Naoki Urasawa has made quite the name for himself in the anime world with heavy hitters including 20th Century Boys, Monster, and Happy to name a few. Now, anime fans will have the opportunity to enter a world that re-imagines the legendary character Astro Boy in Pluto. Presenting a dark, futuristic world wherein technology has created artificial life forms and amplified the abilities of mankind, you can now catch the eight-episode series that is considered one of Urasawa’s best stories.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Pluto was created by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki in 2003. Running until 2009, the manga presents itself as a murder mystery in which a detective must get to the bottom of who has been eliminating humans and robots alike. To help bring the series to life on Netflix, animation heavy hitters such as Genco, Tezuka Productions, and Studio M2 have joined forces to create the series that gives fans around an hour of animation per episode.
Pluto Has Landed
Netflix shared the news that Pluto has arrived on its streaming service via its official social media account. Sharing a new trailer to show off more of the series, it’s clear that Naoki Urasawa’s work combines hard-hitting action with psychological, introspective beats. It has yet to be confirmed if any additional seasons will be created for Urasawa and Nagasaki’s story or if this first season will be a “one and done”.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to check out the original Pluto manga, which first dropped in 2003 and ran until 2009, here’s the official description of the dark take on Astro Boy, “In an ideal world where man and robots coexist, someone or something has destroyed the powerful Swiss robot Mont Blanc. Elsewhere a key figure in a robot rights group is murdered. The two incidents appear to be unrelated…except for one very conspicuous clue – the bodies of both victims have been fashioned into some sort of bizarre collage complete with makeshift horns placed by the victims’ heads. Interpol assigns robot detective Gesicht to this most strange and complex case – and he eventually discovers that he too, as one of the seven great robots of the world, is one of the targets.”
Will you be binging through Pluto this week? What is your favorite work from creator Naoki Urasawa? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Pluto.
