Pluto Episode 5 Discussion

Love the show, but the Iraq War analog takes me out of the immersion way too often.

For half of it, they present it very realistic & similar to actual events. But then when showing "Persia" & Darius, the comparison does a complete 180. Are we really going to present the Saddam Hussein stand-in as an innocent, progressive leader ruling over a prosperous & "cultured" society? Seems odd that within the show he's still known as a "dictator," even though everything they've shown to this point has shown him as a victim.

You might ask what's the big deal, but how do you think people would feel if they saw a fictional show presenting a 1:1 World War 2 happening in their world, and Hitler/Nazis were presented as innocent victims of a peaceful, progressive society? It feels gross.

Even the "fact finding mission" seems weird. I have no issues with its existence in the show or the way in which it ties into the war, but when it goes to Saddam... I mean "Darius" talking about it, it suddenly damages the analogy again. Iraq had UN weapons inspectors in the country for years, then abruptly kicked them out & refused to allow future inspections. And this was after chemical weapons were already used on its own population, under orders from Saddam, so the history of atrocities was already there.

If the show wanted to go this route, they could've still made it all work. Darius should've already been a known tyrant that used weapons of mass destruction to kill tens of thousands of his own people/robots, which then lead to its pariah state status. Countries would then set out to justify toppling the regime permanently, rather than continue to let him stay in power, and worked to develop robots of mass destruction that could do the job for them. By the time those robots were completed, it had been years since the last incident in Persia, but that didn't stop the United States of Thracia from trying to convince others Darius needed to go.

They sent out the fact finding mission, but only found the robot graveyard without any context. Leaders in charge then decided to fill in the gaps & tell the world it was more of Darius's atrocities (which was believable, as there was an existing history of this happening before), and declared war. Then all the exact same events seen in the show could happen, and nothing would conflict with the comparison.

The war was still based on speculation & misinformation, the horrors of war still create resentment & desire for revenge, and everything else plays out the exact same way. Only this time you don't present Saddam Hussein, a crazy dictator who gassed tens of thousands of people, as a formerly peaceful & progressive leader of a prosperous country.

I mean to be fair this is a re-telling of an arc from Astro Boy so unless the mangaka decided to completely diverge from the original story, regardless of what he may have wanted (if his preference was to actually keep Atom dead), he had to stick with Atom ending up alive.

Love the show, but the Iraq War analog takes me out of the immersion way too often.

For half of it, they present it very realistic & similar to actual events. But then when showing "Persia" & Darius, the comparison does a complete 180. Are we really going to present the Saddam Hussein stand-in as an innocent, progressive leader ruling over a prosperous & "cultured" society? Seems odd that within the show he's still known as a "dictator," even though everything they've shown to this point has shown him as a victim.

You might ask what's the big deal, but how do you think people would feel if they saw a fictional show presenting a 1:1 World War 2 happening in their world, and Hitler/Nazis were presented as innocent victims of a peaceful, progressive society? It feels gross.

Even the "fact finding mission" seems weird. I have no issues with its existence in the show or the way in which it ties into the war, but when it goes to Saddam... I mean "Darius" talking about it, it suddenly damages the analogy again. Iraq had UN weapons inspectors in the country for years, then abruptly kicked them out & refused to allow future inspections. And this was after chemical weapons were already used on its own population, under orders from Saddam, so the history of atrocities was already there.

If the show wanted to go this route, they could've still made it all work. Darius should've already been a known tyrant that used weapons of mass destruction to kill tens of thousands of his own people/robots, which then lead to its pariah state status. Countries would then set out to justify toppling the regime permanently, rather than continue to let him stay in power, and worked to develop robots of mass destruction that could do the job for them. By the time those robots were completed, it had been years since the last incident in Persia, but that didn't stop the United States of Thracia from trying to convince others Darius needed to go.

They sent out the fact finding mission, but only found the robot graveyard without any context. Leaders in charge then decided to fill in the gaps & tell the world it was more of Darius's atrocities (which was believable, as there was an existing history of this happening before), and declared war. Then all the exact same events seen in the show could happen, and nothing would conflict with the comparison.

The war was still based on speculation & misinformation, the horrors of war still create resentment & desire for revenge, and everything else plays out the exact same way. Only this time you don't present Saddam Hussein, a crazy dictator who gassed tens of thousands of people, as a formerly peaceful & progressive leader of a prosperous country.

RIP Hercules I thought he was cool. Some very nice revelations and action this episode, the biggest one imo is that Adolf’s brother killed Gesicht’s son, yeah that would make me kill a human too. It seems that the robots are slowly but surely learning human emotions, the most one prominent to come out being “hatred”.

The worldbuilding was also very cool, with the United States being behind on robot-making and also there being cyber nets to stop bridge jumpers.

By now I strongly suspect Gesicht is Pluto. As far as I recall the two were never at the same place at the same time.

And Sadam Husein's "I'm sure you already know" line also pointed toward Gesicht. Is he the "perfect robot" Dr Tenma built?

Gesicht demonstrating that he understands what it's like to feel hate; Uran demonstrating that he has a heart bigger than all of us and Atom being able to become a "monster".
God, what an insane episode!!