Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Pluto manga, A great reimagining!

I've been reading a fuckton of manga recently, so expect a few blogs on it. I'm currently reading Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, though I really can't imagine how the fuck I'd write about it. Maybe whatever I read next will make it, or I'll just make another Code Geass blog. 
                                                                                                                                               
  Everyone, even none anime fans have heard of Astro Boy. The robot child that fights crime, and has a machine gun in his butt.  Credited with starting anime and manga to some extent, Osamu Tezuka is considered a genius.
      Naoki Urusawa is considered by many to be a great manga-ka in his own right. I first read 20th Century Boys, and loved it. From there I went to Monster, and then Pluto. Pluto is a realistic retelling of a story arc from Astro Boy about a black robot going around destroying other high end robots, such as Astro Boy. Obviously in the orginal Astro Boy was in the lead, but in Urusawa's retelling, the lead is an inspector named Gesicht.
I thought this was really cool.
      In the world of Pluto, there have been a string of mysterious killings, with all the victims being robots, or creators of robots with giant black horns sticking out of the corpses. The lack of evidence points to the killer being a robot, but supposedly robots are unable to harm humans.

Gesicht
   The story begins with Gesicht, a human looking who works for Europol being assigned to the case. He has a human wife, and as the story continues, he realizes that he's made his memories wiped. There was something in his past that he needed to forget, and the public could never know.
  
  In this world, there was a conflict known as the 39th Middle East War in Persia, in which the most powerful robots in the world were sent over to massacre their robots. Their leader, after being defeated created Pluto, the titular robot to take revenge on the robots that decimated his plans, and their creators. The story beings after one robots, Mont Blanc has been killed, and the other robots know something is after them.
Atom Astro Boy
     Gesicht is basically traveling around warning other robots what's up, when he meets Atom (Astro Boy). The worlds most realistic robot, so much so that most people believe he is human. Gesicht allows him to borrow his memories on the case, and that's how he becomes involved. The idea of a more mature Astro Boy, a more realistic one is really cool to me. During his first fight with Pluto, he loses, and is left catatonic.
    Gesicht is targeted by a robot cult, and killed in the street by a damaged robot child. During his last moments he remembers the truth- that he had a child, a small robot found in the junk yard and took him home. I think his robot child was killed,and in turn, he snapped and murdered the killer. I'm not sure on this, but it's what I think anyway. Atom wakes up at this point, having been inserted with Gesicht's hatred at the moment of his death. After a bout of rage, he calms down, and goes off to save the day. All the other super robots have been destroyed by Pluto, it's all on him to win.

  I honestly have no clue how to write about this series. I absolutely love it, and i feel anything i write wouldn't do it justice. It's only 8 volumes, and it's amazing. Pluto manga- 10/10!



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