Read more about Astro Boy at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Osamu Tezuka/Mushi Productions

is a Japan manga series first published in 1952 and television program first broadcast in Japan in 1963. The story follows the adventures of a robot named Astro Boy and a selection of other characters along the way.

Astro Boy is the first Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiar worldwide as anime. It originated as a manga in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka, revered in Japan as the "God of Manga." After enjoying success abroad, Astro Boy was remade in the 1980s as Shin Tetsuwan Atomu, known as Astroboy in other countries, and again in 2003. In November 2007, he was named Japan's envoy for overseas safety. An American computer-animated 3-D film based on the original manga series by Tezuka was released on October 23, 2009.

The Astro Boy series consists of several storylines, many of which are self-contained. Frederik L. Schodt, who wrote the English-language adaptation of the series, said that as Tezuka's art style advanced, Astro Boy "became more modern and "cute"" to appeal to the audience of boys in elementary school. Schodt added that the page layouts used in Astro Boy episodes "became more creative." Tezuka often had a habit of introducing nonsensical characters at random moments in order to lighten a scene that he believed was becoming too serious. Tezuka sometimes felt trapped by the need to satisfy the young male audience's desire to see battling robots.

Tezuka used Astro Boy to imagine, in a 1950s perspective described by Schodt as "analog," a world where man and advanced technology coexist and the issues stemming from this fact. At the time Japan did not have a reputation for science and technology that it had gained by 2002.

CBUB Match Record: