What is astro boy about?

Answer 1

Astro Boy is a Japanese anime or cartoon, recently expanded into a movie- there are an immense variety of episodes, plot devices, and even verses of the theme song! It was created in Japan around l96l. In original Manga, Astro was a robot made to replace Dr. Tenma's lost son, Tobio. The original manga had him reanimated with no memories of his previous self. In the 2009 movie, the title character is an android partly animated with the life substances ( now we would say DNA) of the son of his inventor, so he is partly Human- partly Robotic- Has the equivalent of 500,000 Horsepower, sometimes expanded to 1,000,000 . Visual powers similar to Superman ( X-ray, telescopic, etc) and booster rockets in his legs, etc. Cartoon in even original form was very violent but it was undertstood that Astro Boy was a Robot and not a living human so this ameliorated censorship. At times this and other Japanese Cartoons dealt with psychological trauma that Could happen to present-day kids and this was handled in a suspenseful, frightening matter. Such was not the case with orthodox animal cartoons such as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Huckleberry Hound, etc, where violence was usually slapstick and elastic.