Far from the cheery innocence of the beloved manga series it’s based on, this anime adaptation is a futuristic murder mystery railing against the atrocities of war
Astro Boy, first serialised in 1952, remains one of Japan’s national treasures and the defining work of the “father of manga”, Osamu Tezuka. When the renowned manga artist Naoki Urasawa revealed in 2003 that he would reimagine Astro Boy in a new series, expectations were astronomical. Astonishingly, Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka did not just honour its source material; it radically expanded it and became an immediate critical and commercial sensation. While the 2023 anime adaptation doesn’t quite surpass the manga’s cultural impact, it still manages to faithfully capture the philosophical and emotional adeptness of its source material.
Over eight hour-long episodes, Pluto does not follow Atom, the spiky-haired protagonist of Astro Boy; instead, it centres on Gesicht, a German detective and one of the world’s most advanced robots. Gesicht must track down the mysterious assassin targeting Earth’s most powerful robots and the scientists behind an international investigation that led to a devastating war. The murder sites are linked by two consistent elements: horn-shaped objects referencing Pluto, the Roman god of death, and the absence of human biology as evidence. But how could robots be suspects when they are programmed to never harm humans?