Anime in Focus RETRO EDITION: Astro Boy (1963) episode 1

 FOR SCIENCE!

For this anime segment, we are going back in time to the 1960’s, back before the advent of color and people caring about the quality of animation. Watching stuff like this is entertaining in its own way, as we can see just how far the industry has advanced in the 50 or so years that people have been creating animation. Also, the plot is deliciously dated.

This episode starts IN THE YEAR 2000!, when people have advanced so much that they let little kids drive cars. Unsurprisingly somebody dies.

However, that boys father decides that he must replace his dead son. Fortunately, that man is in charge of the institute of SCIENCE (I’m not kidding) where he decides in a conference that the next 6 months will be dedicated to building a robot to replace his son. Nobody has any objections to this despite him saying that all the companies’ resources will be going to an obviously personal project. Aren’t 60’s kid’s show plots just awesome?

For some reason the institute of SCIENCE manages to complete this super robot in a matter of months. The creator of the robot names him… ASTRO BOY, hence giving the show its title. Astro boy manages to be a sentient robot, despite later being revealed to operate on 12 volts of power. But that’s fine, because he’s filled with SCIENCE. The scientist is very pleased with his project, and adopts it as his son.

Astro boy has super strength, and learns at an incredible rate, and doesn’t need to eat on top of it. However, his father is massively disappointed when he realizes that his robot isn’t growing (GEE, I wonder why?) Disappointed by his “son’s” lack of growth, he decides to put him on the 1960’s equivalent to Craigslist, and sells him to the highest bidder. This causes him to wind up fighting other robots in a circus attraction. This leads him to him meeting other robots at this circus, and causing rallies for robot rights. Also, he learns to fly spontaneously in there for some reason.

This show is sort of entertaining to watch with a group of friends, based around just how silly some of the concepts presented are. Also, it is an important part in anime history. Furthermore, you get to see a time period when anime was inspired by Disney, before today, where it has established its own customs and art styles. On another note, the dub manages to be so bad it’s good, (well, actually the voices aren’t too bad) in the sense that a lot of the dialogue is shoehorned in to fit the character’s lip movements. Might be worth renting on Netflix, if you want to have a sixties cheese night with your friends (it’s what my local anime club was doing)

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COMING SOON:

(some other retro stuff)