Movies / Animé and Toons

Astro Boy Volume 5

By Hervé St-Louis
April 16, 2010 - 21:25

In this collected edition the whole series and its theme of the integration of robots as equals to humans comes to a head as Astro must avert a war between humans and robots and at the same time fight the destiny his creator Doctor Tenma has planned for him as the leader of the vanguard of humans against robots. Will Astro abandon humans in favour of leading a nation of robots?

All that has occurred prior comes full circle here as the discrimination against robots intensifies. What’s interesting, is that Osamu Tezuka had enough foresight into creating this dynamic of humans versus robot rights way back when using allegory for discriminated groups in fiction, as the X-Men do was not frequent. What the team that created this cartoon series was just take it to next level. Unlike previous Astro Boy series, this one is not specifically open-ended. The ending, as logical as can be is seen in this collection. Sure new adventures can occur, but it’s more like blockbuster movie where everything just explodes during the climax. The part about robots having equal rights to humans came out of nowhere. It wasn’t alluded to before, or it was edited out in the North American version. Astro never asked for that much, it seems. All he wanted was for humans and robots to live peacefully.

Here the creators use more staple Tezuka start system characters and of course, it works. This series is quite interesting and I couldn’t stop myself from not watching it in one sitting. This is the only DVD in the collection that has a special feature. Here’s it’s a behind the scene on this series, but the dubbing is poor and the feature lacks interactivity. Something that would have complemented this series would have comments by the creators. It’s really too bad that this series was treated as a cheap almost direct to DVD release instead of the respected series it could have been. I would argue that it was as entertaining as the Justice League series. Some episodes were more childish than others were and that was a problem, but in the end, there was enough action to keep the eight-year-old boy in me entertained.

Rating: 10 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12