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When I first heard about the upcoming Astro Boy, I really wasn’t too excited. Having never read the comics or watched the TV series, it kind of mingled in my head with “Dragonball Z” – something about super powers and fights and the like.
However, I was still interested enough to check out the preview – and was much more impressed than I would have expected. Instead of the slightly tired super-powered humans fight to the death kind of thing, it’s all about a scientist who creates a robot in the image of the son he’s lost – but then realizes even a duplicate with super powers can never really replace his son.
Already, this was sounding a lot more interesting than I had originally thought. Digging deeper, I discovered the original comic was written by Osamu Tezuka. Since I’m still incredibly impressed with his Metropolis (2002) anime film that came out a few years ago, my interest in Astro Boy went up another notch.
And then there’s the voice cast. They drew in a variety of famous names for this one – everyone from Kristen “Veronica Mars” Bell to Bill Nighy (memorable in anything he shows up in, from Shaun Of The Dead (2004) to Underworld (2003)). Even Nic Cage has decided to toss in his voice on this one (thankfully – I need something to replace the by now rather irritating ant in Ant Bully (2006) when I think Nicolas Cage and animation).
With Osamu Tezuka behind the original comic, a fresh take on the super-powered robot bit, a great voice cast and some stylistic animation, Astro Boy might just be able to take off.
Let’s just hope it lives up to what it’s promising.
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