Pluto 5

Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2009 – 8 volumes

Admittedly, I get more of a conceptual pleasure out of Pluto than I do actual entertainment value, which is okay.  The story is more about exploring its themes, and it does this masterfully.  At this point, I’m still trying to ponder setting armies of robots against one another to fight a war, and the story looks at that problem from both sides, how it affected the robots involved and also what the humans were thinking at the time.  There’s also the themes of the limited range of emotions robots can experience, and some eerie scenes of bitter disappointment when robots have to feel sadness for the first time.  It also looks at robots dealing with anger and hatred, two emotions purposely left out of their AI routines in order to avoid harm or death to humans.  Sometimes it happens, though.

Gesicht has to deal with anger in this volume.  Again, it’s eerie to see scenes play out where the robots just have to deal emotionlessly with whatever is happening to them, and the abuse Gesicht takes from the man he’s protecting is one of those times.  But then he does get angry, and his memories return to him, and he suddenly remembers what anger and hatred are really like.  He has to talk to Brau again, who seems quite pleased with his revelation, and then he has to do something incredibly selfless anyway, all the while asking if anger and hate are things that go away.  It’s just… sad.  Also sad are scenes where robots wish they hadn’t been allowed to adopt since they wouldn’t have to feel sadness at losing their children in that case Gesicht covered all those years ago.

More interesting is the ending, when Dr. Tenma comes in and begins discussing his AI programming.  The point is made that AI can never replace human intelligence, as was the case when he tried to replicate Tobio Tenma.  But he claims that he made the perfect AI routine, one with the information from all six billion people on Earth in it, that the computer was left to sort out and deal with, but was unable to.  He claims that the only way to tip the balance when the computer can’t deal with something is to give it the anger and hatred it’s not allowed to have otherwise.

And there you have one of the main themes of the series, I think.  There’s also a fight between Pluto and Hercules, but this was much less interesting since we’ve seen fights like this before and know their outcomes.  I’m not sure where the story is going at this point, but I think we will have a grand, if evil, revival sometime soon.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Also, the comic is once again printed with one panel in color when the field of flowers representing Pluto is shown.  It’s still an amazing technique, and really… really makes the difference of Pluto’s personality stand out.  I’m looking forward to seeing it explained.