The Shortest Masterpiece | A Short Discussion and Review of Pluto

nakasawa is my favorite Japanese author pretty much full stop I have very little hesitation to say that I was first exposed to his work through monster which has remained one of my favorite shows since the first time I saw it I still haven't finished some of his most popular wordss like 20th century boys but I've at least never been let down by his work so far so when an anime adaptation of Pluto was announced I was excited for it even if I didn't know anything about it that's that I also haven't seen any of naura was worked in a few years so I couldn't help but wonder if I I'd really enjoy it as much as Monster if i' even still enjoy his work the way I did almost a decade ago Pluto is an adaptation of naawa as Manda of the same name it was published from 2003 to 2009 and while Pluto's length and setting are very different from his usual words you can absolutely recognize his style and I don't mean because of the noses I mean look at this guy look at this bit old schnos the Manda is essentially a loose adaptation of the the greatest robot on Earth Arc of astroboy or tetuan adamu written by Samu Tesa one of the most well-known influential M of all time and also a descendant of hiori Hano what the [ __ ] Osamu himself passed away in 1989 and years later his son Makoto kzo would go on to be a supervisor of a asawa's adaptation which essentially reimagines the original story to be from the POV of other characters and looked at it under a different lens as well as adapting the original designs I've seen a lot of people talking about asro po because of this and I'm glad it's a good Manda and I've seen several of the anime myself though I tend to lean towards W the 1980 anime as my preference over the Classic 60s series by Yoshi Yuki no I watched it when I was like 12 and it was incredibly upsetting that said I think a lot of people are also misremembering Astro Boy and treating Pluto as the dark and gritty reinterpretation this Ain this ain't that old Astro Boy is dark and gritty and while I love Pluto I think it's disingenuous to act like the original series wasn't similar it might have had a light-hearted presentation but it still had that bite to it all of the moral dilemas and Astro or Adam being L traumatized every opportunity was still there Pluto just looks at it from a very different perspective while giving its own Tes on the same dilemmas and I think part of what makes Pluto is so good is that it's not trying to be a dark and edgy remake instead it comes from asawa's love of the original material while also diving his own views because as much as this is Astro Boy at the same time the entire show Absolutely drips with urawa style my first time watching PLO it kind of felt like filling the void left behind by monster when it ended every character feels like a very fleshed out person with their own difficulties and conflicting faults all adding up to one coherent message and question that the show Loosely does try to answer the anime follows a robot detective named desit who tries to solve a series of murders in which the most powerful robots in the world are suddenly being killed it's a very well-written and interesting murder mystery though the strengths of Pluto generally lie in its character riding over that mystery which is good because the mystery itself isn't really that satisfying to be honest I wouldn't say it's bad but the conclusion of the actual mystery Falls a bit flat it really changes its focus pretty early on pretty much all of the best moments of the story are in regards to how it handles those characters which are all very well written with real depth and layers to them I especially love the way it handles Adam's grader umaro kenma who despite having not a lot of stream time ended up being genuinely my favorite character so before I do further I would recommend that you go into this show as blind as possible it's Eight Episodes each one is an hour length and it's on Netflix to watch it great show I'm not going too deep into spoilers because I don't want to just recount the Wikipedia page for 20 minutes but I'll talk about the themes of the story because I want I want to talk about it it's really good I've noticed that well watching Nowa shows that a lot of times he seems to set up a theme and then spend the story dissecting it to an extent monster particularly really handles this strongly the titular monster and the question of whether or not all lives are equal is established almost immediately it asks you does the life of a man who funds A Hospital have more value than that of a child can the value of a life be measured at all or are they all just as equal regardless of actions does life have intrinsic value at all kenma chooses the life of a child who then grows up to become a killer does this mean he was wrong and that lives don't have equal value or was he right regardless monster spends its entire length taking those questions from the beginning analyzing them putting them under different lights and then finally deciding on its answers Pluto is a very similar idea but instead of the value of life it's about grief loss Andy Les of hate and at the same time similar to his other wordss it's surprisingly optimistic it's a world of war and suffering but at the same time humanity isn't gone I've seen so much cyber punch stuff lately that I was actually caught off guard seeing a Sci-Fi setting like this that isn't miserable despite the fact that terrible things happen it's never portrayed as helpless or pessimistic cyber punch settings are often about finding a form of reprieve in a doomed world and raging against that hopelessness well on the other hand the setting of Pluto is a surprisingly optimistic take on the future a lot of current day struggles and societal issues remain but things are slowly getting better in the setting and I think at the end of the day that's something that I really enjoy about aosawa work I especially remember thinking that when I was watching monster you see some horrible conditions and situations but at the same time they keep that spark of life in them and a very Earnest belief that despite everything things can be good characters can change Adam particularly reminds me a lot of kenm from monster in this regard he's got that same kind of genuine good nature and earnestness even once the story beats him down and drags him along on he's optimistic in kind but not because he's naive it's a conscious choice not to fall into the same hatred and bitterness that so many of the other characters exhibit the robot two clut CL was a little weird that's a weird said way but it's weird in the show too in general I think Pluto does a good job of handling Prejudice in a multi-layered way ranging from genuine vitriol to passive assumptions that weren't really meant badly a lot of the racism towards machines is portrayed as ignorance rather than real hate the robo KKK is a little bit jarring it's like they suddenly pull out a sledg camera when the subtlety was fine as is that said I still appreciate the idea and besides that I think Adolf is actually a very well-written character it's a dra protrayal of a genuinely good father and likable person who ended up swept up in a hate movement only to end up recognizing what he had turned into by the end it's strangely paced but I overall did enjoy this potline even if it stands out a little compared to the I would honestly say almost perfect writing that the rest of the series holds up in the end Pluto is a genuinely amazing anime that I really did love all the way through and I would give anything from more adaptations of Osa wws everything from the characters to the music to the realistic but still very appealing aesthetic of the animation is some of the best I've seen in a while it is a legitimately beautiful anime with real passion and meaning behind it where you can actually see the author in it if you want to watch Pluto all eight episodes are over on Netflix give it a try thank you for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] the [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Tsundere Lobster

Views: 2,859

Keywords: pluto, pluto anime, monster, pluto review, pluto anime review, naoki urasawa, naoki urasawa monster

Id: 73gbz-KKcmY

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2024