Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality.
Once in a couple of years, a great manga that differentiates itself from the rest of the horde, overcoming stereotypes of near-sighted librarians, perverted high school boys, and female fighters with huge chests and short skirts – at the same time unusual and ludicrous. No, Pluto does not possess any of these indiscretions. Instead, this novel offers characteristics apparent in great anime classics that moved our hearts back during the turn of the century; a robot impersonating humans and striving to acquire emotions, a tear straining allegory of an old director with music as his only memory his homeland, a child genius that can impress even the smartest of doctors, a series of robot murders, and a detective giving all he has to solve the case – all in the style of novel classics such as Akira and Monster. This is the kind of manga that we have come to love, that we have become used to during the golden age at the turn of the century.
Taking inspiration from Isaac Asimov, arguably the greatest author of robot fiction, we are presented with a retro-futuristic world, the exact prototype of envisioned by Verne, Bradbury, and Huxley. Taking insight from Tezuka, we are again presented with old characters of renown that inundates one with vast pangs of nostalgia. An entirely new universe is born from the remnants of the old. An entire world envisioned to perfection where robots coexist with humans besides building and on sidewalks, a world in which, instead of Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws, we are presented with anti-robot organizations and the trashing and replacing of machines without sympathy. A world where those who fight for the rights of robots are killed mercilessly.
The strength of the story comes from its impenetrable plot. The setting is based on a police state of a society in the near future, where the moral dilemmas of ethical treatment of machines arose after the invention and development of the robots; as such, the plot is cleverly woven, and the issues brought up subtly. We are presented with big pictures. Head of departments screaming at their officials because they are robots, criminals kept alive in order to undergo extensive examination; we are also presented with insiders. In the homes of the denizens of the city, we see families mistreating robots who have worked for them without complaints over their short life-span when they are unfit for work. Although the characterization is arguably equally important, the minor characters, the ones that Urasawa is famed for focusing in order to develop the plot, are the ones that should receive the most attention.
Regardless of whatever accepted norms in which one writes a story, Urasawa breaks expectations and brings plot progression not through the introduction of characters, not through their deaths, but through the conversations between the main character and minor characters in the story. Through the conversation with a common household robot maid – whose husband is directly involved in a robot death, the reader is reveled with insight into the emotional threshold which robots are envisioned to develop in the story, and thus, have been perfected into beings which crossed the fine line between the living and the dead; the conversation with a robot who is locked up as a psychotic human killer – introducing events happening long before the story, creating the story’s back drop without excessive filler; through the dialogue uttered by father of the greatest robot ever built Atom – another character with only rare appearances in the novel, we are introduced to new ideas through subtle means. What better way to deftly progress the plot than to use minor characters instead of the protagonists from whom we expect change? So we’d better pay attention, because seemingly unrelated allegory to a musician can explain volumes.
A great skill that Urasawa possesses is the ability to keep suspense in animation for the entire duration of the manga. Unlike its more relaxed cousins, Pluto brings the suspense permeating through the entire cast of the characters. No matter from what angle one views the purpose of the protagonist, the mood is felt throughout the manga that he is on the edge of being blown into bits or slaughtered mercilessly. There is no moment when the reader ceases to worry for Gesicht as well as his compatriot androids; they seem at once invaluable to the plot, and disposable at any moment, a large boon to casting most of the characters as robots who can be seen as more things than persons, which brings up a main motif of the novel: if robots are so close to the real thing that they may be seen to have a conscience, then are they still animated objects? Humans originate from silt, and animate through the electrical signals sent by nerve endings, a description essentially identical to that of robots; so why are we held in higher regard?
As contrasted from thoughtless stories, the presence of these aforementioned reoccurring motifs provides the opportunity for thought, adding flavor to the plot through personal interaction. In this respect, Pluto proves itself as not merely a juxtaposed series of events for entertainment, though it provides a plethora in tow, but rather, an insightful reflection towards the allegory of life’s purpose. The addendum of these motifs also serves to bind the story together by providing a central theme as well as benchmark topics that work as threads connecting one parcel to another, forming the overall sphere of plot from the background.
The jewel in Pluto’s crown is its pantheon of characters, as well as Urasawa’s use of characterization on the antagonist. Wielding dexterous bouts of diction and plot devices, Urasawa molded the villain into a constant force lurking in the shadows; albeit having few appearances, we are left with a deep impression of the deep dangers threatening the main character. There is no place that is not influenced by the darkness; even in the mildest of settings, the central conflict is unconsciously understood through symbolic harbingers. A ride in the peaceful woods can turn into an explosive battle and insinuating sabotage. What to expect? What will happen next? We are kept at the edge of our seat as we turn page after page of insidious ploys and puzzling mysteries.
Without attention grabbing action and music adding a flourish, manga is rarely preferred over anime in this community. However, belonging to part of a minority does not mean that it does not have anything valuable to offer. On the contrary, manga works such as Pluto provide an interesting alternative to much of the tasteless cash reapers debuting on adult swim. Immobile graphics burst into life with the help of our imagination, each person envisioning a different world in the mind, with glorious music fitting perfectly into the background. That is the beauty of manga. To animate the imagination.
Any way the wind blows~
