Astro Boy
| Astro Boy | |
Cover for Mighty Atom volume 8 from the Osamu Tezuka Manga Complete Works edition.
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鉄腕アトム (Tetsuwan Atomu) |
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| Genre | Action, Adventure, Science fiction |
| Manga | |
| Written by | Osamu Tezuka |
| Published by | Kobunsha |
| English publisher | |
| Demographic | Shōnen |
| Magazine | Shōnen Kobunsha |
| Original run | April 3, 1952 – March 12, 1968 |
| Volumes | 23 |
| Adaptations | |
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Astro Boy, known in Japan by its original name Mighty Atom (Japanese: 鉄腕アトム Hepburn: Tetsuwan Atomu?), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka from 1952 to 1968. The story follows the adventures of an android named Astro Boy and a selection of other characters.
The manga was adapted for TV as Astro Boy, the first popular animated Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiar worldwide as anime. After enjoying success abroad, Astro Boy was remade in the 1980s as New Mighty Atom, known as Astroboy in other countries, and again in 2003. In November 2007, he was named Japan's envoy for overseas safety. An American computer-animated film based on the original manga series by Tezuka was released on October 23, 2009. In March 2015, a trailer was released announcing a new animated series.
Astro Boy is a science fiction series set in a futuristic world where robots co-exist with humans. Its focus is on the adventures of the titular "Astro Boy" (sometimes called simply "Astro"): a powerful android created by the head of the Ministry of Science, Doctor Tenma (aka Dr. Astor Boyton II in the 1960 English dub). Dr. Tenma created Astro to replace his son Tobio ('Astor' in the 1960s English dub; 'Toby' in the 1980s English dub and the 2009 film), who died in a car accident (ran away in the 2003 anime; vaporized in the 2009 film). Dr. Tenma built Astro in Tobio's memory and treated Astro as lovingly as if he was the real Tobio. However, Dr. Tenma soon realized that the little android could not fill the void of his lost son, especially given that Astro could not grow older or express human aesthetics (in one set of panels in the manga, Astro is shown preferring the mechanical shapes of cubes over the organic shapes of flowers). In the original 1960 edition, Tenma rejected Astro and sold him to a cruel circus owner, Hamegg (the Great Cacciatore in the '60 English dub).
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