 Hey everybody, welcome back to your Wigging Geekdom, Geo here, and today I have the very difficult process of trying to summarize and condense Naoki Uruzawa's Pluto. Oh boy. Welcome back to the channel, and yeah, Uruzawa's Pluto. Where the heck do I even begin with this amazing title? I've read this before, but this is actually my first time doing a video on Pluto. A lot of you voted on my community posts here on YouTube that you wanted me to review this series, so here we are. Now what the heck is Pluto about? Before I do that, I mostly do spoiler free reviews, right? So I don't want to ruin the experience for you guys if you've never read Pluto, but hopefully I can entice you to pick this title up, because I do think if you're interested in reading and collecting manga as well as graphic novels, whatever it may be, collected editions, I think this is something that should be in your library. So what is Pluto all about? I'm going to start off differently because I usually give you a summary of the story, but here I'm just going to geek out about the amazing artwork and how beautiful it is. You know, Uruzawa is a master at character designs, and you know, this is not the exception. Uruzawa has this famous style that you see a drawing of his and you immediately know who that is and what you're getting yourself into. Intricate character designs, very realistic human expressions, and he really did master the craft of conveying emotion and expressions through his drawings. You see that in older people, in younger people, no matter the age or gender, Uruzawa nails it 100% of the time, and the art is just a visual treat. One of the best drawn, serialized stories in my honest opinion, and I cannot gush over it enough, even from these covers alone, which, you know, they're just magnificent. You see how diverse and beautiful these character designs are, you know. All these books are vis signature sized, so it's good to get them in slightly oversized pages, which is always great, especially on collected editions. So where the heck do I even begin with Pluto? Well, this is a story, of course, based on Mighty Atom, or as you might know it, out here in the west, Astro Boy. This originally was supposed to be a one shot for the Tezuka Astro Boy celebration, I guess. You know, the story being so intricate and complex, it developed into its own, I think it was 65 chapter series, and we're all thankful for it. So Naoki Uruzawa decided to adapt his favorite arc from the original source material, The Greatest Robot on Earth, and if you've never read or seen that adaptation, I do recommend checking it out. It's not necessary whatsoever to enjoy Pluto, but it does give you a hell of a good context as to where the author Naoki Uruzawa is coming from and why his love for Astro Boy is so strong that he is honoring Tezuka by developing, sort of reimagining the series in his own twist, but of course grounding it more on reality, whereas the original of course had a little bit of a cartoony element, and they even pointed out in one of the afterwords of the book, or Uruzawa himself, if I'm not mistaken. Astro Boy has this reputation that a lot of people fondly remember it outside of Japan, but they like to think of the series as this wholesome kids animated series because of its anime adaptation, but if you go back to the manga and if you read some of those chapters, there is an underlying darkness to it, and Tezuka did a fantastic job of exploring many awesome concepts that to this day are still as relevant and are explored in sci-fi, in novels, in TV shows, in other manga, anime, cartoons, you name it. Concepts of inequality, racism, the advancement of technology, all these things and so much more get explored in Astro Boy, that a lot of people somehow aren't aware that the series is capable of that and they just remember the caricature, but there's a lot to Astro Boy and Naoki Uruzawa takes his time developing this story and retelling his favorite arc, which I mention now, the greatest robot on earth, into something much more grittier and complex and beautiful to read. This is the story of the main character, which you see here, and I'm totally going to butcher his name, Je Siecht, and I am terribly sorry, I am horrible with pronunciations when it comes to accents, and I know it's a German word, I know it literally means face, which is appropriate because a lot of the elements here regarding robots is their appearance. So our main character is this famous police detective and he's assigned to these mysterious cases where robots and some humans have been murdered, but there is sort of this dockerish creepy element to it because no evidence can be found for the perpetrator, but the actual murders have a creepy motif with like two horns placed on the victim's heads to signify something and it's up to our main character here to discover what this is and when certain elements reveal themselves and you find out that it may not have been a human, it may have been a robot, things just keep escalating onward. The series has to deal with the fact that our detective as well as six others are classified as the world's or the seven world's greatest robots. When the plot of the book begins, it is I believe ten years after the 39th Central Asia War and you're probably wondering what the heck is that? Urisawa has always tacked on themes of politics in his books. If you have read, you know, stuff like monsters, 20th century boys, and even in short stories, there's always hints of political play and the powers that be. Not necessarily a critique at a certain somebody, but just the nature of politics itself is present in these titles in some shape or form, maybe not so in certain titles but more so in stuff like Pluto, where in this war it is, you gotta understand that this book was written in 2003 if I remember correctly, so it is very evident that there are a lot of political undertones with the Iraq invasion and all that stuff and you have a conflict that is the source of everything that is going to happen in this series. Everything goes back to that specific war at that specific moment where you have the United States of Thracia, obviously modeled after the US, and their excuse to enter the Persian kingdom supposedly after they had received some intel that the Persians had these robots of mass destruction, so an investigation takes place and they form a survey committee and this committee unravels this huge vault of scraps of dead robots and it just sparks an international incident and the UN assembles and all that war is declared and as a result people are murdered, towns are obliterated and destroyed, but what is very cruel and interesting about this book is that robots are the one doing most if not all of the fighting, it's not the actual humans themselves so that is a very key component because this is a world where robotics are highly advanced and you have artificial intelligence that is able to feel and express themselves, they feel sadness, they feel hatred, anger, joy, all these emotions that we take for granted and part of the reaction from humans into story is of course of a racist undertone because they feel threatened, they feel humans are the superior beings and they cannot accept these robots taking over and being integrated as part of society. Obviously with the original series the famous international law for robotics is passed with you know the cardinal rules that no robot will injure or kill a human that is at play here and there has been an incident in the past before the start of the series where a robot actually committed murder and killed a human so people are already weary of these rules and are discriminating and hating on robots so with that setting you have a new set of murders taking place and Jaseesh is trying to do his best to understand what's happening and sort of find his way and realize that they're not like him and the other seven great robots they're not just robots they're more than that and the series I think does a beautiful job of examining just humanity and by having the main characters be robots I think it's similar to you know having anthropomorphic animals and you're able to examine things from a different perspective look at it from a different angle I should say the character of Astro Boy himself Adam I think he is fantastic and once you start going with his side of things and his story it becomes very interesting cinematic and beautiful the way his narrative unfolds and one of the central themes of Pluto aside from being a psychological action sci-fi crime drama is the emotional message at the heart of it it's something that I really took to heart and whenever I read it this is my second read-through of the series I always get emotional by it and it is the fact that nothing comes out of hatred that is one of the main messages in Pluto that is one of the main things that said here because obviously Urusawa has these themes running throughout of peace and anti-hatred and war and all that stuff unfortunately humanity has a tendency to resolve things through hatred whether it's for a good purpose whether it's for evil purposes whether it's just existing people rely on hatred to get through life unfortunately and it's an amazing reminder for the for the reader if you're reading this story then nothing good can come of it you know wars violence none of that is going to resolve anything in the end and it's only going to push us further apart love is the key here and not hatred I'm a huge advocate of that and I I believe wholeheartedly and I know that the world would be you know it yeah I get it it's it would be a little bit preachy to tell you oh don't don't hate and love and love more and you're thinking yeah in an idealic place that would be fine but the world is not going to adhere by that rule because the world's a very cruel place but we can have faith and believe that those things are around the corner and then we can turn it around and that we can aspire for greater things if we pushed hatred out of our hearts and that's sort of the emotional context of Pluto there's obviously a lot more you do get some really amazing set pieces and action scenes with characters duking it out because there are robots and some of them like Bruno and Hercules and even Adam himself have these extraordinary abilities so when you do see that in display it's really awesome and it's not just about hatred there are other themes explored throughout the origin or the basis of most of the conflicts in this book obviously stem from war so you do have elements of PTSD and you have characters trying to find the new lease on life you also have characters like Mont Blanc who became such a symbol for pacifism and nature and to have that be twisted around by his untimely death in the series at the start of the series is quite shocking you have the character of Epsilon who decides to be a pacifist and not participate in that war and as a result to this day at the start of the series still faces backlash for his decision of not wanting to take part in combat and take care of orphan children as a result which is extremely admirable and it's something that regular humans wouldn't even consider doing and you have a robot doing it so it goes to show you that you shouldn't really judge it book by its cover right that's one of the big things about this series also how you can take people and use hatred to manipulate others into doing horrible despicable things and twisting their emotions and sensibilities around and turning them from would-be protagonist into antagonist that is also a theme shown throughout it of course the mysterious bad guy that I don't necessarily want to reveal just in case you haven't experienced the world of Mighty Adam aka Astro Boy or Udu Sawa's adaptation the later part of the book after the climax of the story it's just one roller coaster of emotions and you can't wait and it's a page turner you'll read this in a snap you see these eight books here but this is such a quick read you're gonna have a fun time with this really well-written characters obviously Udu Sawa loves Tezuka's work and he's expressed that that you know Tezuka has is such a huge inspiration to him as a writer and that is more than evident when you see some of the wonderful stuff that he's doing in Pluto you see other elements from Tezuka's library it doesn't just honor Astro Boy itself it honors the man himself with concepts of that reminded me of things like Blackjack and even Phoenix stories like that are present here and I think it's a very accessible book masterfully written filled with suspense and just a beautiful ode to a beloved franchise from old but as well as the human spirit and talking about the wonderful characters and the you know this setting that they've created and like I mentioned earlier the original had these dark undertones and Udu Sawa was able to take all of that and expand and even further and really give you metaphors and allegories of things that are happening in real life and the positive message of you know anti-hatred and to have Adam be that anchor to represent hope in humanity and to have a character like Jazeesh trying to solve this murder at the same time figuring out things that are happening to him on an emotional level like I said earlier you don't expect robots to emote but they do this is a highly intelligent look at robotics and you know do robots have a soul and those thematics are explored in this and they're not just soulless things that are trying to live with humans they develop bonds and friendships with other robots and other people and are as integral to society as regular people we see evil characters spewing and telling others despicable things but we also see the goodness in these characters as well as they're trying to weave through this mysterious narrative of a murder mystery with huge action-packed explosive fights near the end that I was just entranced by so that's sort of the themes and topics that I wanted to talk about and what I thought of Pluto at only eight volumes this is a very quick read it's action-packed you get that delicious Urusawa mystery that he crafts so well he's a master at this I talked earlier about the art the art is impeccable and I think it's my favorite art art wise it's my favorite of Urusawa's material and it's just oozes his style and personality like I said you see a drawing of his you immediately know who that is and what you're looking at and this just excels what about you guys have you read Pluto I'm pretty sure you have let me know in the comment section what you thought of the series and if you want me to review other of Urusawa's work like monster or 20th century boys or whatever it may be let me know in the comments section down below guys this was a ton of fun to read this again and go over it and just enjoy a masterclass of suspense and action in manga form this is easily one of the best comic manga graphic novel collected editions whatever you want to call it one of the best stories around and I do wholeheartedly think this if you'd like sci-fi if you like noir mysteries I think this should be in your collection so thank you to all my subscribers who actually voted for me to review it thank you so much and look forward to the next batch of reviews on this channel I made a community post with the next reviews and it's pretty interesting what you guys are voting on so I'm pretty excited to talk about those books as well thank you everybody for being a part of a wiki geek them whether it's by liking commenting and just subscribing to the channel if you're new here and you want to subscribe I do kind of like this where I talk about anime manga and comics as well guys I've got to go I will catch all of you on our next video