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Any thoughts on the story thus far?

I'm intrigued that Tenma was the guy who tried to emulate 'true' free will when his past incarnations seem repulsed by the very idea.

Uran's power makes more sense now. She can't communicate with critters so much as sense their distress, though it isn't clear how something like this could be quantified (the distress itself, that is, not the wailing and flailing that goes with it).

And it makes sense that the 'robot law' programming would eventually be breached if androids like Geischt had all the other facilitites of the human condition. Sure, he ended up killing a man because he hated him, but isn't hate and anger, to some extent, a survival mechanism? Wasn't this man a threat to the survival of his species, if not to him personally?

Just lookin' for nibbles on the nerd line.

Ah, I was hoping someone would want to talk about it.

I'm a little confused about what you mean about Tenma, could you elaborate a bit on that?

Uran's power is kind of unscientific (I guess she could be reading brain waves or chemical changes that go with emotions, but the later would only work with organic things, so I don't know how she can read robots.) She's kind of like a robot empath, huh. Then again, it kind of fits with her character here, and how she tries to understand intangible things.

I hadn't thought about Gesicht killing as a survival mechanism, but that's a pretty cool idea. I just thought it was a burst of really human emotion that made him kill, but you might have something here. I'd really like to know more about Brau-1589 and the case when he killed humans too. Was it an emotional reaction to something or something else or was he just a killer at heart? He said there was nothing malfunctioning in him, so what happened? I feel like we could understand Gesicht's situation better if we could see the other case.

The big thing that's eating at me right now is whether or not Abra knows that he's a robot. I'm about 99% certain he is (and about 90% certain he's the 'perfect robot') but I really think he believes he's human. That should be impossible, but it's also supposed to be impossible for robots to kill humans, so I guess anything could be true (plus it was built in secrecy during wartime, so I'd be willing to bet Tenma wasn't really obeying the laws that restrict emotion for robots.) If he does, it'll be pretty sad (and interesting) when he finds out.

I have read ch 1-55, & so far I am fairly agreeable with the munquibyte's post, except that Tenma seems to be more like he was depicted in the whole of the Shonen manga & the B&W series. There, he was occasionally Atom's enemy, but just let anyone else mess with Atom, & Tenma is all over his a**. Examples are Egyptian Conspiritors in manga, and the Herald Brothers in the B&W. As I recall. in Pluto, Tenma is depicted as reflecting on his mistakes, just as he did in Egyptian Conspiritors; other than that, I cannot recall, as I have been reading voraciously, & working on making notes from the 2003 manga.

About Uran, until I read this thread, I had forgotten the subtle difference in her ability. Perhaps she only tasted a half drop of Fafner's blood in this version.

"Palindrome" wrote:I'm a little confused about what you mean about Tenma, could you elaborate a bit on that?

Well, from what I've read, he seems to come on as a manipulative control freak. Even in this story he third-degrees Atom and coldly compares him to Tobio.
All the sudden, he wants to make an AI unbound by even individual personality. Somehow this freedom of choice is no freedom at all, the intelligence in rendered completely dormant by possibility, there are no burned bridges to walk away from so there's no path to follow.

What about these robo-couples, they bumpin' uglies or what? :d evil: