Astro Boy 9
August 27, 2007
9? Are we on volume 9 already? I ordered five more during the recent Right Stuf Dark Horse sale, but I don’t know if I’ll get them or not. What are the odds this series is still in print after five years? While I’d like to believe it is because of its historical significance… yeah. I don’t know.
While I still fall asleep a lot while reading these, I think they’re starting to get a bit more exciting random story-wise. This one has a pretty epic battle with a robot Cleopatra that involves Dr. Tenma and his rival as well as some random gigantic Egyptian robots.
The other two stories are better, though. The second story, which is quite long, deals with a teleporter fubar which causes a static ghost to appear and attack people. This was caused by a jealous scientist who regrets his decision now. The static monster is actually a combination person, rabbit, robot, and fish, and it shifts form, so it actually winds up being really cool. Astro can’t do much to attack the ghost, so they have to use other means. It’s got a surprisingly surreal ending.
The last story is kinda short, but introduces Cobalt, who I believe winds up being Astro’s brother. Cobalt looks just like Astro, and is Dr. Ochanomizu’s attempt to replicate Astro after Astro went AWOL. Apparently he’s just not as good as Dr. Tenma, and Cobalt is kind of a second place finisher. Interestingly, Tezuka says Cobalt died in the original version of this story, which is… really bizarre and violent.
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August 27, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I bought the first volume of this series three or four years ago and have not bought volume two yet. I didn’t like it. But at the same time, I haven’t traded it in like all the other manga in my collection that didn’t work out. Am I still holding out hope, after all these years, that some how volume 2 will knock me backwards? Until now I never thought about buying anymore; I just thought the story was silly. But now my interest is piqued. Is there any fighting or some coherent story evolving in the later volumes? I want fighting! FIGHT! FIGHT! Heh.
August 28, 2007 at 3:56 am
Unfortunately, Astro Boy strikes me as pretty boring too, particularly the early volumes. It just… it’s got some really good stories in it, but overall it hasn’t aged well. The best stretch of the series so far has been volumes 6-8, which is the “Origin of Astro” story and makes up what may be the only continuous plot. The rest of the series you can buy at random since there is zero continuity and all the volumes are random stories just like the first. Well, at least as far as I know, I’m a little less than half through, so maybe there’s more continuity in store.
There are some really good action stories that show up here and there, some are stronger than others. This volume did have some good ones in it. The best story so far, though, would probably be the “Strongest Robot on Earth” from volume 3. It’s the story that Naoki Urasawa based Pluto on, and it’s made the best use of robot powers yet. It puts Pluto against… I wanna say nine of the strongest robots on Earth, all of whom have different abilities and varying desires to fight (Astro is one of them, of course), and Pluto mops the floor spectacularly with almost all of them.