After realizing my thread on Hatarakiman was so popular (sigh... thank you ZeusIrae
), and considering surprisingly that no one already introduced Urasawa Naoki's latest series, i thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to do it again.
So here i go.
"Pluto" is a SF-thriller story essentially based on Tezuka Osamu's "chijô saidai no robotto" ( "the greatest robot in the world") which was one of Tetsuwan Atom stories. As i didn't read it i'll keep to introducing the characters and the plot Urasawa made his own. In vol.1, the main character appears to be Gesicht ("Face" in german), a police inspector, investigating on the murders of humans, seemingly killed by robots, and somehow related to the mysterious death of Mont-Blanc, the world's most beloved robot. Through his investigation, he finds himself having to deal with his own condition, and memories, asking help from persons he maybe shouldn't ask help from, being himself more and more involved as leads on his inquiries and tries to answer the many questions that come out one right after the other in front of him.
If you read "Monster" or "20th century boys" you must know how difficult it is to tell more about Urasawa's stories without spoiling them. So just know that he relentlessly inserts sideplots, which end looking less and less "sideplotish" or "fillerish" as you go on reading. He uses every parts of Tezuka's creation(s) he needs to make you craving for what's coming next. He completely rebuilds characters, and adds new one. There's no need for the reader to know the original story to realize how good the adaptation is. If anyone here knows about "tetsuwan atom", and read it, please confirm.
Though it is still a bit soon to say it is a new masterpiece ( only 3 volumes released so far, the latest one only a couple of weeks ago), there's nothing i could do but try to make you feel like giving it a look. The art and the shooting are even more skillfull than urasawa's previous works, not mentioning the plot, perfectly mastered. There's no way you couldn't become addicted.
The only problem would be the wait between the volumes.
That's why really impatient people should better wait themselves before they start reading, i guess. (Frankly speaking, i didn't look for english scans yet)
Anyways, i still don't mind sounding like a salesman.
I just do it because i love it. As i already wrote somewhere i'm not a native english speaker, and i hope my little introduction was clear enough.
The covers
There are also special editions the covers of which i'll maybe insert in a next post. ( wouldn't it be forbidden, like "too big!"?)