Astro Boy: The Universe

Astro Boy –The Story He is known as the boy with a hundred thousand horsepower strength and a heart of gold. Welcome to Watchmojo.com, and today we’ll be exploring the story of Astro Boy. Since 1952, Astro Boy’s adventures have been re-told several times. Despite this, all versions keep the same main plot points in common, as they explore the creation of an artificial boy in the future. The story begins with Dr. Tenma, a roboticist and head of the Japanese ministry of science. Tenma’s son was killed in a car accident, and Tenma became determined to recreate him using all the resources of the Ministry of Science. The result was the world’s most advanced robot with the capability to think and feel like a human. After sometime, the scientist became enraged that Astro Boy could not control his super strength or truely replace his son, as he lacked the ability to grow and age like a normal boy. He drove Astro Boy out and destroyed the lab. Astro Boy then became prisoner to a robot circus, where robots were forced to fight for the amusement of humans. Dr. Och-an-om-izu, a robot rights activist, scientist and new Minister of Science, eventually rescued him. He repaired Astro Boy, and took on the role of stepfather. Meanwhile, Dr. Tenma fled the authorities, as they sought to bring him up on charges for having abused his power while at the ministry. Tenma would later attempt to reclaim Astro Boy in order to have him lead the robots in a war against humanity. This forced the gentle Astro Boy to become humanity’s protector in order to prevent Tenma from starting his robot uprising. Throughout the franchise, Astro Boy would retain his child-like innocence and be bound by the laws of robotics, which would compel him to prevent harm to humans. Regularly, Astro would battle his brother Atlus, a robot created by Tenma using the same blueprints and given similar abilities. Astro Boy’s powers have always been a large part of the franchise’s appeal. Astro Boy has several abilities, some given by his creator, and others by his second adopted father. His most famous ability throughout the franchise’s history, aside from the ability to do amazing calculations and computing, is the ability to fly using jets that come out of his legs. Astro Boy also possesses super hearing and super sight, and can shoot lasers out of his hands, as well as a variety of beams from his eyes. A few of his powers have changed over the years. In the original Manga and earlier cartoon series, Astro Boy could sense whether someone is good or evil and shoot machine gun rounds out of his buttocks to disable large enemies. This proved useful when pinned or had his limbs removed in combat. Interestingly, he retained his rear-firing weapon in the 2009 animated film. As a series, Astro Boy has remained a timeless classic for both children and adults alike. It has been imitated several times, most notably by the Mega Man video game and cartoon series. Despite this, it has retained its outward appearance and charm as a simple children’s adventure tale, but continues to function as a way of addressing deeper societal issues; such as civil rights, war, prejudice, morality, and Man vs. Technology.