Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

The second set of Rightstuf's DVD release of the original Astro Boy TV series is now up for pre-order. It comes out at the end of August, but is significantly cheaper if you order early. It is dub only, like the first box, but beautifully retouched and loaded with extras:

This poll you've set up is a tough one. The 80's series has a lot of fans, though perhaps out of nostalgia. It certainly must be truer than the 2000 series (I've never actually seen the 2000 series mind you), while better executed than the 60's series, but herein lies my delimma.

With the 60's Astro and Kimba, we see Tezuka try a lot of things with animation. It doesn't always look good, but it always looks original. In Astro, there is a clear attempt to push the medium as close to Tezuka's beloved Disney films, even while having no money to do so. Something also has to be said about the 60's soundtrack. All of the sounds used are unconventional--not stock sounds at all! A friend of mine actually picked up a record with these sounds on it, and they are as experimental as the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet. In whatever way he could find, Tezuka was attempting to approach cartoons in a new way!

In Kimba, I feel the use of color is enough to make this series noteworthy. No other animated series or film to my knowledge has the look of Kimba. This period seems to just be bursting forth with creative energy.

None of that is in the 80's Astro. The animation is technically better because of more funding, but the results are mediocre. There is nothing about the look of the 80's Astro that feels or sounds special, and while I greatly enjoy it, I feel this Astro is one step closer to a completely safe and wholesome Astro for little children.

Perhaps my feelings are in part jaded by the fact that Astro is NOT my favorite work by Tezuka. With his tendency for complex, moralistic story-lines, Astro was both in manga and in anime, Tezuka's most dumbed down, commercial effort. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. Certainly Astro has won Tezuka more attention than any of his other creations, and it is still great stuff. Just a little too simple for Tezuka's rather high standards.

That said, I'm split between the 80's and 60's, in part because the 80's series is easier to watch, but misses some of what makes the 60's series special.

One thing that is distinctive about the 2000's version of AstroBoy is that nobody is ever killed in any episode.

The only characters who can be said to "die" are generally robots who are destroyed but apparently get rebuilt by scientists or other sources, such as the Blue Knight. So therefore they can re-appear in subsequent episodes.
And there's the alien shape-shifting girl in one other episode who is shot dead but brought back to life and turns into stone at the end, with at least the assurance that research can restore her to her living self again.

So technically nobody dies in the absolute sense in this series.