The manga you’ve been waiting for us to talk about is here! This week, we get into PLUTO volume 1, Naoki Urasawa’s epic reimagining of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy story 'The World’s Strongest Robot"
Chip's totally right about the "I'm a robot" line. It would be stronger without it. It's interesting that the original Japanese is just "I'm a robot." While the English is "I'm a *ROBOT*!" with an exclamation point and "robot" in bold italics. Maybe a case of American comics conventions in translation/adaptation making the line a little more FRANTIC! and EXCELSIOR! than it should have been.
I love hearing Chip's comments about color technique, but one of you need to explain to him at some point that, in cases where the first few pages of a series are in color, 99% of the time it's *not* an artistic decision—it's just that the magazine had some room for color pages and offered them to/forced them on the author. They're doing everything they can to make their chapter pop so they can avoid the series getting canceled. Urasawa is the rare case of a mangaka where he will use color in a more deliberate way, again like Otomo (see Domu), but the first few pages of Pluto are definitely a decision made for serialization.
Perfect timing on this episode. Pluto has been appearing in bookstores everywhere lately because of the Netflix adaptation, and that's had me thinking of doing a reread. Awesome stuff as always.
Chip's totally right about the "I'm a robot" line. It would be stronger without it. It's interesting that the original Japanese is just "I'm a robot." While the English is "I'm a *ROBOT*!" with an exclamation point and "robot" in bold italics. Maybe a case of American comics conventions in translation/adaptation making the line a little more FRANTIC! and EXCELSIOR! than it should have been.
Interesting diffrerence!
I love hearing Chip's comments about color technique, but one of you need to explain to him at some point that, in cases where the first few pages of a series are in color, 99% of the time it's *not* an artistic decision—it's just that the magazine had some room for color pages and offered them to/forced them on the author. They're doing everything they can to make their chapter pop so they can avoid the series getting canceled. Urasawa is the rare case of a mangaka where he will use color in a more deliberate way, again like Otomo (see Domu), but the first few pages of Pluto are definitely a decision made for serialization.
(and thanks for finally covering what is on most days my favorite manga!)
Perfect timing on this episode. Pluto has been appearing in bookstores everywhere lately because of the Netflix adaptation, and that's had me thinking of doing a reread. Awesome stuff as always.