Friday is Artificial Life Form Day No. 5

This Friday I bring you Astro Boy. Astro boy started out as a Japanese comic book or as it is referred to Manga. It was later made into an animated cartoon or as that is referred to now as Anime. In face Astro Boy was the first Anime and set the styles, looks and groundwork for how future Anime would look. The comics were first published in 1952 and the cartoon first aired in 1963 in Japan. The American dubbed cartoon version was quickly translated and it was aired in 1963. There were only a few comics issued in English at that time but since has been picked up by American comic publishers and the original Manga comics have been reproduced. There has also been new cartoons of him and a 3-D American produced movie.


The English dubbed show of Astro Boy is the story of robot created by Dr. Astor Boyton with amazing powers and abilities in the likeness of his son who died in a car accident. Although Dr. Boyton created Astro Boy to take the place of his deceased son he found he could relate to his son and sold Astro Boy off…….intense for a cartoon, no?

Astro Boy was eventually ‘saved’ by Professor Ochanomizu who treated Astro Boy with love and affection and soon became a father figure for Astro Boy. Later on Astro Boy becomes a hero and uses his amazing powers to fight evil and injustice. Although Astro Boy uses his powers for good he is still sometimes frowned on upon by people who don’t like robots…….silly people, what’s not to like?

Astro Boy had a list of powers he used to fight evil. Those included flight, power beams, super vision, super hearing and some others. Honestly I never saw the show myself. I suppose the syndication of the show was not going on while I was growing up during the late 60’s and early 70’s. Or possibly my brother who was a little older than me didn’t like the show and I ended up watching what he wanted. Maybe Gigantor beat out Astro Boy in my viewing. In any event I don’t remember ever seeing the show.

Next week moving on to another famous, more contemporary Anime, that was also one of my favorites; Voltron Defender of the Universe!