Slightly Biased Manga

I actually had a big anniversary post up last night that involved artbooks and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, among other things, but I took it down because it felt wrong.  It also felt wrong taking it down, because it took almost 4 hours to prepare.  At any rate, this site turned 3 on Saturday, and I had a week-long celebration planned, but that’s been postponed indefinitely.

Have some Astro Boy, though!  My comic store still carries this, so I keep buying it from them.  I was pretty excited about this volume, because it has the end of the origins of Astro story that’s been running since volume 6.  We see an epic escape from Hamegg and a really cute story where some mystery person makes Astro a robot family.  Aww.

Unfortunately, the actual conclusion to the story was kind of boring.  The conclusion wraps up everything with Scara and her husband, and there is plenty of action, alien stuff, and Astro even gets taken down at one point… but it just seemed kind of boring compared to the rest of the story.  Maybe it was because it had been too long since I read the other parts though, I don’t know.

The last story in the volume was pretty awesome.  It was a simple story about a robot who gets his head stolen, then goes around ripping the heads off other robots to see if they fit him.  He’s got a torso with eyes on it, which is pretty creepy.  Apparently, while his body is strong enough to take out pretty much every one of the huge robots he comes across, his head makes for the strongest robot on the planet, and is used for evil purposes.  So… he was the strongest robot ever when he had his head?  How long was he like this?  When did he cease to be a labor robot on the moon?  HUH?  There are… many things which I had a hard time grasping.  The last line of the story seems like the most important: “Why would humans make a robot like that?”

Interestingly, a lot of the last story takes place in Los Angeles, and even when it moves to Japan, LA is mentioned repeatedly.  That’s a little California Love, straight from Tezuka himself.  Or the translator/editor, in case they were just trying to make us feel better.

One final note, the adaptation on this series is fantastic.  As bored as I get reading it sometimes (I fell asleep three times reading this volume), the puns and stuff are exquisite and very much in the silly spirit of the series.  I can’t remember any specifically right now, but there was a particularly good one at the beginning of the volume that made me want to give the responsible person a high five.