Frezno's Comics Challenge: July 2024 (Pluto)

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Well, it will end when Sean runs out of comics for me to cover for it, but I just really wanted to make that specific Emerson Lake And Palmer reference to get my foot in the door of talking about this. For the second time in a row and the third time overall, we're in the wide world of black and white comics. Once again it's a manga, but it was a doozy. Naoki Urasawa's (or really, Urasawa X Tezuka if we're being technical) Pluto is the longest thing I've had to cover by far here. 65 serialized chapters of manga. If I had more time, I could spin this into a really long deep dive coverage of all its themes and foibles the way I do with Quantum Leap and other things (Season 2's next, incidentally). As I had a bit of a whirlwind for the first half of July 2024, however, that led me on a bit of a time crunch. I think it's going to make the piece better. Some of that good old-fashioned brevity which makes the Twin Peaks posts I did last year sing. Let's do a little of that and talk about Pluto.

On paper, this shouldn't work. Like this really shouldn't work as well as it does. A manga artist and fan of Osamu Tezuka's groundbreaking Astro Boy deciding to adapt an arc of that series as a gritty murder mystery in 2003, because the five minutes in the future date of Astro Boy's creation in the 50's was in 2003? When I write it out like that, it sounds like the worst idea ever, born out of a combination of fanwank and edgelord behavior. That is not the case. I don't know a lick about Astro Boy (I might have seen some cartoon adaptation on TV right around 2003 or so) but this particular arc is something which affected Urasawa even at a young age. There was a certain energy around this story which resonated with the young Urasawa. I know that feeling well. Sometimes something just sticks in your head and refuses to escape until you use creativity as an outlet for it. Something like that, living in your head for years? That's bringing your childhood with you. That's the case with Pluto. I knew of Urasawa in the same way I knew of Astro Boy; around 15 years ago I had a friend who praised Monster, and I might even have read a little. I can't recall. It's all in the haze of memory. What the hell is Pluto, then?

I'm painting with a broad brush here, you must understand, but Pluto is all about clashing ideologies. Robot vs. human. Love vs. war. Life vs. death. Over 65 chapters there's a rich interconnected tapestry at play here which delves into the inner workings of so many characters, what they believe, and how the traumas of a cruel world shaped them. The scope of it expands beyond him, but for an example it's worth focusing on the protagonist of the majority of the book, Gesicht the Interpol agent. He's an advanced robot in a world full of robots, a place which runs on its own Asimovian logic regarding rules of robotics and how they are meant to be broken. He investigates murders, uncovers the deep layers of conspiracy, and has to deal with his own fractured memories and repressed horrors as the story unfolds. Parts of the story resemble something like Manhunter with Brau 1589, the one robot (that we know of) who actually killed a human and is now in lockup for it. Brau is basically Hannibal Lecter, erudite and charming but also quite dangerous and finding a kinship with Gesicht, thinking they're not so different. So much of the book is focused on the notion of robots and hate: in the quest to making a "perfect" robot, the only way to make them more human is to give them the capacity for negative emotions. That leads so many down the dark path in this book, and hate is the animating force beyond the seemingly monstrous Pluto who is murdering so many of the world's most advanced robots.

Hate is a prevalent antagonistic force in the book, from the Klan-coded anti-robot secret society to Pluto and his mastermind, to the trauma of a war with Persia a few years in the past that led to many destroyed robots and a society still rebuilding from the ruin. It's a very human emotion, but not keeping it in check will poison the world. That's quite literal in the final chapters of the book, when the rage and anguish and hurt of Pluto and his mastermind are enough to trigger something which was meant to bring goodness and life to the world but instead will now bring about untold calamity. It's a story we've heard time and time again on this blog, and the way forward is to trust love. To forgive and show empathy. Human emotion is multifaceted, and we can learn to love as easy as we learn to hate. The robots have to learn that as well. In that regard, there's a perfect fitting synchronicity at hand here for me. As I mentioned last time, for some months in 2023 and 2024, I was a part of a podcast discussing episodes of Kamen Rider Zero-One. That particular series is about mass-produced robots called Humagears, and the nuances and struggles of seeing them as not just robots but as individuals with rights and deserving of respect. It was a fun series that had a lot of depth to it, but Pluto is like that evolved on this whole other level of maturity. Pluto, for instance, devotes four chapters to one of the robots, North No. 2, as he tries to learn how to play music from the elderly musician who he is entrusted to care for. In reality AI art is just regurgitated slop, but in fiction like this it's lovely to see the idea of a robot learning something like the craft of music for a positive purpose. It's wild, and I dig it.

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH
I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about how this works as a comic, and it works quite well. Each volume begins with a set of colorized panels, and they definitely set a mood for the place of the story they're at. Beyond that, there's a paradoxical softness to this story about robot murders and prejudice and hate. It's not a shoujo manga style softness of bright shimmering eyes and soft lips, but just a sense I get from the linework and shading. There's a gentle and graceful touch at play here which I feel gets at the positive nature of the book. By contrast, the scenes where Pluto goes on a rampage are chaotic. Pluto literally creates tornadoes upon his arrival, rushes of howling winds and swirling vortexes as the robots confront him. He's shown in shadow and silhouette for most of it, a horned being looking like a mirage of the devil from Fantasia, screaming in agony and heartbreak and hate. The arrival of hate and misery leaves the softness of the book shattered and in turmoil, just like a storm rolling through. When the storm passes, there's always a quiet calm... and something has been destroyed in its wake, and we mourn its loss and move onward. The one exception to the black and white nature of the book, though, are the color shots of flowers. Be they actual remembered flowers or drawings of them, they stand out as a deliberate choice. Flowers represent what Pluto should have been, what it could have been were the flowers not stamped out by hate, the vibrant colors left to die as the people behind the events choose death and despair and misery. They are an oasis in a desert of defeat, and their beauty shines through. One day, they will grow again.

Pluto was a truly impressive book, and I'm only scratching the surface of it here for this. I would call it my favorite thing I have read for this project thus far, but that depends on whether or not I like the well-told story over the academic concepts at play in Unflattening. It's a day by day choice, but what I can tell you is that you should seek out Pluto. The fact that Urasawa was able to create something so beautiful out of something so affecting from his childhood speaks wonders, and what shouldn't work absolutely does work. Marvelous, positively marvelous. Unfortunately, as teased to me at the end of that latest Kamen Rider podcast, which now is about the series Build and also has Sean cohosting with us, the next comic is not going to be such a fun one. It's going to be a bit of a mess, and one I may need a guiding hand with.

This looks like a job for Superman.