Osamu Tezuka is considered to be the Godfather of Manga for producing over 700 volumes of manga in his career. All throughout his career and to this day he has inspired other manga artists. One particular manga that he inspired was Pluto. Pluto was intended to be the ultimate tribute to Osamu Tezuka as it reflects his style of story telling, art, and features many of his characters that are recognized in the manga and anime world.
Pluto ran from 2003-2009 and was written by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki, utilizing many characters that were created by Osamu Tezuka. The plot of Pluto is similar to Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun as it is a mystery and science fiction manga involving robots. The story focuses on a robot detective Gesicht being called in to investigate 2 murders that appear unrelated to each other. One murder is of the beloved robot Mont Blanc and the other is of a hated human Lanke. On the surface these 2 murders seem unrelated, until evidences suggest a robot killed them both. In the world of Pluto, robots cannot harm humans. This suggests to Gesicht that humans and robots are being targeted primarily those who are his friends. The story eventually progresses to the point that the Mont Blanc and Lanke cases become interrelated as the death of Gesicht’s friends begin to increase.
Pluto is set in the world of Astro Boy and features many characters from the series and Tezuka’s Star system. Astro Boy focused on a robot attempting to save society and gain acceptance from the very same society. Conversely, in Pluto, humans have accepted robots but not all robots have accepted humans and a robot is killing humans. This reverses the idea that Tezuka established in Astro Boy as a small sub-section of robots are against humanity. In developing this concept and pairing it with Astro Boy fans of Tezuka are exposed to both the robot and human side and gains a better understanding of the two sides. In Astro Boy, Astro is a robot that is portrayed as the hero while humanity is neutral and few humans are evil. In Pluto, humanity is viewed as being good while a few robots are bad. The two works are mirrors to one other that reverse the roles of humanity and robots and as a result the two works complete one another and provide an unbiased view on what Tezuka was attempting to create. Astro Boy and Pluto are great works but when read together expand the universe that Tezuka created beyond what could normally be achieved in a single series.
The first volume of Pluto can be purchased here.
