Astro Boy was one of the most popular manga and anime of the last century. The serialization of the manga began in 1952 and finished in 1968. There has been tons of adaptation of Astro Boy, including different anime and an animated movie. It was one of the very first stories that explored the mecha genre, and as a result, people have always loved it.
Even though people know about Astro Boy, there are other alternate takes on the manga that most people do not know about. Netflix recently released an anime called Pluto, which is roughly based on Astro Boy. But much before, there was another anime of a dark nature that was inspired by it. The name of the anime is Atom: The Beginning.
Atom: The Beginning Did Not Live Up To Its Potential
Atom: The Beginning was loosely based on the Astro Boy. The manga was first released in 2014 and was adapted into an anime in 2017. The anime had only one season with twelve episodes. Atom: The Beginning revolved around two scientists named Umataro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochanomizu, who love robots and spend most of their time with mechanized parts. After a disaster had happened in Japan, they made a new robot named A106.
While Astro Boy was more childish and acted as a mascot, Atom: The Beginning focuses on a slightly heavy dose of mystery with hard sci-fi and has a dark nature to the Astro Boy adaptation. After the anime was released, there were a lot of expectations and hype surrounding it, but unfortunately, none of it lasted for long.
People felt that Atom: The Beginning was a story too rushed in comparison to the manga. There were several complexities, and the characters did not do justice to the story. Even though it had great potential, the audience was not ready to accept such a dark and dense adaptation of the Astro Boy. At the end of the dark retelling, the iconic manga could not perform well, even though it was not an outright flop.
Atom: The Beginning Is the Connection between Astro Boy and Pluto
Astro Boy walked so that Atom: The Beginning and Pluto could run. Even though both of them were inspirations, the credit goes to Atom: The Beginning because it showed that there could be a different perspective to the original story. Later, it was developed by Naoki Urasawa into a much better story through Pluto.
Pluto is about a humanoid inspector named Gesicht, who is in charge of investigating the mystery murders of humans at the hands of robots. These murders have created a disarray in the relationship between humans and robots. At the moment, Pluto has received satisfactory reviews from the audience and feels a much better story than its predecessor.
Pluto season 1 can be streamed on Netflix.
