I couldn't stop watching I was HOOKED... for a little while
Ah Naoki Urasawa the mind behind Monster and 20th Century Boys got a new anime adaptation for his manga Pluto, a sorta kinda retelling of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy. You know good for him.
In fact any author would love to get this level of attention given to their series, from what I've heard they've been working on this for quite a while. Which is why the series is so polished. All the characters are EXTREMELY on model which is weird to see in modern productions that go for more simpler designs. Urasawa's style is instantly recognizable even in faraway shots, but sometimes they go a little too hard with the black outlines. It sometimes clashes with the backgrounds which is why IMO the show looks better on 720p over 1080p but that's just me test it yourself. The backgrounds are given a lot of attention to detail, they render the retro-future style in stunning capacity with all the city shots. The one fault I could levy is the integration of CG elements which will almost always clash in a mainly 2D anime but any scene involving cockroaches made me want to not look at the screen. There's also some pretty cool cuts from Shinya Ohira, and as a sakuga nerd they were pretty fucking cool, I bet he got a good ass pay check. Hell I know people become sticklers over this but the dub is really good, I'd even call it definitive with the attention to detail in the accent of the voice cast, but that's neither here nor there watch what you want.
I feel as more and more people watch this the discourse is going to become more suffocated around Urasawa's previous anime Monster so I'll get out all the major comparisons right now. The show is WAY faster, a lot of content is in those 8 episodes, which average around a third of monster's length. I mostly found that show to be a slog so this was a welcome change. The show plays with morality but mostly centered around the humanity of machines and the roles technology might play in our future, as opposed to the ideas around innate or nurtured evil like in Monster. But that's about it, the shows should not be in one another's conversations. Unless you want to I'm not the discourse police, I know it starts off as a mystery show but it veers far away from that genre as the show progresses.
Now that point around Pluto demanding you entire attention, a lot of very vital characters are introduced very quickly and they shuffle around them very quickly from episode to episode.
Gesicht, Atom, Epsilon, Uran, Dr.Tenma, Abra, and Adolf all become very key players in the plot, and it becomes very easy to get hooked into the mystery of Pluto in the first 2 thirds (when you get past that very lukewarm first episode). I mainly connected with Gesicht as there is an air of mystery pertaining to his character in relation to his memory and role as the detective for the Pluto case.
Now ummm... the ending is kind of a clusterfuck but I can't get into that without spoiling so I'll leave all my gripes in the section below ok cool
I honestly hate how it took such an interesting hook with the pluto murders and basically did nothing with them, this isn't like a mystery where they connect the dots and follow leads no Pluto just comes to them and they all get picked off. I found a more compelling narrative around the murder of Adolf's brother and the false/removed memories of Gesicht. That's like a theme around robotics that is actually explored quite well, the idea of emotions and mimicry and memory that has stake in it's setting as Gesicht is the lead investigator on the Pluto case.
Now Abra. I do think it's a little strange they just let him take Wassily to lure Epsilon into a fight with Pluto, do orphanages just give children away that fast? Really? But besides that his character amounts to hating Thracia for destroying his country and killing his family, but having a bunch of underlings complete his tasks for him via programing, the most special being Sahad who's pacifism is corrupted into the murderer Pluto to carry out his deeds. I can just imagine making Abra Pluto instead of involving Sahad as his narrative loses weight when he just sorta realize that Abra isn't really his actual dad but Goji with Abra's memories. In reality all of this was Dr.Tenma's fault for trying to make these super human intelligences, you could've just loaded his memories into a regular robot so you could get your colleague back instead of making a mass murderer, and he almost did it a second time with Atom like dude come on.
From the added context I guess one could say the ending is more logical, as Pluto was just a proxy for Abra's bidding, but it basically alleviates any responsibility Sahad had in murdering those 7 robots. It also feels strange that the show alludes to the fact that other robots and people are just getting murdered BECAUSE of the string of Pluto cases with the horns, but are just dismissed as copycat cases. Even so people are still dying and that's worth exploring, introducing more varied perspectives into the work to like the anti-robot rights group that all look like KKK members. But they just sorta sideline those actors for a larger scale threat. I just think it took an actual discussion on the role technology will have in our future and the right of sentient life and the lasting effects of geopolitical warfare and just ended it with "guys can we all just get along :D"
Yeah the more and more I think about this show the more I just sorta falls apart I don't know why there was so much hype around this show. But honestly I don't really care I watched it and thought it was mid, nothing more to that I guess.
Yeah that's about all I have to say.
If you enjoyed it, good for you.
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