Reading Collective Reading of PLUTO by Naoki Urasawa & Osamu Tezuka

[ukimix]

I finished the manga and I'm still confused.

What I understand is that the perfect robot created by Tenma is Goji; when he was created he couldn’t wake up; to break that condition, he was equipped with Abra’s memories. Once he was conscious he schemed to eliminate the human race and to create a new world with only robots and some few humans. This perfect robot created many replicas of him, and I understand all replicas were equally capable as the original bot. The most important replicas of him were Abra, and Teddy (the bear). So, part of his scheme was that he managed to become the main advisor of the president of United States of Tracia, (Teddy) he tried to eliminate the most advanced robots in the planet, (likely because those robots could stop him as in fact happened in the story), and also made a replica of him in the Bora robot.

Abra is a human scientist who died in Persia after losing his children and wife. And Sahad was also a robot created by Abra (the human) to turn the desert in a fertile land; but lately he was manipulated by Goji (the perfect robot) to create Pluto.

---------- Post added January 01, 2014 at 11:33 PM ---------- Previous post was December 29, 2013 at 10:39 PM ----------

I'd like to share this: even if there is not a logical reason to accept that only negative feelings can nurture a perfect intelligence, there is an acceptable literary reason for it: the story was written for us, human, a race that include many humans capable to hate to their own race. And the president of Tracia, killing people only for the purpose to make of your nation the most powerful one, is just a good example. So the whole story has a powerful and very touching message for us. And I specially enjoy the fact that, at least in the terms of the story, who teaches us that are robots. Just great!!!

Gesicht is my favorite character by far.

 

[k-dom]

What is sad is that Sahad-Pluto couldn't understand earlier what Astro managed to. It seems he always knew what he did was wrong but couldn't go against his father orders except at the end. Or is it that only Gesicht experience could help Astro to get rid of all this hatred.
In a podcast I listen to where kids ask questions to scientists, one of the last questions was : Why do we cry ? The answer they gave was : we cry so that we can evacuate all our sad feelings. If we don't cry they stay inside. So I guess it's nice that robots who can't forget, can cry too.

 

[Faust]

Robots can delete memories in Pluto IIRC. So that's the way to forget for them.

 

[ukimix]

Iirc, the deletion of the memories was always the result of an intervention by a third part. Only in the case of the perfect robot, he was able to lie to himself, which is kind of a capability to forget.

Many advanced robots seem to have reached the final conclusion that nothing comes from hatred, even Brau, who in the last page could understand Atom's feelings.

I think k-dom was clearly right in pointing this manga has a clear reference to the Gulf-War. It's almost impossible not to think that the story presents some variation of that story, with the idea that the stupid president of USTracia wanted simply to be more powerful than the evolving Persia. So the story is mostly about hatred but also about the sight for power. The president and the robot show to the readers the result of their quests. That's another way to look at the logic of hatred as feed for intelligence: the story was written to show that nothing comes to the hatred, but that could only be accomplished if robots were nurtured with pain and hatred, not with joy and happiness. All of it is there to accomplish that purpose, in those years. Clearly a message from the authors to the world of 2000s decade.

But is not gesicht absolutely fantastic? All the stories of the robots were just great and very touching, likely with the exception of Atom, the only one who didn't die. But of all stories, Gesicht's was really touching... Those pages with the rehab of that little robot were just ... snif! snif!