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Astro Returns
Born on the cusp of the transition between Generation X’s reign and the fledgling steps of the Y Generation has allowed me to stay abreast of both internet trends and classic 80’s Saturday morning cartoons. I grew up sprawled out in front of Inspector Gadget, Top Cat, Care Bears and Astro Boy. It is arguably my first contact with anime.
Fans of the original series will find a faithful adaption in Director David Bowers’ 2009 release of Astro Boy. It tells the tale of a young boy, built to replace his creator’s dead son. The doppelganger is quickly cast out by his aggrieved father. Astro is cast down from the heights of his airborne metropolitan home to the earth’s surface where he and his newfound friends’ mirth is tested when they try to save the city from near destruction.
Astro Boy revives the modern fable genre. Where the Shrek movies have parodied fairy tales, Astro Boy embodies and nurtures traditional fables meant to impart moral conscience on readers. Astro Boy is not unlike a modern retelling of Pinocchio, whilst also incorporating elements of David and Goliath, and to some extent, Frankenstein. Like Pinocchio, Astro is created by a man who longs for a son, he faces various trials like gaining an education, being swayed by conniving villains (Ham-Egg serves as a veritable Stromboli who demands Astro perform in his robot fights), and facing a monstrous creature in an end-all battle which would seemingly claim the hero’s life.
Doctor Tenma as a villainous character is greatly scaled back in Bower’s adaption, to that rather of a grieving father. As in the original series Doctor Elefun, provided sanctuary for the orphaned Astro, in this version he is Astro’s emotional refuge, providing fatherly support where Tenma fails.
The final aesthetic presentation is stunning and reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s ‘Laputa: Castle in the Sky’. Patrons will enjoy the high-tech futuristic feel of this film.
The original series carried a poignant environmental message as well as morals about the ills of sloth and respecting one’s community whether its members are robotic or otherwise. 1980’s Astro Boy championed rights for robots. This concept was not at all considered absurd in Astro Boy’s homeland, Japan, where Shintoism and Buddhism teaches that God exists in all things, including non-living objects. One’s environment is just as deserving as one’s respect as fellow humans are. In 2009’s Astro Boy, this aim is reduced to comic amblings of a trio of junk-heap robots who represent the Robotic Revolutionary Front. Instead, Astro is driven to do simply what is right. The audience comes to love Astro and realise that the city-wide exploitation of robots is nothing short of slavery and laziness on the human’s part. Astro Boy in 2009 serves as a successful film, if not another addition in what seems to becoming a long line of Hollywood anime adaptions.
