Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 1 (1) Paperback – February 17, 2009

Seen the anime on Netflix. It was sooo good. So naturally I had to get the Manga. Good quality.

I love the mood and atmosphere here, the themes explored are great and handled well as of finishing Volume 1. I am going to continue buying this one, and I'd recommend if you like a series with some philosophical aspects exploring some heavy themes.

I cannot recommend this series enough, it’s a terrific mystery-thriller with a cool futuristic setting, characters that are well-written and complex, and GORGEOUS, highly expressive art. Also the volume itself is of such a nice quality, very sleek and nice to see on a shelf. It’s an adaptation of an Astro Boy story, but you don’t need any knowledge of that series to enjoy this (I still haven’t read/watched Astro Boy and this is one of my favorite series). This is the first of Naoki Urasawa’s series that I’ve read and it definitely won’t be the last. This is his shortest series to my knowledge, and therefore a good starting point if you’re interested in his work. I encourage you to give it a try and see if you like it!!!

In Pluto, Naoki Urasawa lays all the groundwork for a thought provoking murder mystery that explores themes of personal identity and human nature. The well-tread ground of the potential "human-ness" of robots is made fresh again by the vivid world that Urasawa re-purposes from Ozamu Tezuka's legendary Astro Boy manga. While much of the first volume is world building and development of Gesicht, a bit part from Astro Boy now upgraded to leading man in Urasawa's interpretation, act 4, 5, and 6 tell the story of North #2. Those three chapters alone are worth the price of admission and set Pluto apart in terms of serialized stories. Truly, acts 4-6 could be anthologized on their own and would deserve mountains of praise. North #2 is a fully realized character paired alongside his foil, a crotchety luddite composer far past his prime. North #2's story makes a declaration: that this is one of the best comic books you'll ever read.

So far I have only read the first two volumes but the volumes I have read were amazing, the art is awesome and the story is great. Higly recommend it and plan on getting the rest. Once I finish this series I plan on reading Astro boy, the original story.This series is about a serial kiler who is killing off all the great robots of the world. One of the great robots is a detective in charge of this case. This robot has to stop the killer before himself and the other great robots are destroyed.This series deals with the great concept of robots with emotions and is a great thriller. I highly recommend this series.

I read this series a while ago, and loved every minute of it.It provokes deep thought. It touches your heart. Then rips it out, stomping it into the ground. Makes you cry, makes you laugh. It's sark, hopeful, suspenseful, exciting....I was a huge fan of Astro Boy, and although this series isn't solely about him (heck, you don't see him much at first at all), this was not what I expected and far surpassed any expectations I had. Such an amazing series!

Pluto Vol. 1 is a good manga, but that's it. Those who swallow all the "groundbreaking" hype might be disappointed. If the only manga you've ever read before is Love Hina then yes, this will rock your world. Otherwise, it's a good start to a story that increasingly fails exactly because it doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done to death already.Nostalgic readers tuning in to see Astroboy again need to wait until volume 2 for his story. Buy that one too, then quit while you're ahead. That's where the series peaks, then it's all downhill from there. The storytelling quickly gets politicized and commandeered by surprisingly trite and omnipresent messages about prejudice (Guess what? It's bad.) and an embarrassingly naive straw-man argument against the Iraq war (Guess what? Starting a war solely to murder innocent women and children is also bad.) -- he's not exactly going out on a limb to take any controversial or enlightening stands here. If that's what passes for deep and groundbreaking for you, then I'm sorry, but the Older Teen rating means you're probably not old enough to read this series anyway.The Pluto universe, with it's inconsistent use of technology and intelligent machines, is inevitably more a facade of convenience than a good sci-fi universe. This is fine at first, but it starts getting silly after a while when the rules keep changing to fit the preaching.Your money is better spent on Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys. It's extremely long-winded but a lot more fun.

Artwork is incredible. Beautiful.