LiveWire

A post by Maynard

It may have been the early Astro Boy cartoons, which ran on TV from 1963 to 1966, that induced me to enter Starfleet Academy. Now they’re back, showing late Saturday night on the Adult Swim cable channel. You really need to see them again, or watch them for the first time, or show them to the young generation of nerds and nerdettes! Check your local listings; I’m finding it at 2:00AM and 5:00AM on Saturday night (that is, technically on Sunday morning).

Astro Boy was the original Japanese anime, and it influenced everything that followed. The graphics were crude black and white, but there was a heart and depth and humor to the stories. The tale begins early in the 21st century, when Dr. Boynton, head of the Ministry of Science, loses his young son in an auto accident. Obsessed with restoring what has been taken from him, Boynton builds a powerful robot in the child’s image. But, unsatisfied with the result, he rejects his creation. Astro Boy, a young creature with his own emotional needs, is forced to face a hostile world alone.

From my brief description, you get a sense of the real-world conflict that comes across in this simple cartoon. A troubled boy of unusual ability, who struggles to do the right thing even though the deck is stacked against him. He finds a surrogate father in the new head of the science ministry, the esteemed Dr. Packadermus J. Elefun. However most of the world remains prejudiced against robots, which are relegated to second-class citizenship status.

This is not to paint Astro Boy as a serious cartoon. It’s filled with gags and low humor. In a typical scene, Astro Boy is lost in the desert, and running low on power. A vulture descends and pecks at him, causing the bird’s beak to break off. Astro Boy reaches up and re-attaches the beak, kindly explaining, “You can’t eat me. I’m metal.”

The Adult Swim broadcast is probably the result of the DVD re-release by RightStuf.com; click to their site for additional history and background. The DVDs are carried by Amazon. A fan has uploaded the opening credits and theme song as a YouTube clip.

There have been various comic and animated revivals, and I’ll bet we’ll be seeing a movie sooner or later. But in my book, this is the true Astro Boy.

(BTW, Adult Swim runs the nighttime line-up of the Cartoon Network; these are the same people that shut down Boston a few months ago with their ill-advised promotion for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie that was mistaken for a terrorist threat.)