Manga: Atom

By Shelley Pallis.

Atom: The Beginning is a marvellous experiment in retro manga, a retelling of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy in prequel form, narrating all the back-story and build-up that is only hinted at in the original. In this new version, written by Masami Yuuki and drawn by Tetsuro Kasahara, big-nosed incel Hiroshi Ochanomizu and his colleague, the dashingly handsome Umataro Tenma, are cybernetics postgrads trying to perfect a concept on the edge of their field. They are less interested in the matter of robotic minds, which they regard as mere accretions of data, but of robotic hearts – the development of a sense of human empathy or sympathy.

In Astro Boy they are broken-down old men, duelling over forgotten principles, but in Atom they are young eejits, obsessing over food from the university cafeteria, arguing over whose turn it is to push around the Hoover, and struggling to make ends meet with a series of crappy jobs. Even their laboratory password is a glorious insight into their youthful pride and confidence – it’s 1031, or ten-sa-ichi, which is to say “GENIUS ZONE.”

Their pride and joy is A106 (or “Six” for short), a humanoid robot with heuristic circuitry that allows it to learn from its interactions with the humans and machines around it. Like Pinocchio with super-powers, Six is an innocent creature in a tough world, dragged along on the inventors’ various money-making schemes, including a cataclysmic stint as removal men, and an explosive venture into robot gladiator games. Piece by tantalising piece, the manga chapters build a picture of a world reeling from an unspecified disaster, like some sort of atomic Brexit, and a conspiracy within the cybernetics world that is sure to break out into open warfare.

Titan’s translation is worthy of note, complete with cutting put-downs, loving observations of nerd behaviour, and an attention to detail in sound effects above and beyond most other manga publishers. It’s not just a case of careful curation of onomatopoeia (I loved “flakkity flakkity”), but also its insertion into the images. It’s a long time since the retouch glory days of Studio Proteus, but by contemporary standards, Titan goes that extra mile by putting the sound effects back into the pictures, rather than shunted off like footnotes to the side.

For those who know what will happen once the story of Astro Boy gets going, there’s also a melancholy shadow, as we know that these two youths are due to fall out and become mortal enemies. But for now, they are having an oddly good time of it – chasing girls, fighting the faculty, and tinkering with their little robot. And the punning fun leads to all sorts of speculation… it’s not lost on me that A106’s name can be read A-TO-MU…

Atom: The Beginning is published by Titan Comics.