Pluto
	 Volume 6
	  Postscript : Pluto to Our Generation
	   by Gorot Yamada : Critic

	It's a bad habit of old men raised in the Showa period (1926-1989) to make statements
about generations, but it is virtually unavoidable when discussing Pluto. This is because mangaka
(born in 1960) Naoki Urasawa's attempt to revive his origin, "The Greatest Robot on Earth,"
carries a special meaning to my (1958) generation of "20th century boys" born during the high-
growth period of the last century -- the "21st century men."
	In the 18 years that Tetsuwan Atom was serialized -- starting in 1951 -- the most popular
saga by far, and one occuring in the period that the "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka admitted was
"his most enjoyable period of work," was "The Greatest Robot on Earth," published in the monthly
"Shonen" magazine in 1964, as Japan was in a frenzy over the Tokyo Olympics. The serial's title
at the time was "The Greatest Robot in History." An animated version was aired the next year, and
a collected volume of the saga was printed by Kappa Comics. That Pluto is printed once a month,
and its deluxe edition comes in the same size as the Kappa Comics, are surely by the design of
Urasawa and his producer, Takashi Nagasaki (1956), for the purpose of bringing the experience to
modern readers in the same way as it was originally presented.
	Having been raised on this masterpiece, Atom and Tetsujin, Godzilla and Ultraman, 
shinkansen bullet trains and Apollo 11, sluggers Oh and Nagasaki, wrestlers Bab and Inoki, 
student protests and Woodstock, our generation was the most innocently inspired by science, 
heroes, revolution and rock. But with the Osaka Expo in 1970 -- what should have been the start 
of the "Silver Future" (cour. of Toshio Okada [1958]) -- our dreams of bliss came to an end, we 
grew up and saw a real world where science made pollution, heroes were celebrities, rock became a 
business, and revolution was terrorism. Many of our kind awoke from their dreams and grew into 
adults, while the remainder shunned reality and became otaku.
	As we reached middle age and began to wonder if we were spending our lives the right way, 
along came Urasawa's 20th Century Boys, with its message of, "Let's take back the future we 
believed in." Considered that way, it's easy to see the reason that he tackled Pluto next. This 
is not just a remake of a classic. By resurrecting the root of our childhood dreams, he is 
delivering a jolting missive to our generation, saying, "Follow me."
	Of course, Pluto is plenty entertaining even if read simply as a manga. Drawn into an 
irrational series of events, the main characters follow a mystery, recover lost memories, and 
realize their fault in the case... Using the "Urasawa Suspense" formula crafted in Monster and 
20th Century Boys as a skeleton, themes and references from Tetsuwan Atom stories and the rest of 
Tezuka's library provide garnish to a reconstructed tale. It is a gift of Urasawa's that he can 
craft the storylines that refused to fit the shonen manga format of the '60s into the density and 
depth of 21st century seinen manga. My favorite story is that of Norse #2, from the first volume. 
The beautiful, poignant final scene is one that will remain in the history of manga as something 
that could only come from Naoki Urasawa.
	But in exchange for that beauty, there are no scenes of merciless destruction, as found 
in the original. The same goes for Gesicht's death in this volume. As well, the cute/sexy scene 
in which Uran challenges Pluto wearing only Atom's underpants has been turned into a normal 
"feel-good" story in Volume 2. In other words, the cruelty and eroticism that could be found in 
the original story has been dimmed in Pluto. For a wake-up call to his fellow generation, I find 
this slightly disappointing.
	That cruelty and eroticism is often stigmatized as "the dark side of Osamu Tezuka," but 
in fact, as a children's author, this is one of his greatest strengths. When poorly handled, 
violence and eroticism are harmful, but in the hands of a skilled author, they act as a vaccine 
that builds resistance to harmful concepts. Tezuka himself admitted that his mentor Walt Disney's 
greatest strengths lay in these points, and strongly warned against descending into cheap 
humanism out of fear of criticism.
	Tetsuwan Atom fails to work without Tezuka's sense of violence. Atom is created as a 
replacement for a dead child, was tortured and sold to a circus, forced to work for human gain, 
and was discriminated against for being a robot. No matter how many times he was betrayed, he 
continued to fight and believe in humanity.
	This painful sense of cruelty is also the source of Atom's hope. At the end of the 
original story, Atom says "I think a day will come soon when robots get along and cease to 
fight." The reason these totally unfounded words bring us hope is because we have already 
witnessed those robots' heartless, unthinkable squabbling for ourselves, and our anger, disgust 
and sadness lead us to think, "These actions must not stand."
	That's right. Only extreme negative emotions can produce true hope, a fact that Urasawa 
understands well. Pluto will no doubt reach its climax soon, after Atom is resurrected. Will 
Urasawa be able to depict cruelty greater than that drawn by the God of Manga himself, who 
witnessed the aerial bombing of Osaka with his own eyes? Can he fill the souls of the "21st
century men" with enough negativity that they bring hope to an age without dreams for the future?
	I believe that Naoki Urasawa can do this. I have no proof for this, but as Tatsuro 
Yamashita sings, "No matter how much we grow up, we are the children of Atom." As a fan from his 
generation, I hope that I can at least lend him hope, on the same level as Konchi from 20th 
Century Boys.