Sunday, February 26, 2012

Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka Vol. 6

by Naoki Urasawa after Osamu Tezuka, with Takashi Nagasaki

Reading this installment of Urasawa's reinterpretation of a classic Osamu Tezuka Astro Boy story, I kept glancing back over to my shelf of books that I haven't read yet to be sure that I hadn't picked up the last chapter by mistake.  It's true - there are still two volumes to go.

A lot happens in this volume that normally would only happen closer to the end of a North American comic.  The identities of the people or robots that have been systematically destroying the world's most powerful robots, and murdering the members of the Bora Survey Group, an organization kind of like the weapons inspectors that were constantly being kicked out of Iraq in the months leading to the war there.

Gesicht, the robot Interpol inspector who has been the main character of this series all along confronts Pluto, the gigantic robot killer under a tulip field in Amsterdam while Gesicht's creator is the victim of an attempted kidnapping in Dusseldorf.

This volume moves at a very quick pace, and while providing some thrilling moments, continues to ask questions about the ability of artificial life to develop emotion, and what the place of robots in human society should be.  It's an exciting and at times, touching, comic.  It's also highly recommended.

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