Anime me!
Built in a lab by a doctor, our hero is given little time to put together what’s going on in his infant-like life and is asked to be a hero nearly instantly. This first episode established the conflict of who Astro Boy is and what purpose he serves to the community he lives in and what purpose he serves to his human family. While certainly ‘just’ an animated series on the outside, the inside is a bit deeper. The kid is still young in the story and he’s asked to do grown-up things. Protecting an entire city from a spider robot as big as a skyscraper and more dangerous than an atom bomb is no small feat.
That’s the best part about this series; you have an emotional portion where you understand that this kid is still a kid by all intents and purposes You also have an adventurous action side, which also understands that he was built to fight and protect. Tezuka Osamu’s original idea, that was very much ahead of his time, is very much intact here in this 2004 series. You get to see a wide variety or personalities, along with a well-developed personality from our main hero. You get multiple storylines stretched across the series. Most of all, you get all the action and adventure you would want from Astro Boy.
Since this version of the series was made in 2004 you also get some eye-popping visuals. That’s the first thing you will notice is that this new Astro Boy is clearly cut above the rest of the cartoons from that time period. When most animators were experimenting with CGI (see Transformers for details — BLECK!) the animation crew for Astro Boy was sticking to the ol’ tried and true method. In the end, the amount of fantastic detail, though ‘anime’-esque, lends well to a series that needed to reboot itself from an old Japanese idea. Much like the idea of Astro Boy, the new 2004 series contains all the elements of a kid friendly nature, but in addition it contains all the action that would keep a kid interested.
The five volume set gives you roughly 20-22 minute episodes that are well acted and drawn. The animation, as I stated above, is hand drawn and it fits the mold perfectly. Having watched the X-Men series recently, which came out around the same time period, the considerable differences in effort and detail are more than noticeable. When I put in the first disc in to start reviewing, I felt like I had started watching a motion picture. Everything is vivid, colorful and reinforces the Astro Boy motif. He lives in a mechanical world and everything around him is drawn to fit that nature. The buildings are shiny, blocky, everything is detailed (every robot and costume); it really creates the illusion of residing in the future. These details are far and away above any recent cartoon that has aired on network television. It’s sick that more animators don’t treat their works as well as Astro Boy was treated.
With that said, the DVD version of the show certainly does show some age. There is some graininess to the video and it seemed like the show wasn’t cleaned up properly or well-preserved. It’s certainly not perfect, but that doesn’t matter as much as the solid storyline that you get throughout the series. You get to see Astro, Zoran and Reno in this series. You get your really bad guys to your really awful bad guys. This series, much like the original Manga released eons ago, holds all the personalities intact with solid storytelling; excellent stuff.
As for features, here’s where you get slightly short changed. You get one feature on the fifth disc called Remaking of Astro Boy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good to watch, but that’s all you get. For a show that’s huge and an upcoming movie that has a ton of hype behind it, there has to be more.