Astro Boy 12
December 19, 2007
Still slowly getting through Astro Boy. I went back to it because I started playing through Astro Boy: Omega Factor on GBA. A fine game.
Most of this volume concerns the roboids. There are several robots who fight along with Astro to stop these robots from outer space (technically the Earth’s core, but originally outer space, apparently). I always hate it when an honest robot’s weakness is exploited and they get killed. It happens once with a robot who loves to play with children here. Another robot is blown up while trying to use a suicide power. I kinda didn’t believe that one, because I thought the superpower was going to come back around and knock the roboid out, but… it didn’t. He just transformed into a harpoon or something and was knocked off course.
There was a little boy roboid that tried to make friends with Astro, but unfortunately his dad was the head roboid, so he and Astro were locked in a battle for grim death.
There was a minor role for Uran in this story. Uran doesn’t often make an appearance in this series, and here she’s kind of knocked out right at the beginning and someone impersonates her the rest of the time, but we do see a lot of Uran in this chapter.
There are three other stories in this volume, all are relatively short. The best one was “Broadcasts from Outer Space,” which featured Uran, Cobalt, and Astro dancing up a storm in the most adorable way possible. Basically, alien television signals are being broadcast and robots are picking up the shows and acting them out inadvertently, which tends to make them go berserk. An alien tries to collect fees for the signals with unexpected results.
“Eyes of Christ” is an almost straightforward mystery. I kind of liked it. Duke Red gets one of the only good guy roles I’ve ever seen him in.
“Youth Gas” was just awesome. An asteroid lands on Earth and generates a gas which makes anything exposed to it younger. They use it on a celebrity or two before the asteroid is stolen. At one point, Cobalt and Astro must fight to the robo-death, which was extremely unexpected. Much like Uran, Cobalt is also unfairly overlooked in this series.
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