Pluto

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Japanese: PLUTO

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 8

Chapters: 65

Status: Finished

Published: Sep 9, 2003 to Apr 1, 2009

Genres: Action, Award Winning, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Suspense

Themes: Detective, Psychological

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Big Comic Original

Authors: Urasawa, Naoki (Story & Art), Tezuka, Osamu (Story)

Statistics

Score: 8.62¹ (scored by 52,561 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #101²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #102

Members: 142,064

Favorites: 5,756

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8.62

Ranked #101Popularity #102Members 142,064

MangaBig Comic OriginalUrasawa, Naoki (Story & Art), Tezuka, Osamu (Story)

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Volumes: /8

Chapters: /65

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Synopsis

Famous for his military service in the 39th Asian War, the legendary Swiss robot Montblanc is violently murdered. Humans and robots around the world mourn for the beloved celebrity. Montblanc's popularity only grew in the years following the war, thanks to his dedication to nature conservation and his loving personality.

Fellow war veteran and robotic Europol detective Gesicht is sent to investigate Montblanc's tragic demise. In his pursuit, Gesicht uncovers evidence of a mysterious entity known only as "Pluto." He also learns of a conspiratorial plot to dismantle the eight specialized robots from around the world who participated in the war. Racing against time to save those who still remain, Gesicht grapples with his memory, morality, and a world full of hate, desperately attempting to defend the fragile coexistence of man and machine.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Osamu Tezuka's acclaimed Tetsuwan Atom, seinen mangaka Naoki Urasawa collaborated with Tezuka Productions to create a dark adaptation of The Greatest Robot on Earth story arc. The adaptation shifts the focus from Tezuka's protagonist, Atom, to his supporting character Gesicht in order to better ground the story in realism.

Pluto won the ninth Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize and the Excellence Prize in the Manga Division at the seventh Japan Media Arts Festival in 2005. It also won the 41st Seiun Award for Best Comic in 2010.

The series was published in English as Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka by VIZ Media under the VIZ Signature imprint from February 17, 2009, to April 6, 2010.

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Reviews

Jan 10, 2009

Beatnik

Recommended

Naoki Urasawa, now an established author of pot-boiling epic thrillers such as Monster and 20th Century Boys, delivers again with Pluto, a sci-fi mash-up of Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atom.

This excellent sci-fi revolves around AI robots and dispenses with the explanation of Asimov's Law of Robotics for Dummies and just gets right on with entertaining your brain with explorations of the theme of sentient life born from humanity's hands. You're either a sci-fi reader and will immediately swim in the narrative, or new to all this and thrash around unknown waters because Urasawa is not interested in holding your hand, he just wants to tell ... the bold story using the 'World's Strongest Robot' story arc of Tetsuwan Atom as a jumping point.

Urasawa even takes a supporting character of the original manga and turns them into the main protagonist, rendering Astro Boy himself into a supporting high profile cameo, and a great one at that. This entire concept of one artist dipping into another's world is fascinating and full of wild possibilities. Tezuka's imaginative universe coupled with Urasawa's tension-filled narrative is a joy to read, especially after a few volumes when crisis after crisis befalls characters pushing them to the limit.

Blade Runner, I, Robot, Ghost in the Shell, The Animatrix, to name a paltry few, the list is long and varied. All of sci-fi's greatest literature and movies play with these ideas of the relationship between AI/robots and humans, as did Tezuka and as does Urasawa. But with Pluto there is no vague posturing of whether they can fit into human society, these ideas are already established by the time the story starts.

A brilliant decision as there are already many stories about the border between acceptance and antagonism of robots, the threat of their uprising against humanity culminating in apocalyptic war, but not as many stories about robots being treated as valid citizens of countries, with jobs and families of their own, some of them even revered and idolised by the masses while others are disliked for their metallic bodies. Yes it’s an allegory for race relations, but so is all sci-fi an allegory for something, at least it’s not hackneyed in the hands of a seasoned writer like Urasawa. (uh, except for a robot-hating character called Adolf, but anyway...)

The backdrop to Pluto is great future-retro design. Skyscrapers with inexplicable tubes for commuters flowing around and between them, sleek efficient cars wrapped in glass, long roads swirling around cities. It’s a heightened fantastical futurescape full of idealism. Urasawa's characters are distinguished by their noses as usual, with different races differentiated easily, you dont ususally ever get confused with who is who in his tales.

What kick-starts this story is when a major robotic figure, loved by all, is murdered brutally. Fans of Urasawa rejoice, we have yet another exciting mystery with procedural investigation, a cast of many witnesses, suspects, criminals and cameos. This manga began publication the same year a certain country was attacked and occupied by another, and that event permeates this story, for better or worse is up to you, but its integrated well by tying many threads together into the whole mystery. The first robot victim that opens the story was one of 7 of the most powerful robots in the world. Someone is going round bumping them off. Europol detective Gesicht is on the case.

A methodical man troubled by nightmares, he is as brooding as Urasawa's previous protagonists yet having the added depth of being a robot himself. This main character is so great because there is that classic dichotomy and juxtaposition of man and robot, the constant questioning of motive and intent, the internal conflict of the character and the external conflict of his work life and private life. By robot law instilled into every AI, robots aren’t allowed to take human life, yet all surface evidence of the crimes in the story point that they could not have been perpetrated by a human, so our detective has his work cut out for him to solve the mystery while resolving the issues in his mind.

At heart Pluto is a mystery/crime thriller, and there are great intriguing cliffhangers to each chapter. We follow Gesicht as he investigates crime scenes, questions people and we also get the occasional and obligatory “regret to inform you” scene which is turned on its head. You don’t know if you're meant to laugh at the blocky metal robot in a kitchen apron being told her husband's been killed, but the pathos through dialogue and composition ends up with gravitas.

You shouldn’t be laughing at our metallic friends; they've got intelligence and emotion as much as their creators. As is amply demonstrated through many chapters with robots attempting to attain the higher level of consciousness lived by their creators. When some of them die, in their last moments they're perplexed by how much humanity they show in death and it’s poignant.

So when Gesicht gives his chapter-one ending statement with steely determination, we're firmly in the passenger seat, riding shotgun for some great sci-fi thrills.

"I will search for the killer. Whether he is robot or human, he is possessed by a demon."

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Mar 23, 2021

unspecified-user

Mixed Feelings

Well-written

There’s something repetitive about how Naoki Urasawa draws. His skill at faces is arguably unmatched, in design and caricaturization. He captures real peoples’ features more than most mangaka even try to, yet his characters still feel completely at home in a comic. But when you read more than one of his stories, you start to notice the similarities. The same exaggerated noses and large foreheads, the same folds in skin and shapes of jaws. Rarely will he completely copy and paste a single design, but he’ll happily reuse the building blocks. It’s like picking random in a game’s character creator — the combination may be ...

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May 5, 2026

Lightning_art7

Not Recommended

Preliminary (7/65 eps)

I'm not saying Pluto is bad, but it's just not for me. It's like there are parallel timelines happening together, and small segments of several timelines alternate showing up, so I don't know when they are and which one is happening in what order. The art style is quite realistic and has a 90s and 00s vibe. Which is cool. And I get that the author's writing skills are amazing too, but the story doesn't suit people who like a linear storyline or a story that doesn't alternate between two scenes using segments. The characters acted in a realistic way. And it's basically an alternate ...

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Poll: Pluto Chapter 14 Discussion DarthDaimyo - Dec 28, 2009	12 replies	by jijisenpai »» Aug 6, 12:29 AM
Poll: Pluto Chapter 6 Discussion DarthDaimyo - Dec 12, 2009	26 replies	by jijisenpai »» Aug 3, 11:37 PM
Poll: Pluto Chapter 5 Discussion Beatnik - Jan 10, 2009	16 replies	by jijisenpai »» Aug 3, 11:31 PM
Poll: Pluto Chapter 4 Discussion DarthDaimyo - Dec 12, 2009	12 replies	by jijisenpai »» Aug 3, 4:59 PM
Poll: Pluto Chapter 12 Discussion DarthDaimyo - Dec 28, 2009	13 replies	by Stefff32 »» Oct 14, 2025 12:18 PM

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