Reviews for Astro Boy

Astro Boy is a historically important manga/anime, if only because its success helped in no small part to establish the Japanese animation industry and helped familiarize Western audiences with Japanese media (although it would still be a few decades until it got really popular). While this is by no means an outright terrible series, its not that good either. Keep in mind that most of the series was drawn with small boys in mind as its intended audience and it shows very clearly. Not to mention that it was released almost 70 years ago, meaning that various parts of the manga have not aged very well. Theart is pretty good but the stories are very simple. While they do often address serious issues like intolerance and violence, the stories they feature in are very simple with predictable resolutions and very little depth. Most of the stories are episodic, which means that the quality of the manga changes with every chapter (although some of them are actually good) and continuity isn't something that's regarded seriously. The characters are flat and boring, if not completely unlikable. The supporting characters have little to no development from their initial introduction and the villains are mostly just there to serve as punching bags.

Astro Boy himself is fine but there's nothing really remarkable about him.

Unfortunately, its historical significance is the only reason I would recommend anyone to read this.

Manga history! This should really be read by everyone. The manga doesn't really have an overarching story, but rather just a collection of stand-alone chapters. However, these chapters can be really long, like half a volume long. I would recommend reading all of them but it can be a bit of a drag sometimes since not all stories are especially interesting. One of the real essentials is one of the few real arcs, "Once Upon a Time" spanning volume 6-8. The arc is also a good example of the darker side of the manga. The stories are often about the nature of humanity, violence andwar. There's usually a lesson to be learned at the end.

The art style is childish, but it really is excellent. Tezuka has a really cinematic style and is great with shadows. The characters are also great but unfortunately most of the main characters just don't get enough development or relevant screen time. My favourite characters were Astro Boy himself, and his creator Dr. Tenma. Dr. Tenma is not a good guy but he's not fully evil either, he's a very morally grey character. Dr. Tenma doesn't appear that often, but whenever he does, it's a highlight. The one-off characters are also really great, and all have their own back story, motivation och development.

Unfortunately the manga overall is very up and down. I think for younger children it doesn't really matter, but for an adult some chapters don't really leave an impact.

Astro boy Review. Strengths: Historical significance: Astro Boy is considered one of the most important works in the history of manga and anime. It was one of the first popular Japanese comic books to feature a robot protagonist and is credited with popularizing the genre of science fiction in Japan. Creative storytelling: Osamu Tezuka was known for his innovative storytelling techniques, and Astro Boy is no exception. The series explores themes of humanity, identity, and social justice through its characters and storylines. Enduring popularity: Even decades after its original publication, Astro Boy remains a beloved and influential series in Japan and around the world. Its characters and concepts havebeen adapted into countless TV shows, movies, and other media.

Weaknesses:

Dated art style: While Astro Boy's artwork was groundbreaking when it was first published, some readers may find it outdated compared to modern manga and anime styles.

Pacing issues: The series can be slow-paced at times, with long stretches of dialogue and exposition.

Repetitive storylines: Because the series was originally published as a weekly comic strip, some of the storylines can feel formulaic or repetitive.

Overall, Astro Boy is a classic manga series that has had a significant impact on the medium of Japanese comics and animation. While it may not be perfect, its creative storytelling and enduring popularity make it a must-read for fans of science fiction and manga.

Even though Tetsuwan Atom/Astro Boy is a cultural icon, I feel like the story is not talked about enough. People might say "it appeals to kids" "its for kids" which is true mostly for the anime, but the manga tackles some very tough material. Let me set the picture for you, in the 1950's an artist whom his mother's family had a long history with the military. Naturally you would want to speak about war issues if you are in the middle of World War II so years later you make Tetsuwan Atom, it garners massive attention and easily becomes your most popular work. It'spopular because of kid's audiences and is kinda forgotten for its dark story. Would you really like that? Honestly Atom is one of the best manga I've ever read which is a good example of old doesn't mean bad. Early early manga usually connect to World War II like Cyborg 009, Most Go Nagai works, etc which makes a interesting connection between WWII and the rise of anime. Give it a shot, the art will grow on you and if your not into it, probably try Pluto by Urasawa (Monster author) which is a lot more adult appealing then Tetsuwan Atom.

In my mind, Astro Boy is to manga and anime what Mario is to videogames or The Citizen Kane is to movies, you kinda have to go through them if you are fan of their mediums, because of the impact they had in them. And since watching any of its anime is a no-no for me, I decided to go and read the manga, which is after all the original version. It’s not an easy thing to do though, as you won’t find two sites with the same information about it, there’s a different number of chapters and volumes everywhere you look at. So this reviewis based on the Dark Horse Comics version, which compiles everything in 98 chapters and supposedly misses other two chapters (which you can still find online and are very short).

Since it’s an official English release, it means that the most names were localized, which wasn’t that big of a deal, I was reading the manga from left to right, which was weird, but most important of all, the order of the chapters is not chronological, but instead some weird selection supposedly arranged by Tezuka himself. Let me tell you that this way the narrative is one big mess, concepts and moments are repeated, references to events are made without the original happening yet at times, characters are introduced for the first time way after you have already seen them for a lot of chapters, and so on.

But honestly even if the manga was in order, it would still be just episodic stories of varying yet overall not so great quality amongst them, as it is usually the case with episodic or anthological series.

This is fairly obvious and well known but what can’t be denied is how creative and influential the scenarios are, you can find a later concept or character in almost every chapter. On the earliest volumes alone, things reminded me of Megaman, One Piece, Magic Kaito, Speed Racer, Mazinger Z and so on.

Still, I consider worth mentioning that even the simplest concepts can sometimes elevate to global, interplanetary or space wars in scope and scale, but the resolutions always leave a lot to be desired and the tone is never that serious, Tezuka even breaks the fourth wall at times and sometimes even features himself in the manga, it is a manga for very young readers after all.

Which is a shame because if the stories were more serious and different, we would have a pretty good collection of sci-fi ideas in here. Some that I want to bother to mention are Greatest Robot on Earth (but only because it inspired Pluto), Ghost Manufacturing Machine, which satirizes nazism, Hitler and the Valkyrie operation, the Once Upon a Time continuity, where Astro goes back in time, with varying results in quality, Subterranean Tank, that is mostly missing Astro.

Finally, the Blue Knight, where a robot rebels against humans because of the way they treat them, and the human response was to basically put the robots through a holocaust, so they end up creating a robot nation, and the villain of the story even manages to convince Astro himself. Probably the best chapter in the whole manga, worthy of getting its own Pluto-like spin off, but its ending and continuation leave a lot to be desired.

After the magazine where the manga was published closed down, it moved to another one, and the stories became shorter and even more childish, resulting in the last volumes of the manga being considerably worse and with barely any time to explore its ideas and concepts.

Other issues in quality are the exposition, which is quite bad, as characters tend to mention and overexplain even the most obvious things, and even in not the most appropriate ways, such as villains exposing their plans or backstories in the middle of nowhere.

And the characters are closer to simple caricatures, and they’re not that consistent either, as they should know and trust Astro the whole time, but sometimes the conflict escalates because they do not pay attention to him or act sillier than normal just because.

As for the visual quality, there is a lot of needless exposition as I said, and the actual drawings and panelling show varying quality, partly because Tezuka improved throughout the years, partly because many different assistants worked on the manga, and later on went on to become important authors themselves, and well, partly because the Dark Horse order is a mess.

As a whole, you can find a lot of innovation and a starting point for plenty of anime, manga and even Japanese videogames in here, creativity regarding sci-fi scenarios, an often big scale in conflict, and a noticeable improvement in visual quality throughout the manga, but the narrative, exposition, execution, characterization and what passes as a conclusion, if there’s even any to begin with, leave a lot to be desired, thus coming off as a title more important to read for historical reasons than anything else, but otherwise not really worth going through.

Astro boy story take place in a futuristic world whereby mankind and robots all lived together. Astro boy manga for the most parts consist of episodic stories, in which our protagonist fights evil robots and aliens. As the story progress, Astro realized that robots are discriminated and abused by humans. One of the recurrent themes of the manga is robot rights. Should robots have rights, should they be equal to humans, what should they be able to do and what aren’t they allowed to do. And throughout the manga we going to see how the relationship between human and robot progress. As for the art style itwas a bit cartoonish, highly inspired by western cartoon. Astro boy put in perspective Osamu Tezuka visual concept of the future in the 80s and 90s.

Astro boy was an enjoyable manga to read,

7/10.

Art and Composition: 7/10 Story and Themes: 3/10 Characters: 3/10 Overall: 5/10 Art and Composition: Tezuka's style and Disney's influence on said style are rather well known, and for good reason. His light and cartoony characters fit very well into the futuristic Japan (as well as the many other places that Atom visits) and his reusing of minor characters such as Lamp Acetylene and Duke Red helps to connect what are otherwise unconnected stories, even if only slightly. The simplistic charm of Atom and his friends helps even the most underwhelming Mighty Atom story feel like a real adventure. The art does what it needs to do and does itwell, but it's only rarely that Tezuka produces a page or double-spread that I find genuinely great - this sucks, since there are indeed a few instances where Tezuka's art genuinely astonished me. Unfortunately, every artist has their limitations and weaknesses - Tezuka's is undoubtedly drawing people with dark skin. Drawing inspiration from common depictions at the time (which themselves drew inspiration from American minstrel shows), Tezuka depicts black (and various other dark-skinned) people in a racist manner that makes several chapters very difficult to read. Additionally—although this is far more of a design complaint than an ethical one—he tends to depict women (especially ‘pretty’ women) nearly identically to one another. This is a problem also shared by some of his ‘attractive’ male heroes as well, but it's much more prominent with his female ones. It's rather annoying for all of the main male characters to have unique, distinctive, exaggerated designs while the women look about the same sans a different hairstyle. Overall, Mighty Atom's art was highly influential but nothing exceptional outside of a few outliers.

Story and Themes:

Mighty Atom was for elementary school aged children in 1950's (and subsequently 1960's) post-war Japan - this is something that cannot be understated. This makes it rather difficult to accurately and fairly judge the plot and themes of Mighty Atom, since I am decidedly not the kind of person Tezuka was writing for. That being said, it would feel dishonest to say that Mighty Atom's stories are anything more than underwhelming a majority of the time. Yes, there are a few stories that I would classify as “okay” to “good”, but it's rather lacklustre for the most part. After a while the plots begin to feel repetitive and the only thing that keeps you going is the artwork. In addition, the story attempts to tackle some rather heavy themes such as racism, segregation, and discrimination (which is rather admirable and stands out from the contemporary manga being published at the time), but fails to really say much of anything outside of “treating people different from you poorly is wrong” and “everyone deserves rights”. These are fundamentally true statements, and I commend Tezuka for trying to include such heavy topics in his story, but... their inclusion is restricted rather heavily by the story they reside in. A manga for young boys with a focus on action and fighting that also attempts to tackle race relations can often feel like it's being stretched thin, with little time for any actual discussion on the themes. Did I expect Mighty Atom to contain deep and nuanced portrayals of hatred and violence? No, of course not. I wouldn't mind the shallowness of Mighty Atom's take on discrimination and related things if it wasn't also filled with confusing contradictions on what is or isn't right or wrong. In the story, Atom possesses the ability to innately judge whether a person is a good person or a bad person - this concept alone illustrates how the story might not give the proper respect to the real world themes that they deserve. It's difficult to say how much should or not be shown in media for children, but for me. Mighty Atom firmly lands in the area of “doesn't say enough on the themes to justify their inclusion”. Also, some random notes: there's a story with a robot Holocaust and a character talks about creating an Israel for robots and this is given serious narrative weight. Also, sometimes there's alien locust cuckoldry. I didn't know where else to include that.

Characters:

Practically all of the characters in Mighty Atom are flat, with little to no personal, moral, or narrative depth ascribed to them. This is to be expected for a series targeted at very young children, but it can make the story somewhat difficult to become invested in as an adult. Atom is a fun protagonist with the most amount of development out of any of the cast (although that isn’t exactly saying much), with Dr. Tenma being a close second despite his relative lack of appearances compared to some other secondary characters. If you want a character driven story, look elsewhere. That isn’t the story that Tezuka is telling here and it isn’t the story you’ll get.

Mighty Atom is an incredibly important piece of manga history, but an “okay” piece of media that may not have much of value for the modern day adult reader outside of its historical value. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's important to keep in mind before jumping in.

When Astro Boy is good, it is amazing. Some of its arcs are quite wonderful, contemplative and with clear direction over when it believes and is trying to say about the future, the present, and the ways we see the past. How we ought to shape a future with robots in it and how we ought to be living. Astro is a vehicle of idealism. When Astro Boy is bad, it can be crushingly so. Stories which undermine those amazing arcs and moments. Ridiculous novelty nonsense and one dimensional characters. Racist caricatures against middle eastern, black, pacific islander, and southeast asians, hasbara for Israel, anda few cases of some dangerously strange anti-trans conflations, mostly concentrated in the volumes 18 and 19.

I highly suggest you stick around up until the arc wraps up around the point where Astro's timeline goes in something of a circle, without spoiling you'll know exactly what I mean as it exhausts most of its best work and begins dumping the really mediocre 1950s works on you.

The characters are always the highlight when Astro Boy is at its peak. Astro himself is a wonderful character, and I always found the cuteness of his sister Uran really endearing. She even gets some of her own shining moments which I reflect back on fondly. He has a brother and a grand total of four father figures. One, the teacher who's integrating him into human society who's passionate and hot tempered. The head of the ministry of science who tries to direct Astro on the path of nonviolence and peace above all. His original father and creator who occupies a deeply interesting and morally grey position, always interesting when he shows up. Lastly, a robot dad who was built for him and technically is in a lower school grade because he was made after Astro and less spectacularly. These characters all stick around pretty much most of the manga and I think they're all pretty great, all things considered.

Another character who constantly appears is Osamu Tezuka himself, reflecting on events in the story, his process and creation, that is if you're reading the Dark Horse edition. I couldn't for the life of me find anything that wasn't the Dark Horse comics. Of all the one off characters that deserve special mention, I do have to mention Pluto and Epsilon, which both appear in the spinoff adaptation written by the mangaka of Monster. They were so perfect to be chosen for a reinterpretation of Astro Boy's stories in a more serious context, because they were very three dimensional and sympathetic. Read it for them.

The art, the paneling, it has very mixed qualities. When it's not doing something racist and made in the 60s, it will have some of the best action flow and paneling you'll see for its era. Not so much with the 50s stories. Way too much explaining in those, they get so very dull. When it leans too much on dialogue without any depth of character, it can feel like a complete waste of time. Trust your gut and know when to skim here.

Overall, I'd say it's worth the read if you're really curious about retro manga or speculative robot sci fi.