Astro Boy (One Shots)

Best Shonen Magazine
July 1970

For most of the 1970s, after the the successful runs in Shonen,  Mighty Atom Club, and the Sankei Newspaper, all came to a close, there was no regularly serialized manga series featuring Astro Boy.

Instead, Astro was featured in a series of “one-shots” and other special editions, for a wide variety of reasons: “Slippery Catfish in Imminent Danger” was created in response to a request from Takashi Ishikawa, a science-fiction writer and a colleague of Tezuka’s working at the Sunday Manichi Newspaper who wanted to feature all Tezuka’s heroes “in an entertaining way”.

“Showdown in the Standard Deviation Kingdom” was the result of a request by the editors ofWeekly Asahi Newspaper to tackle a contemporary social problem in Japan – the over-reliance of standardized school tests.

“Astro Returns” was published in Fourth Grader as an attempt to address the mountain of fan-mail Tezuka received after the somewhat tragic ending of the original B&W animated television program.

“Astro II” came about after Tezuka was awarded the Bunshun manga award and Bungei Shunju, as the main sponsor, wanted to include an Astro Boy story in their deluxe edition – even though it typically catered to an adult readership.

Finally, “The Silver Tower”, “Astro Boy’s First Love”, and “The End of Astro Boy” were all created as different features on nostalgic manga. In all, 7 separate chapters were published as one-shots and/or special editions.

One of Osamu Tezuka’s most successful creations, Astro Boy has been featured in several publications.  The Astro Boy manga has also been serialized in the pages of Shonen, and published in Mighty Atom Club, as well as the Sankei Newspaper and Second-Grader.

Publication Information and Chapter Summaries