Review: Astro Boy

Tezuka, Osamu (2002). Astro Boy: Book One. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 222 pages.


Summary & Evaluation: Astro Boy is the product of a mad (and brilliant) scientist, Dr. Tenma, who sought to replace his recently deceased son by creating a robot, one that resembles his son and is superior to any other robot. In this collection of Astro Boy stories Dr. Tenma is back at it again, having created an army of cybernetic robots that have a terrible secret--each robot contains the brain of a dog, so that they aren't inhibited like normal robots from killing human beings. After Astro Boy discovers the secret behind this robot army, he stops at nothing to defeat the evil masterminds who have created these monstrosities

Osamu Tezuka is considered to be the grandfather of Japanese manga and Astro Boy was his first effort, which became wildly popular in both Japan and the United States and is considered to be a manga classic. This collection, reprinted in an effort to collect all of the Astro Boy comics for American readers, is a perfect example of why Astro Boy became so popular. The story opens with a high-speed car chase where unknown villains kidnap the prize dog of Mr. Mustachio--the mentor to Astro Boy--and then takes the reader on the oddest journey, where aliens (the cybernetic dogs) with weird behaviors appear, who then attack space shuttles on their way to the moon and mysteriously disappear. Astro Boy is then sent in to deal with it, leading to a story packed with action, adventure and mystery.

Booktalk Hook: In order to booktalk this work, I think I would collect some of Tezuka's other works and booktalk them as an "introduction to the grandfather of manga." Tezuka had such an interesting and varied series of works--from sci-fi stories, such as Astro Boy, to historically-driven works such as Buddha and Adolf, to supernatural tales like Vampire.