Machines re-producing machines? Isn’t that the beginning of the End of Mankind As We Know It?
Here is a teaser trailer for the new Astro Boy movie, a computer-generated feature made in the US under the auspices of Imagi Animation Studios, the animation production company of TMNT and the in pre-production Gatchaman (based on a famous TV series once mangled under the US title Battle of the Planets).
Astro Boy is, of course, based on the iconic character (Tetsuwan Atomu, lit. “Mighty Atom”) created by Osamu Tezuka, whose highly influential manga was made into a TV series in 1963-1966 and subsequently re-made several times over the years, each time updated using the latest animation techniques.
The image of Astro Boy still adorns everything from T-shirts to handbags to pencil cases. The various TV series have only in recent years been made available in the West in their original Japanese format, though the name “Astro Boy” has, like the US transliteration of “Gojira” into “Godzilla”, become more familiar than the original moniker.
Though in the “cute” school of anime (and therefore generally considered to be a kid’s programme), Astro Boy‘s stories have pushed into dark, and often morally complex areas, exploring before-their-time issues of AI intelligence, social tolerance and the responsibilities that come from the creation of self-aware, albeit artificial, lifeforms that go beyond their roles as “appliances”. Where do we draw the line between artifice and life?
Let’s hope the franchise’s essential qualities — both on the endearing and the thought-provoking sides of the equation — are retained by this new non-Japanese endeavour.
Here is the first third of the first episode of the 1982 version of Astro Boy, just for those poor souls who have never seen any:
