The boy wonder.  Well technically, not a biological one.  A robot made to mimic the life of a 12-year old boy in real life said to the world’s greatest hero for peace and harmony and thwart all evil robots on the earth.  Hence the title of the post.

I was originally hesitant to put Astro Boy (also known as Shin Tetsuwan Atom in Japanese) as part of my ongoing collection of all mecha series I love to keep in my blog, as the word ‘mecha’ supposedly meant a pilot controlling a robot from inside either within a cockpit or its chest.  (Tetsujin 28 is no different, but we’ll get into that point later).

Nevertheless, I decisively reserved this page for this ‘unconventional’ form of robot as this series made a lot of serious contribution to the manga/anime world all over, as we all know that Osamu Tezuka is the creator of the series.

Osamu Tezuka was hailed the “God of manga” from its sources on IMDB.com.  Several noteworthy anime/manga he created under his belt were recognized publicly in Japan and the rest of the world (including the likes of Walt Disney who once did request Osamu to sign up to do some production work on Disney’s animation).  His Astro Boy was rather interesting.  In terms of its craze and possibly unprecedented popularity.  In Japan, this was the very first manga series produced in the mid 1950s.  It ran for more than a decade.  It was so popular that it became a major hit as aTV anime series later on in 1963 by Mushi Productions.  His other manga artworks did come through as well, as clearly Osamu Tezuka was granting himself as a legendary status of the father of manga artworks for over 4 decades.  So it’s little wonder why Go Nagai has high regards for him when he shared his thoughts on Osamu’s humanitarian ways with the French presses at Japan Expo in Paris in Oct 2008.  (Click here for the interview link.)

Astro Boy Gallery

The series served plenty of credit, if not part of a direct contribution to the existence of mecha subgenre up to this point.  The elements of story-telling is all too common we all hear of late.  Good guys are brought up into this world to rid us the bad guys.  Its been a long lasting tradition that robots are designed by fictional scientists in the hopes to serve the mankind in order to achieve not only better use of science and technology in the right way but also accomplishing humanitarian ways that no military forces in any day of age could possibly do with their own resource.  Think Dr Saotome(Getter Robo, Getter Robo G),  Professor Ochanomizu  (Astro Boy), Dr Kabuto (Mazinger Z,  Great Mazinger, Getter Robo Series, Mazinkaizer), Professor Shiba (Steel Jeeg), Dr. Daimonji (Great Sky Demon Dragon Gaiking) etc etc.  Ironically enough, the AstroBoy comic creator himself was a medical doctor who used his talented surgical hands to bring this ‘fictional’ boy to life, in hopes on bringing great joy and entertainment for everyone of all ages and races.  After all, with Astro Boy’s eternally youthfuly looks along with Pinnochio-esque inoccence and his honest nature that gives the warm feeling that he’s going to help everybody to get through any obstacle in life, why wouldn’t children start to grow liking him, as much as the adults do?  It proves so since its debut 50 years ago.  I faintly remembered watching it so young that time but I guess in my country it wasn’t such a mainstream program every kid would talk about.  So I guess now I’m learning more about it, I’m starting to understand how greatly relevant this is to my personal exploration of mecha chronology over the ages.  It clearly shows its age and times now.

In my opinion, Astro Boy willingness to save every human being on Earth certainly gave Mitsuteru Yokoyama and Go Nagai inspiration to tell us normal folks that robots are used for good as long as they’re driven by the correct pilot, setting out to do things what is right and serve justice.  Giving them the image of heroic characteristic of any superhero character you can think of ie Superman/Spiderman.  But obviously in a different medium that Japan knows.

So without doubt, Osamu’s works has made these talented artists possible for us to enjoy mecha over the last 30 years and I’m sure it deserves its place on Generation Mech’s Journal.com for many years to come.   This is the beginning of it.

Related posts:

1. Astro Boy’s next heroic challenge: Bid for World Cup 2018
2. Astro Boy figure in Hong Kong’s wax museum
3. Legendary Godfather of Anime’s great shorts gets a DVD upgrade