A father rebuilds his dead son as a robot — what could go wrong emotionally?
Doctor Tenma, chief of the Ministry of Science, brought a digital brain genome from an aircraft. Doctor Tenma begins a trip to Mars, then combines the genome with a robot. Doctor Tenma's son, Tobio, who had died in a traffic accident, has been revived.
Direction
Dezaki's painterly storyboards elevate 20 minutes to operatic devastation.
Score
Mournful orchestration that refuses to let you recover emotionally.
Production
Gorgeous watercolor backgrounds versus sterile lab aesthetics.
Director
Osamu Dezaki
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Dezaki directed this as part of the 2003 Astro Boy series pilot, but its standalone theatrical release in Japan treated it as prestige anime art.
This adaptation finally confronts what Tezuka's 1952 manga only implied: Tenma's god complex and emotional abandonment are the real villains, not the robots.
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