Naoki Urasawa is frequently considered one of the greatest authors in modern manga. His plotting is incredibly tight and densely packed, his characters feel grounded and have complexities not afforded to most characters in manga and anime, and overall his stories since Monster have felt very adult in their themes and ideas without falling into the pitfalls common of seinen manga, who abuse the narrative freedom afforded to them by packing their stories with an excess of gore and sexual content to make their stories "edgy". For many anime and manga fans who want to show the best the medium has to offer, many will frequently point to his works.

So years back, after being blown away by Monster, when I found out he had actually penned this story, a retelling of an arc from Astro Boy, I was pretty damn excited to see what he had come up with. I was familiar with the franchise and some of Tezuka's other work, having watched several episodes of the 2003 Astro Boy anime and played the Omega Factor videogame years back, so there was an actual investment here that went beyond just reading another Urasawa story.

Needless to say, I was completely blown away by what I read.

Pluto is, at its core, a work of science fiction in the tradition of Ghost In the Shell and Blade Runner, i.e it is primarily concerned with the question of makes someone "human", and what point the line between a sufficiently advanced machine and a human actually is. Like Ghost in the Shell, the world that the story takes has had robots integrated into society for quite a while, so the story is not about them as an emerging force but rather what kind of society would exist where these beings who are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from humans, and how that grey area creates a lot of problems and interesting implications.

What makes Pluto not only work, but work very well, is two things.

The first is that it is actually reasonably intelligent. When it comes to a work like this, it can be hard to have new or interesting insights into what is essentially a very speculative future at best where many ideas have already been shown and articulated in a smart fashion in other works.

As with basically any story that deals with this "what makes a human?" theme there is some ground that is retread, but Pluto has some pretty great compelling ideas of its own to offer. It has an understanding of what it is like to live as a minority and a second-class citizen, and shows how simply because that group might be protected by the laws doesn't automatically mean everyone will accept them, because hatred simply doesn't work that way. Even when hatred is not present, contempt and indifference can be just as harmful, with many of the human characters displaying a casual disregard for any robots' well-being despite them having rights and being ostensibly their own people.

Hatred is in fact one of the central themes of the story, and it shows itself again and again as a force that cannot create anything positive or meaningful. Some people in the story hate robots so thoroughly and hold them in such contempt that they have formed explicit hate groups dedicated to maintaining human supremacy (in one of the more on-the-nose parallels they are basically the KKK for robots). But ultimately, hatred is one of the main things that define humanity and we can't simply not feel it; the point is made that any succifiently advanced robot will someday have to come to terms with experiencing it. That is one of the story's more laudable accomplishments, portraying crimes of passion, something we condemn in our regular society, as one of the spiritual rites of passage that makes a robot truly enlightened.

Secondly, Pluto has amazing narrative economy and is able to provide compelling characterization and development for characters who honestly aren't around for all that long. The mystery of the story and the way it unfolds is extremely captivating, making for a great page turner as things become more and more tangled in past political and social events. Urasawa employs a very "Steven Spielberg"-esque sentimentality to the writing, where it could have very easily felt mawkish and banal if not the compelling sincerity with which it is delivered and the general intelligence and imagination that went into the setting and ideas of the story. When the characters suffer, you will really feel for them, these Pinocchios who play at being human so well that you can't help but cry with them. The manga's cast is immensely likable and interesting, with the standout being Gesicht who is probably one of the best main characters of manga to date. They embody by far one of the most interesting aspects of the work, which is the dichotomy that comes from humans who have shut themselves away emotionally and become much more machine-like as time goes on, versus the advanced robots whose kindness, sincerity and empathy make for a fascinating contrast.

While the manga ends up losing some steam and its ending comes across as a bit anticlimactic, it ties up pretty much all its loose ends and is generally an engrossing read. While it can be easily argued that it is overly optimistic and sentimental, it has enough substance to be able to get away with most of it, similar to a smart person whose opinions you disagree with. The story can be a bit on-the-nose sometimes (it actualy references Pinocchio itself once, which I found unnecessary), but its heart is in the right place.

A final note is whether familiarity with Astro Boy or Tezuka's other work is necessary, since the series does have shout-outs and references to other works in his canon.

I think that the story is strong and does enough of a good job of explaining itself to stand on its own, but I do think that yes, you will get more out of it if you are familiar with Astro Boy in some way, whether it be the manga or one of the anime adaptations. Seeing Urasawa's take on these characters is one of the main pleasures of the series, for sure, and not one you'll be able to appreciate if you weren't already introduced to them beforehand.