Astro Boy 13

Most of this volume was taken up by a really long story about a robot named Zolomon who wasn’t really a robot (and wasn’t really a golem either, come to think of it), a tiny alien planet, a lucky jewel, a boy who wanted to be changed into a cyborg, a disembodied queen head with psychic powers, and a whole bunch of other insane things that came together to form a really long, epic Astro Boy story.  At one point, Ochanomizu is shot and killed.  Who are the only two characters in Tezuka’s staff evil enough to start the riot and do the actual shooting?  Why, Hamegg and Lamp, of course.  It took me a minute to recognize Lamp, but Hamegg actually has a bit part in this story.  And it’s hard not to recognize Hamegg.  While Lamp can be made to look like a regular person, Hamegg just can’t be disguised.

There were two other short stories which were also awesome.  One was about Astro getting emotions like a human (basically a human heart) so he could appreciate things like art and music.  This backfires when it also makes him a scaredy cat unable to fight evil. This was apparently drawn by someone else, though Tezuka went back and redrew most of the pages for the graphic novel.

The last story is about a little robot boy who lies, which robots don’t do.  He says exactly the opposite of the truth every time, and he causes several panics when he is released into the public.  His real purpose is to serve a dying old lady, and he was made to lie so that he would make her feel better when she asked how she looked today.  Aww.

Astro Boy 12

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.

Astro Boy 11

Eh, what the heck.  I’ll write this one tonight since I just finished it.

I still have a hard time getting through Astro Boy stories because of the density of what’s going on.  The volumes are small, there’s a lot of panels on a page, and the stories can go all over the place before they’re done.  It takes me one train ride to read about 40 pages of Astro Boy where I would read 160 pages of anything else.

A lot of the stories in this volume had really, REALLY random elements.  The first story, which was about a robot bomb-boy built by aliens and trying to hide from bad guys on Earth, had a choice random moment which I felt could be used as an icon of 60 children’s entertainment.  After the action had been largely Astro beating up alien bad guys, Astro found a remote house with an old woman living with her granddaughter.  Astro suspected the daughter of being the bomb, but he let it go and the scene was relatively quiet and nice.  Then, out of nowhere, they were attacked by giant ants.  That’s right: giant alien ants.  Didn’t know that aliens could do that?  Neither did I.  The ants snatch the granddaughter and fly off into space to a flying saucer.  In order to catch them in the act, Astro tears one of the ants apart and hides inside it, then flies up into space with the giant ant swarm.

Another story opens with Higeoyaji riding an airplane and talking about how much he liked it.  On the next page, the airplane is struck by a passing jet and split open, and all the passengers are parachuting out of it.  On the next page, we find out that Higeoyaji has somehow wound up by himself in the middle of a desert, and passes out from the heat.  Then a masked man pops out of the ground in a tank and offers him a ride to Japan.   This is all within the first 4 pages of the story.  Later, the man’s mask is taken off, and we’re treated randomly to a horribly offensive racial caricature the likes of which we’re warned about in the beginning of every Astro Boy volume.  Oddly, what appears to be a straighter version of an Asian caricature appears on the next page.  I don’t know.

There’s a really short story at the end of the volume where the action is abrupt and in continual affirmation of whatever the characters have just said.  The effect is strange.

So yes, this was one of the most bizarre, random volumes of Astro Boy I’ve read yet.  The storytelling here sort of reads like a more refined version of the bizarre tangents that would happen in Lost World, but a precursor to the insane plots we’d get in Ode to Kirihito and MW later.

Thank you, Osamu Tezuka.

Astro Boy 10

I’m still not quite as enamored with this series as I was when I was reading the “Origins of Astro” story a few volumes ago, but there’s some decent stories in this volume, and you have to appreciate the insanity of these stories, because it’s like reading a small-scale version of a Tezuka epic every time.

The first story is about a planet-shaping robot made by aliens being sent to Earth by mistake.  Garon is the robot’s name.  I actually kind of liked this story, if only because Garon literally had no weakness whatsoever, and Astro couldn’t beat him in a fight.  Duke Red was in this story.

There was another good story about 5 psychic French kids who are intercepted by aliens who are set on destroying the planet, since it was that alien who made mankind millions of years ago.  Yeah, it was something like that, and it was totally serious.  Sorry for the light spoiler, but I think it’s important that you know the alien was slurped up by cows in the end.

The best story, and the most disturbing, was one which involved giving Astro a body which had been aged 10 years.  The same superpowers and everything were in this body, it was just older-looking.  The villain was an international conman that wanted Astro’s original body.  Co-starred Mr. James “Dnob” and the conman’s name was word play-ish as well.

Astro Boy 9

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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Astro Boy 8

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.

Astro Boy 7

Yay! I got the next volume from the comic shop. Unfortunately, they didn’t have volume 8, but I didn’t think much about it until I finished this volume and found out the story is in three parts.

It’s still really, really good here. I like this huge story much better than the shorter, smaller ones, though abrupt deaths still bother me a bit. This volume deals with Astro being found in his predicament from last time 20-some years later (in a rather improbable way, though… WHY IS THE NOTE STILL INTACT?), and when he gets sent back to Japan, he gets 24 hours to do the right thing. He meets up with the kid from last time’s daughter, and they go on an adventure to try and get robots their rights. The story ends kind of sadly though, and had the volume ended on the cliffhanger here, where Astro Boy just lays down and dies in resignation, I probably would’ve been pulling my hair out.

The second half of the volume is a rather well-told origin story for Astro Boy. I can’t remember if Tezuka told us in volume one or if we learned in editor’s notes, but we got the nuts and bolts of it back then with an explanation that somehow Japanese people just always knew, and there wasn’t much of an origin story for Astro. This baffled me initially, but then I realized that he got more of an origin story than, say, Bugs Bunny, so I guess you don’t really need one.

This story is SAD. Dr. Tenma’s son Tobio dies, and Dr. Tenma goes against everyone to try and make the best robot in the world in the image of his son, sort of to replace him. Astro is called Tobio for most of the volume, and watching Tobio and Dr. Tenma is quite sad… Dr. Tenma loves this son very much, he’s gotta teach him how to be human, Tobio loves Dr. Tenma, and you know eventually Dr. Tenma sells Tobio to the circus for whatever reason. It is very, VERY sad.

The circus scenes at the end are heartbreaking, too. Hamegg makes for a good villain, as he beats and forces Astro to do a ton of horrible things he doesn’t want to do. We get a cliffhanger, but since he’s just locked in Hamegg’s closet with no power, you sort of know the potential to free him is there. Hamegg gets a pie in the face from Ochanomizu at the end too, which is also kind of awesome.

Yes. I love this story arc. Screw the strongest robot in the world, give me Once Upon a Time.

Astro Boy 6

AAH!  Astro Boy heard me complain!  I loved this volume, which is apparently a compilation of Astro Boy’s run in the newspapers post-anime.  All the chapters form a cohesive story which leaves off at a sad cliffhanger at the end of the book.

The story is about an infuriating locust woman coming to Earth because she felt like it, sent here by her husband in an attempt to get her off the planet when she’d taken a lover and the lover decided to kill the husband as the laws of their planet state.  Seriously.  After awhile, we get to the part where Astro gets involved.  When her ship crashes and burns, it sends her and Astro back to 1967, 50 years in the past.

The locust woman is ANNOYING.  She just wants to hang out in nature all day and doesn’t want to be a productive member of society, doesn’t see why she should have to, and constantly annoys every single character that crosses her path.  She was just a bizarre character, and Astro stuck by her always… until she called him a slave and he ran off crying.  But even then, he came back for her.

Astro was a lot different here, too.  Most of the characters associated with him are not here (Mustachio and Dr. Ochanomizu are replaced in the past by other characters… sorta…), so it’s just Astro.  He is extremely upset about being in the past where noone knows about robots, noone can relate to him, and where he can’t get energy once he runs out.  It’s really sad.

That was why I liked it, I think.  It was so sad, and you just felt so bad for Astro throughout, and it did not have a happy end for the cliffhanger.  So yes, I want to read what happens next.

Astro Boy 5

For some reason, it takes me a long time to read these.  On another note: Tezuka mentions that when his stories were put into tankouban, they would give him a concrete number of pages per volume and he would need to cut or draw new pages as necessary to meet this deadline.  Also, for whatever reason, sometimes the format for the original art didn’t match the trim size of the book, so he would have to cut apart the frames and make the drawings bigger.  Fascinating.  One wonders, if he had to expand the drawing on that page to suit the new size (in that instance, a 2-page splash illustration that took up the top 2/3 of the two page spread), he would have also have had to cut apart all the panels and rearrange them to suit the new page size.  The panels are modular, so this is possible and not too many of them would need to be redrawn, but it is insane all the same, and it would throw off any page flow he had in mind.

Anyway, the first story features a surly early model transformer who managed to be pretty awesome.  The clear winner this time around, though was “Space Snow Leopard,” which delivers exactly what it promises.  A snow leopard.  From space.  With six legs.  This snow leopard also melts into a puddle periodically, and can reform and do all sorts of weird things.  The plot involves this leopard (named Lupe the Space Snow Leopard) and a man that comes with him sucking all the artificial energy on Earth so that it will be powerless when invasion rolls around.  The solution to this problem is also a lot more transformer-like than you may imagine.

Ooh… I don’t really want to read volume six, but that will mean Astro Boy is cleared from my backlog, and also that I can get three more volumes… and be three volumes closer to Saint Seiya.

Astro Boy 4

Astro Boy… I don’t know.  It’s not for me.  When I read it, I feel like I’m reading a textbook or eating vegetables.  It’s sort of against my will, but I know it’s good for me in the end.  Plus, I’m a completist, and since I’ve started it I have to finish it, and the incentive for finishing is starting Saint Seiya.  I really wanna read that one, and I’ve got… 19 more volumes of this to go!

This one had a lot more shorter stories than any of the first three volumes.  My favorite of these short stories was the one that took place on the moon (“Ivan the Fool”), because I really enjoyed how Tezuka played with ecology there and I liked the way the whole stranded scenario played out.  That one felt like it probably would have been at home in any anthology, and it was a lot less kiddy to me than the others.

The best story in the volume was actually one called “Ghost Manufacturing Machine.”  It was just as huge and epic as the Strongest Robot story from last volume.  It’s got peril in the fact that the scientist is kidnapped and taken to another country, and Astro can’t go after him because it breaks robot law, it’s got a lot of Astro getting into tight situations, it’s got Hitlini, it’s got a backstabbing friend for the scientist who turns out to be all right, and it’s got a cute robot named Platinum.  What more could a six-year-old boy ask for?  While the series isn’t for me, I feel like it’s one of the few manga that would do well to be in every library in America simply because it is really, REALLY good for kids.

Once again though, the series deals with death in rather disturbing ways.  Two characters are killed at the end of the main story, and barely any pause is given to either.  You kind of feel the impact of one because he’s sacrificing himself willingly, but the other… literally it comes out of nowhere, about two panels are spent on the scene, and I don’t think he’s mentioned again despite the huge part he’s played.  I felt pretty bad about the second death.