Pluto's story revolves around A europol detective named Gesicht, one of the worlds 7 most advanced robots, as hes brought in to investigate the murder of one of the creators of said 7 robots, at the crime scene there is a suspicious pair of horns brutally attached to the victim's head, suddenly more deaths of creators and even a couple of the 7 robots alike all with a pair of horns somewhere near the body, Now with Gesicht at the helm of the mystery as well as him being in direct danger its up to him to discover who is doing this and why. The Story of pluto may not have as many twists as the previous stories by Urasawa had but its none the less intriguing, it manages to throw in a new aspect of world building, back-story, or a interesting new development to the plotline whenever it feels like it may become predictable and thanks to the liberties naoki urasawa takes with his own interpretation it provides a very different and more unpredictable story than the original source material.
The characters are easily the strongest aspect of Pluto, The amount of depth given to the characters is truly a masterful example of story telling, with the 7 robots in particular even with the short screen time given to a few of them the manga provides an in depth look into their motivations, Their relationships with others, what makes them happy, what torments them, as well as giving them unique and believable personalities that only helps strengthen the theme of humanity in robotic beings that Pluto uses as a main crutch to its story. The main character Geischt in particular was a compelling character and the story arcs dealing with his control over hatred and the emotional connections he feels to others most notably his wife was easily one of the highlights of the series for me, we are consistently teased with hints of tragedy in his past and uncovering what happened in the past is one of the more minor but none the less intriguing mysteries behind pluto. Gesicht is a smart and well written character with a load of depth and even some development in him, from start to finish he was a compelling and often times tragic character that really helped carry the themes the manga tries to convey. On top of these characters is the character Atom, or as you may know him astro boy, Atom is a much different character than in the source material being a much less care free and more mature to the point character. Atom like the other robots was given a strong look into what makes the character tick and does act as a strong lead alongside Gesicht. Alongside the robots there are human characters like the much more gritty Dr Tenma, the vengeful Adolf Haas, and the more serious Dr. Ochanomizu whom add alot of depth to the story as the series progresses though I will refrain from mentioning much about them as they are best left to see from your own eyes rather than a synopsis. The depth given to the robot characters makes pluto stand out to me as one of the best examples of a story using the humanity given to robots premise done right.
As the story progresses and more of the mysteries unravel the series does transition from a mystery to more of a drama/thriller, sadly even though the last 2 are still strong the series does reach a peak with volume 4 which provides a intense and emotion filler story full of revelations and intrigue all packed with a shocking ending that left me speechless, the final pages of volume 4 with the help of the phenomenal and detailed art is one of the most powerful and saddest images i have seen in story telling. What comes after is still a tear jerking tragedy but mainly in the final volume the series it begins to feel a bit rushed mainly in some explanations, while there are no lose ends the series does require you to use your head to fill in a few of the blanks, though this comes off more as rushed and poorly written in that aspect but not enough to really hurt the series too much as it was just trying to stay true to the source material and had to take a hit as a result, though the extremely abrupt ending of the final pages is disappointing none the less. Even giving it the handicap the final volume of Pluto is its greatest weakness, but isn't so weak to undermine the story pluto masterfully told up until that point.
Pluto is an emotionally powerful series that never left me feeling bored, despite its considerably shorter length than Urasawa stories are usually it still had so much depth to its writing, characters, and themes that its becomes hard to tell its as relatively short as it it. Its a phenomenal series more than worth a read despite its hiccups near the end. Osamu Tezuka would have been proud.
