24 Mar / Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 008 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki, with the cooperation of Tezuka Productions
Oh, tell me it ain’t so … Can this REALLY be the final volume of Urasawa’s fabulous Pluto series? B-b-b-but … Urasawa’s Monsterwent on for 17 volumes, and 20th Century Boys is still going strong at volume 7 … how could Pluto already be finished with 008, boo hooo??!!
So read and weep, dear fans … even if they’re tears of bittersweet joy …
Final volume 008 opens with a newly reawakened Atom – with eyes so gorgeously haunting – as he finally solves the formula for the antiproton bomb, “a recipe for world destruction.” Atom’s been inserted with the late great p0lice-robot’s Gesicht’s memory chip, whose brutal final moments were marked by something robots aren’t supposed to feel – hatred. But as one of the world’s seven great super-robots, Gesicht’s capabilities went far beyond his actual programming. So, too, Atom’s abilities are limitless … even as he is the very last hope for the human race.
“Do you think we’ll ever live in a world free from hate?” he asks for us all. Urasawa’s thinly disguised treatise against the so-called ‘war on terror’ – the United States of Thracia vs. Persia – proves to be a remarkable, memorable eight-volume prayer for peace.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2010 (United States)
PLUTO © Naoki Urasawa/Studio Nuts, Takashi Nagasaki, and Tezuka Productions
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc.
Based on Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka
That’s because it’s not about the war on terror, it’s really about war generally.
The parallels are just there to reinforce the relevance of the theme, not because Urasawa wanted to comment on a particular war.
Yes, I agree that the series is a treatise against war in general, but I think the parallels with this latest war are definitely intentional.
So I have a question for you as a fellow Urasawa reader. Might I say, I’m SOOOO glad you left a comment … I’ve asked a number of other Urasawa readers and no one seems to be sure …
Have you read the addictive Monster series? Is Professor Tenma in Pluto a much older Dr. Tenma from Monster? They don’t particularly look alike … but then the years haven’t been kind to the brilliant professor …
If you know, please do do share! And thanks for visiting the blog!
No, not at all. You are aware that Pluto is a rewrite of a story arc from Astro Boy, I assume. Well, Dr. Tenma is a character in Astro Boy (the creator of Astro/Atom in fact). Dr. Tenma from Monster was named after him in homage and I am highly doubtful they are set in the same world/timeline.
I find it hard to imagine that Herr Dr. Tenma from Monster would create a robot son and then sell him to the circus. The characters are just too different.
Yes, of course, every Pluto cover reminds us of Urasawa’s homage to Tezuka.
Monster begins in 1986. Atom was ‘born’ April 7, 2003 (even though Tezuka began the original manga in the early 1950s). During those 17 years, Herr Dr. Tenma has had 17 volumes worth of an incredibly shocking, disilusioning, tragic life.
I don’t think it far fetched that our Herr Dr. Tenma might eventually have had a son, say named Tobio (ahem), only to lose him, as well … And that might have been the final straw that utterly shatters his heart (and peace of mind). Because he’s so brilliant (and desperate), he thinks he might be able create life, having seen so much death and destruction. But Atom is just not his Tobio and in a final act of detachment, he let’s his creation go.
But because he is Herr Dr. Tenma, in Urasawa’s gorgeously humanized version of Pluto, Atom finally melts through (starts to anyway) the barriers Tenma has had to build to survive those 17 volumes of horrific experiences and still be able to somehow function.
Isn’t that a possible scenario that might make these two Tenmas the one and the same?
I go for the tribute theory, too … But Tenma isn’t a common name — would Urasawa have picked that just as a tribute? The kanji could be different in the two Tenmas, but I don’t have access to the Japanese versions to check …
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts …
Actually, I do believe the kanji for their names is different. I do not recall where I read that though.
In any case, the facial structures are completely different. The hair is completely different. Aging has no way of explaining that. And the theory also doesn’t add anything meaningful.
Plus, I doubt (despite his prodigious skill at neurosurgery) that Tenma would also become the most brilliant expert in Artificial Intelligence within that span of time. The skill-sets are going to be entirely different and Tenma displays no aptitude for that sort of mathematical ability.