Cobalt [Astro Boy] (Manga)

Astro Boy (1952-68), Chapter 008 ‘Cobalt’ (コバルト), was originally serialized on a monthly schedule between June to September 1954 in Shonen.

What it’s about?

Astro has another very important mission for his country. A bomber plane from some other part of the world has crashed into the sea nearby Japan’s coastline. It was delivering a hydrogen bomb to a military base in the middle of the pacific when it suddenly went out of control and disappeared into deep water. Japan has been warned that the bomb is set to blow up in ten days and one week has already passed. If Astro can’t locate and defuse the bomb in three days Japan will be wiped off the map entirely.

But suddenly Astro disappears without a trace and everybody at the Ministry of Science and the police are very worried. Professor Ochanomizu argues against announcing the terrible news and risking a panic riot. He is building a similar robot to Astro called Cobalt, to try to help save the day. The professor speeds up development on Cobalt and completes him.

Unfortunately tests show that while Cobalt has basically the same amount of I.Q. as Astro, he is absolutely useless when it comes to detailed jobs such as disassembling things. Therefore he won’t be able to defuse the bomb and they’ve almost run out of time as it’s due to explode tomorrow. But there is one last hope. The radar energy inside Cobalt is precisely identical to that built into Astro. Thus Cobalt will be able to track Astro down no matter where he is. Following Cobalt’s progress on computer Ochanomizu and everybody else see that he is flying out to sea and they realize to their joy, that all the time they’ve spent worrying Astro has already been trying his best to search for the bomb. Cobalt and Astro meet each other and work together to find the bomb but Astro is suddenly about to break down when one of his vacuum tubes malfunctions. Cobalt heroically replaces Astro’s faulty tube with one of his own and Astro promises to have him repaired later. Astro is able to disarm the bomb just in the very nick of time with only one second to spare. Japan is saved.

What you should know

This is the origin of the robot boy Cobalt who would be adopted by Astro’s robot parents and become his dear brother. Cobalt was omitted from the 1980’s and 2000’s anime series but featured in the 1960’s series. The english dub gave him the name Jetto.