FEBRUARY 9, 2023 • UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, WASHINGTON D.C.

I haven’t slept more than four hours in three months.

When I close my eyes and drift into rest, I’m greeted by anxiety for the cynicism of our shared nightmare – the waking world.

Jolting out of slumber at eleven PM, then two AM, then six AM, I find myself with time restless, both figuratively and literally.

I’ve been watching Astro Boy (2003.)

Let me tell you why.

In the long arc of Japanese anime and Manga, there is no shortage of brooding anti-heroes, Death Note’s L, Karas, Sasuke Uchiha, Ken Kaneki, Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro, D the Vampire Hunter – the list could continue ad infinitum.

At three AM, there’s no solace, no direction to be mined out of the gloom of these characters’ loneliness and misanthropy. Rather, I turn to optimism, to an uber-robot.

Within the circles of sufficiently-rabid-anime-likers-as-to-join-forums, the discussion of “Who would win, Superman or Goku” is about as storied as “Who is the better Captain, Kirk or Picard” which is to say – both questions have kilograms of photons spent arguing them on BBS groups.

There is a certain symmetry between the Clark and Kakarot, immigrants from lost worlds, rising to become paragons and saviors for their adopted world, both enjoying a certain naiveté of good faith, both burdened with their own moral codes they are bound to – a reminder that all we ever have are our scruples.

But the comparison falls flat in spirit, Goku is unashamedly an adaptation of Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West (西遊記) rather than the aspirational figure of Siegel and Shuster’s invention

More storied shin-nichi point to Ultraman, another “Japanese Superman,” an alien living with a secret identity and dabbling in heroics, but unlike Clark Ultraman routinely slays his kaiju-ed foes, slaughter is not particularly hopeful at all.

Then, we fall on Osamu Tezuka’s creation, Astro Boy (Atom.)

Astro Boy, known in Japan as “Mighty Atom,” (鉄腕アトム) was first published in April of 1951 by Osamu Tezuka. Barely half a decade after the Japanese surrender in World War II, Tezuka set out to apply the experiences of his adolescence as themes within his manga. As a child, Tezuka’s family lived through the B-29 firebombing raids of Osaka.

In his autobiography My Manga Life, (ぼくのマンガ人生, 1997) he recalls walking alongside the Yodogawa River for some time, before coming upon a dam of burned bodies. He outlines how in the forty years since, he never once healed from that moment. The horrors of war-time Japan led him to fill his work with messages about the futility of war, the hubris of greed, and the potential for both to destroy all life.

Spinning the Astro Boy character out of a prior manga series Ambassador Atom (アトム大使) Tezuka found he could use his art, manga, to impress readers to be stewards for the world. With the serialization of the Astro Boy manga in Kobansha’s periodical Shonen (later renamed Monthly Shonen Magazine, one of the top selling manga magazines to this day) he found instant success with young boys who resonated with the character.

Tezuka, concurrent to his writing Astro Boy and other manga, was a practicing medical doctor. Seeing both art, and medicine as treatments for an ailing youth in post-war Japan, his intent was to envision a better future and move the children of 1950s Japan into that future. That blend of scientific thought and modern optimism fused the traditional with futurist skyscrapers, flying cars, robots. Not keen for a sterile future his work was laden with play, earnestness, and children for his audience to project onto.

The heart of the manga however, was its star who grabbed the attention of countless readers. Astro Boy. Created by a scientist to replace his son, Tobio, who died in an accident. His creator, Dr. Tenma, eventually rejects Atom as being TOO human. Abandoned, he finds a family with a new father figure and the youth of Metro City. From this community he elects a new purpose, to protect them and the world from evil robots.

Every arc of the manga, and later anime adaptations plural, employed the rhythms of serialized adventures with utopian hope. During the 1950s Japan was reconciling domestically and internationally from the atrocities committed during World War II, Astro Boy stood as a paragon opposed to nuclear weapons as well as war itself. Tezuka was out spoken in his belief that the atomic bomb was the apex of “man’s inherent capacity for destruction.”

The impulsive, post-modern, reaction to this sort of doe-eyed optimism is that no such art could survive the complexity and nuance of adulthood. In that framing we immediately intuit how a pedantic reading would find rot underneath the veneer of Tezuka’s 1950s tomorrow. The golden cage that cynicism and brutality best romance and intellect.

To this end, one of the best modern Superman writers, Grant Morrison, has some profound input that parallels both Kal-El and Astro Boy. In their work “All Star Superman” Morrison restores Superman, and superheroes writ large as not a power fantasy for adolescents, but one for adults. Both Clark and Atom as creative figures critique the prevailing ideas about selfishness and lesser demons we traffic in modernity. Both characters within their texts and as creative exercises, are indefatigable wells to resist stagnation and aspire to fly amongst our greater angels.

The duo don’t enter the world to elevate themselves because, for the uber (such as Atom and Kal-El,) Randianism is not alluring but perverse. They enter the world to grow closer to society, using their talents, using what makes them unique to better the lives of others. The hopefulness at the heart of Astro Boy isn’t innocent naiveté, it’s compassionate responsibility.

Throughout every iteration of Astro Boy, which has been reimagined some five times for broadcast media, Atom comes to terms with identity. Never aging but always growing in experience and emotion, forever desiring a humanity he can only find through protection. In Pluto (PLUTO) a side-story manga written by Naoki Urasawa set within the broader narrative of the Astro Boy series, our hero overcomes teenage nihilism in combat against the titular robot Pluto. Atom realizes nothing is born out of hatred.

Amongst contemporaries such as Gigantor (鉄人28号) many the fantasy robot is a passive instrument for their controller. The controller so armed with a remote decides right from wrong and the automaton is at the whim of whoever had control. Atom however throughout the 70-year-old series, carries free will. Time and again, he is in a crisis where controlled robots rebel against humanity, or humanity conspires against robots, or a tripartite quandary therein. Inexorably, he crusades for peace, for human happiness, and for robot autonomy often through self-sacrifice and his own harm.

Night by night, I’ve crept through the Astro Boy canon. Seeing him confront the very idea that confrontation doesn’t end harm, but perpetuate it. Through his stewardship for humanity, for life, Astro Boy thumbs the scales of his foes. Gradually, compassionately, and typically at great cost to himself guiding them towards self-determination, towards peace, towards the responsibility of power, and away from the wages of violence.

Atom never enjoys the luxury of Kal-El’s absolute conviction however, he’s truly as human as you or I the reader. He’s a boy after all, throughout he plays with children. In early issues, he’s immature and stumbles into his abilities through discovery rather than pre-conception. Just as humanity grows through trial and error, so too did we discover nuclear power, using it for both benefaction and harm.

He (Atom) in iconography and within the text was designed explicitly to rectify the post-trauma of World War II for Japanese youth, however both as icon and as a narrative he calls on peers within text and readers without to re-contextualize man-made horrors beyond comprehension into hope. Fear and curiosity travel hand in hand through the human psyche, the same tools that brought Dr. Shuntaro Hida’s “day Hiroshima Disappeared” also brought the portentous Fukushima Power Plant. So too, travels the cataclysm of an A.I.-centered world for humans and any liberation that world may likewise bring. Destruction and creation.

A core tenet of almost all our fantasies now is skepticism towards technology, I too understand this impulse as it brought me back to Astro Boy (2003) in the first place. Technology, is agnostic to intent, when used callously and without purpose it can destroy. Even Atom, with an adolescent psyche, causes havoc through minor mistakes. This humbling idea is juxtaposed when Atom finds purpose and acts as a salvation for humanity and robots alike.

In a world laden with greys and gradients, Atom (like Kal-El) stands firmly in with compassion. By his very design, Atom is binary, encompassing the duality of nuclear power – a child who can save the world or destroy it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

It is Wednesday, the 8th of February 2023.

I finished the final episode of the series in my leisurely pace through the program. In the waning minutes, Atom confronts his creator, who so made him in his son’s image, and appeals to not wipe humanity and the Earth away. Atom brings the past generation back from the brink by stretching out a hand, not a fist. Dr. Tenma takes his hand and holds the shadow of what his son, Tobio, has become.

Though that’s not a slight towards our protagonist, we are ALL shadows of our parents, casting longer than they can ever reach and ultimately a combination of their shape and outside forces.

Atom, the boy with more power than he can comprehend and the robot with the infinite potential of a child, is beyond Tenma now. He belongs to the world and with that, Tenma must be a better steward for that world as his child is so a steward.

Maybe in that sentiment, of compassion, hope, and stewardship are some ideas we could all use.

At the very least they can give me solace for the waning blue dawn of tomorrow.

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It is Friday, the 17th of February 2023.

Hours after hitting the PUBLISH button and relegating this essay to anonymity, two things occurred.

Firstly, several of you informed me that Naoki Urasawa’s spin-off manga PLUTO (プルートウ 2003) was being animated for Netflix THIS YEAR.

PLUTO was published from 2003 to 2009 as a spin-off/ reboot of Astro Boy the manga. So titled for Atom’s rival-turned-ally-the fighting robot Pluto, it is as close to Morrison’s All-Star Superman as we may have for Astro Boy. The two, Atom and Pluto, over the course of eight volumes explore how only in embracing imperfection is humanity found. Throughout Pluto, Atom, and a third rival to both Photar struggle through violent and often pained attempts to find community. Urasawa emphasizes that one part of that imperfection in people, how hatred can be born from the love of something lost – nothing good comes from that but more hatred.

A robot designed for the singular purpose of combat finds real human connection and opportunity to express itself sincerely. Of course, like with humans, this doesn’t come easily but with maximum effort.

Secondly, so many of you, SO many more of you than I expected reached out to convey your love of Astro Boy, your appreciation of my time talking about it, and the connection built between the two.

So.

With that connection in mind, shall we make the thesis of this more explicit?

Post modernity, in that gilded cage of cynicism and deconstruction, provides no solution for the wreckage it bears. It takes us to narcissistic detachment, deploying irony and skepticism in fear of being sentimental and human. The road from this place isn’t a hero’s journey or grand narratives. It’s the moral at the heart of Atom and Astro Boy – community.

Atom, in valuing others if only for their inherent dignity, builds community from peers, elders, and even rivals. In standing for what he believes and finding joy in the miracle of being, the very things post-modernism would suggest are pathetic, does Atom and so may we find a greater sense of meaning and optimism for both the distant future and the shared now.

Astro Boy, in its strict aversion to cynicism, teaches that to be human is about embracing life and not self-isolation to be the best.