Books: Pluto Vol. #3

The more I read of Pluto, the less averse I am to the idea of remakes. Or, rather, of an artist of high caliber having his work revisited by another artist in the same stratosphere. Osamu Tezuka is about as up-there as manga artists get, and Naoki Urasawa has been racing up the rungs of the same ladder for some time now. Pluto is Urasawa’s reworking of one of Tezuka’s best-loved stories from Astro-Boy (aka Tetsuwan Atomu), and the best thing I can say about it is that it does not for one moment feel like a “remake”. It stands alone.

The third volume is a frenzy of twofold plotting and character development, with a fair amount of page time occupied by Uran, Atom’s sister. Just as Atom himself stepped into the picture at the end of volume 1, Uran (short for Uranium, mayhaps?) popped in at the end of volume 2 — just in time to calm down a batch of escaped zoo animals. She’s as cheerfully blithe as Atom is focused and serious, but maybe that’s just her way of dealing with her peculiar sensitivity towards things around her. She’s the sonar to Atom’s radar: he can sniff out a robot that looks like a human, and she can sense disturbances in the Force, sorta-kinda, that bespeak of bad tidings for both machines and men.

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.