly controls the US government and bosses the President around while taking the form of an adorable little teddy bear. You see, the joke is that the teddy bear is named after Teddy Roosevelt, who was a big believer in US imperialism and using bullshit charges to declare war on Spain and gain more colonies to exploit. It comes across as kind of silly and on the nose, but we’re going to take it dead seriously because It’s Pluto. Professor Abullah and Sahad/Pluto are great, well-rounded antagonists with understandable motives. The struggle between those 2 and the team of Atom and Gesicht was phenomenal. However, Urasawa wanted to have the ultimate bad guy be this embodiment of US government imperialism, so he created a character that wasn’t in the original Astro Boy arc and frankly feels a little shoehorned into this story. Dr. Teddy has nothing even approaching an understandable or complex motive. He’s just evil incarnate and wants to wipe out most of the Earth's biosphere and rule what remains forever while tormenting the survivors. This brings me to my next issue…he’s a completely shameless ripoff of AM from “I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream”. Urasawa already likes to borrow characters from classic lit and put his own spin on it. For example, Inspector Lunge from Monster was heavily inspired by Inspector Javert from Les Misrables. However, Lunge is still his own character, while Teddy is literally just AM plagiarism. There’s no getting around it. Urasawa didn’t even have a good way of actually wrapping up this sub-plot, so Teddy is killed off in VERY anti-climactic faction by a legless robot who somehow dragged himself from Europe to America in a few hours, infiltrated the White House with nobody noticing, and got past all the security to reach the deepest chamber of the White House and finish off Teddy. Who btw has no means of defense despite being a brilliant supercomputer who would logically see the benefit of building a method to protect itself.

3.Pluto was written with a very specific purpose in mind, and I completely understand that. However, as a work of art, it would probably work better if it focused on being against war, imperialism, and discrimination in general as opposed to this one very specific war. This makes Pluto feel quite dated at times and creates issues due to how blatantly it wants to be a 1:1 exact allegory. Take for example King Darius, who is clearly just Saddam Hussein and is drawn to closely resemble Saddam so you can’t see him as anyone else. It turns out that not only did he not possess WMDs, but he was actually an innocent dude who just wanted to turn Iran into a more fertile land and plant tons of flowers. Um…Urasawa-san. Saddam killed 250,000 of his own people AND launched a completely unprovoked invasion of his neighbor in 1980 that resulted in an additional 1.5 million deaths. Just because the neocons who launched the Iraq War were lying scumbags doesn’t mean that Saddam was a nice dude who just wanted to plant flowers! More than one side can be the bad guy at the same time, this isn’t pro-wrestling rules where it must be heel vs. baby face! Pluto goes so far portraying him as innocent prior to the US invasion that it almost borders on genocide denial, which isn’t a good look. Also, this is a pure nitpick, but I'll add it here. Despite Urasawa usually doing his research when it comes to portraying foreign countries, Pluto follows the Hollywood stereotype that Iran looks exactly like Saudi Arabia. In reality, Iran is only 23 percent desert while Saudi Arabia is over 95 percent desert. Iran has mountains and ski resorts. It’s NOT just a giant sandbox!

4.The last issue is that Pluto works perfectly well as an allegory. However, it makes a lot less sense when you look at the story literally. Let’s assume that cloud computing doesn’t exist in the world of Pluto and there is no way to easily backup a robot’s memories and personality on some server farm and just download it into a new body if the robot's body was destroyed. You would still think that a robot would be fine so long as their chip is undamaged. The chip could just be inserted into a different body and the robot has all its memories and personality back with a new body. However, this isn’t how it works in Pluto since it wants to have lots of tragedy and sad robot deaths. When a robot’s body is damaged, they die, and their chip can be scanned by other robots but can’t be placed in a new body. …except when it can. That’s exactly how Sahad’s chip was placed into Pluto to give him a new powerful body. It is never explained why this is the one instance where a chip transfer works. The rules of Pluto’s world building are often contradictory and nonsensical. Gesicht dies when he gets a chest wound. When a human gets shot in the chest, they bleed a lot. The loss of blood means that less blood can reach the brain, starving it of oxygen and nutrients, which causes the brain to die. How the FUCK did Gesicht die from this? He doesn’t have blood! Damaging his body should do nothing to damage his chip, which is located in his head. We know this for a fact, because it is shown to us multiple times. He died purely because the plot demanded that he die, even though it makes zero sense within the context of the story and the established rules.

Anyways, despite my frustrations with aspects of Pluto, it’s still a very good anime overall. I don’t want to accentuate the negative and spend too much time beating up on an anime that I actually love. I just wanted to address some of these issues before some nitpicking critic on Youtube does it. I don’t feel that Pluto quite matches Monster in terms of overall consistent quality, but Pluto’s highs are some of the highest you’ll find in the entire anime medium. I’m really looking forward to the anime adaptation of 20th Century Boys to get my next Urasawa fix!

Pluto may easily be the most overrated series here. Let me explain why I think so. The animation and music are not horrible. The characters are often well-developed and some of them genuinely memorable. The storytelling is quite good and very professional. The anime is heavily emotional and it promises to tackle some deep topical problems. That does not sound too bad, does it? So where does it fail? First of all, the lore is horrible. Unlike in Casshern Sins, to give an example of a somewhat similar series, the world described to us is flat, boring and unimaginative. A future where there are robots and humansliving together: that’s it.

Second, the robots seem to have nothing in common with the real-life technological advances. None of the questions connected to them remotely resemble real-life issues connected to technology. Basically, they are humans who can fly and transform their hands into guns. Consequently, all the so called philosophy in the series is just pretentious nonsense.

Third, the fights are just really bad.

Most importantly though, the story is full of holes. Nothing seems to make any sense if you think about it for a second. Instead of any inner logic we are offered quite a few of emotional scenes. Some of them are rather good. No amount of good storytelling can mask that the story being told is, well, maybe the weakest I have ever had the bad luck to chance upon in my life.

If you are looking for something to watch, look somewhere else. Despite its many irrefutable strengths, the anime falls flat and leaves you disappointed.

If you love sci-fi and cyberpunk with a deep story since it is written by Naoki Urasawa himself (the creator of Monster, 20th century boys and billy bat) then this anime is for you. In a world where the line between humans and robots is thinner than a hair on a microchip, the story plunges into the abyss of the age-old quest: What does it mean to be alive? Based on Osamu Tezuka’s “Astro Boy,” particularly the "The Greatest Robot on Earth" story arc, "Pluto" is more than just a rehash of old circuits; it’s a riveting narrative that delves into the hearts (and hard drives)of its characters.

Gesicht is not your run-of-the-mill robot detective. His quest to solve a string of mysterious robot and human deaths is anything but a mere wild byte chase. Gesicht finds himself tangled in a web of conspiracy that could fry his circuits, with the eerie antagonist, Pluto, lurking in the shadows, ready to strike.

The narrative is laden with themes of memory, consciousness, and the enigma of existence that will have you pondering if Siri has a soul. The juxtaposition of robots with the emotional bandwidth of humans against humans with the empathy of toasters presents a stark, thought provoking contrast.

Urasawa artistry not only sketches the external world but also delves into the internal landscapes of his characters. The emotions etched on the faces of robots and humans alike are so palpable, you think they were crafted by Apple engineers.

"Pluto" is more than a mere "Anime". it’s a philosophical inquiry. It's a sign, A prophecy of the future, a tale that will have you smiling, laughing, crying, and, most importantly, questioning whether your coffee maker has been plotting against you all along.

Yes, a 10/10. that's it from me.

Alriiiiiiiiight. Pluto is here, and damn have I waited a long time for it. I’m gonna keep this concise instead of spewing meaningless drivel and elaborating on the entire synopsis of the plot. Here we have an adaption of one of Urasawa’s masterworks, as well as the finest series produced by Netflix as of so far- animated or not. The fact of the matter is this- the source material was already great. But what makes this series so spectacular is that it elevated everything you loved about the manga and made it better, and I’ll die on this hill. Pluto has been out for yearsupon years, and the original manga is already well reviewed. Fact of the matter is, I don’t need to rave about how remarkable and groundbreaking this piece of work is. It’s already well established that Urasawa is potentially the greatest mangaka of all time in respect to his ability to write narratives. Pluto is an exemplary manga that shows just that.

Our trust in Netflix isn’t very well established on the side of anime. It had some break out hits in the form of Edgerunners and Castlevania, but few would have put stock in their ability to adapt such a work. All it took was ONE trailer, and my mind was changed.

The result was a labor of love. This is an anime that had ambition. It didn’t want to just live in the shadow of the manga, it wanted to be everything the original work was, and more.

They succeeded. It shows in every corner of the production. I’m watching this show in English dub, since it makes more sense thematically since it isn’t just centered around Japan as a setting. The English voice actors put their soul into each role. The music was astounding, making the emotion originally portrayed by Urasawa amplified. The expressions of the characters maintain the signature style developed by the author. And it goes without saying, but the art direction is among the best I’ve ever seen. It’s vivid, rich in detail, and filled with set pieces that make you question just how much money was funneled in for the budget.

Seeing it adapted on the big screen with such care creates a substantially more remarkable foundation for the series. I found myself brought to tears on multiple occasions, all by scenes I thought little of upon reading them; but overwhelmed by when watching them. That’s right, I downright admit I think this adaption is better than the source material- which is a rare occurrence. This is a remarkable achievement in animation that brings me optimism when thinking about the future of anime as a whole.

I’ve heard criticism about the pacing of Pluto due to the hour long episodes. To be Frank, it is a brain dead criticism. Each volume is adapted into each episode, which in turn adapts the pace of the volumes as they were released. In my mind, this is worthy of further praise.

It is my hope that with the success of Pluto, an adaption will come of what is arguably Urasawa’s magnum opus, 20th Century Boys.

Until then, one can hope. One can enjoy the result that has come from this adaption. One can enjoy what is by far the greatest anime to have been produced in years. Enjoy.

Kinda mind-bogglingly good. I don't know how Urasawa can write so many scenes in a row that feel so powerful and don't slow the story down at all, or how he can attach me to so many characters so quickly with only a handful of scenes without feeling like he's cramming things in, or how he can make me genuinely interested in so many different philosophical themes and questions without beating me over the head with them while there's still an entire murder mystery to solve, or how he makes so many moving parts not just fall into place perfectly but do so in such catharticways that feel like they barely give me a break from the tornado of emotions, or how, or how, or how...

I really don't have bad things to say about this show.

The direction here is a big step up from the last Urasawa adaptation I saw (Monster), with much more dynamic-feeling transitions from scene to scene, making it harder to pause, and especially making any revelations feel less belabored than they often did in Monster. The animation is... fine, great in some places, it does its job.

The first episode essentially gives you an accurate taste of what's to come, but that specific episode also isn't completely representative of the others for specific reasons, so I'd say either decide whether to watch the show or not based on the first half of episode 1, or make up your mind about halfway into episode 2.

Unrelatedly, one of the characters shares a face with Johan Liebert, for obvious reasons, and the moment he appeared in the show made me feel nauseous, like something horrible was about to happen. I've never experienced that with another fictional character. Must've been especially traumatized by Johan.

I'm gonna have a fun time trying to figure out how to explain at family functions that my favorite show of the year is an Astro Boy fanfiction.

One of the best hits of the year, and perhaps the decade, a masterpiece of animation and the world of series in general, episode number 1 was definitely a punch to the heart. Yugo Kanno does a spectacular job, and the soundtrack is a marvel. Despite being announced over 6 years ago, the animation remains fresh and wonderful. Urasawa shines with his work, and the adaptation does it justice on stratospheric levels. What is humanity, what makes robots robots, and humans humans? A significant part of the moral idea is based on knowing that neither humans nor robots are so far from themselves, but at the same time,they seem to separate more than the sun from the earth.

A story full of emotions with a brutal cast, and personally, one of the animes you must watch even if you're not a fan of the genre. And if you are, you should watch it before you die.

With one of my all time favorite manga getting an anime adaptation, my standards were set high and this delivered. Its a prit near perfect adaptation that is very obviously a passion project from people who love the original story. Pluto tackles one of my favorite topics of AI and AI rights and does it from within one of my favorite mysteries being Mystery so from the start its a story I was bound to love. I think while in some parts it shows its age being written almost 20 years ago it also aged very well and still holds up as a good thoughtpiece in current times where AI is becoming more and more of a real pressing issue. While I thought some of the color pallets in certain scenes were a bit bland that's pretty much my only complaint. The use of CGI was acceptable and the whole anime looks very nice. While I still think I like the manga better for pacing reasons, I think this is an amazing anime and I wish it would get more attention.

Based off of Astro Boy, Pluto is a story about a killer AI/ robot that turns on it's own kind. I think the show is very over rated based on other reviews and it's rating. I find it hilarious people are comparing this to the great works of Monster and Death Note. Plutos plot is very predictable at every step, the animation and music are average. The art is basic but the frame rate is good. The action scenes were quite bad, most of which take places hidden in smoke/clouds and you actually see nothing. Throughout the series there was not a single good fight.The "feels" missed me at every attempt. I'm sorry but I just can't vibe with feels scenes centered around robots/AI. They aren't real, they don't have souls and their feelings are programmed.... So should you feel something when one is destroyed? No. This causes a problem when trying to develop character attachment. Pluto was 8 hours long and I felt far less about their "deaths" then the 2 hours I knew human characters for in popular movies like Mugan Train or When the Promised Flower Blooms. Because of the flaws on every side of AI anime, I cannot give it higher than 6/10. I could understand giving this up to a 7/10 but any higher would be ludicrous unless you're an anime noob or obsessed with astro boy.

Anyways. it's more entertaining than you're average generic seasonal, but it's not great. Certainly not worthy of being in the top 100.

PLUTO IS FAILURE OF URASAWA Pluto follows the Europol robot detective Gesicht in his attempts to solve the case of a string of robot and human deaths around the world where all the victims have objects shoved into or positioned by their heads, imitating horns Though the premise is great and you have urasawa sounds like a masterpiece but no its so boring you will fall sleep multiple time the mystery done here a so so bad It includes so many irrelevant garbage characters that dont matter in long term there are literally low hyped momments and I knew that because he made it based on astroboy corny robot manga but still I gave it chance but no its not good. Just watch masterpiece like monster or 20 th century boys and drop pluto