Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and 20th Century Boys finally comes stateside

Japanator reminds me that this week will see the release of the first volume of Urasawa's highly acclaimed series, 20th Century Boys and Pluto. Hurrah!



Pluto is a re-imagining of Osamu Tezuka's most famous work, Astro Boy. (It should be noted that Astro Boy, being a children's manga, is not very representative of Tezuka's work in general. His vast portfolio of inventive manga consists mainly of experimental, usually adult in nature manga and anime; Ode to Kirihito and MW being among his best). Specifically, Naoki Urasawa creates a re-imagining of the "Greatest Robot in the World" story arc from Astro Boy (available in vol. 3 of Dark Horse's Astro Boy release, which I have but have yet to read). In any case, he basically puts a more mature spin on the story, and it's definitely something I want to pick up very soon.

20th Century Boys is another manga I've had my eyes on for a while. It's very successful in Japan (spawning a trilogy of movies, the first of which is due out soon). The story centers around a down-on-his-luck teenager who is confronted with a huge conspiracy that only he and his childhood friends can face. It's also been praised endlessly by those who read the translated scans of the manga from Japan.



I'll be sure to comment further on these as soon as I get the first volumes of both manga.

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