145, Atom in the Deep Sea

[Little Brown Fox]

Ah, you got the one where they sit in the fish's mouth; I forgot about that one... And the crabs, too!

Although I still can't stand the fact that Tezuka apparently thought it was okay to blow up an innocent animal...

[jeffbert]

It does seem a bit inconsistent, Little Brown Fox; though in Guernica & for that matter, Monsters come out at night, Atom kills the things without hesitation or remorse.

[Little Brown Fox]

... Urgh. Things like this are tainting the franchise for me... Earlier incarnations of Atom (the earliest in particular) were especially violent towards animals... that kinda sucks. I'm having a harder time liking the characters because of that- because he's not the only one guilty of animal abuse, though he may be the only one responsible for animal murder. I know I sound kind of whiny and vegetarian and whatnot about this issue, but... it affects me in ways that I cannot explain to you here. Or anywhere, at anytime, for that matter. I know that it probably was not meant this way, much as he wasn't ever meant to seem like a human killer, but these things bug me very easily lately.

I'm going to see if I can't make a decent animation from those frames...

[AprilSeven]

I can't help but wonder if somehow Tezuka just didn't "connect the dots" . . . he's a person who suffered unfair treatment, and is very sensitive to that issue in all of his works (as well as environmental stewardship). But he's also very inconsistent in his stories (changing the characters origin stories and all).

Plus I get the idea he doesn't "see" Atom as "killing" but "eliminating" something/someone causing pain/evil as an actual cartoon character. For example - you DON'T see anyone die in the (admittedly awful) "live action" version of Tetsuwan Atom.

I would feel more the way you are describing if Atom just killed for killing sake (or went hunting, or bullied kids). Not excusing the violence . . . and that IS a big part of what American censors had with the show.

But if you watch slap-stick cartoons like Bugs Bunny, etc. you'll see violence - and sometimes characters were show to die and rise to heaven as ghosts.

I don't care for horror movies for the reason of not wanting to see gore, etc. But somehow I feel that if Atom actually existed, he wouldn't kill anybody/anything. But then, that's coming from the 10 year old kid inside of me!!

[Earthshine]

Atom has done some pretty violent things to animals in the series and I remember commenting on that several times when watching it. One of the most horrifying animals 'abuse' episodes occurring when he killed a pterodactyl, then used its skin to infiltrate a dinosaur camp.

I don't think Tezuka was making any sort of reference that it was OKAY to have these things happen to animals, as he as always had such a sympathetic and ethical mindset for the treatment of animals in almost all his works. I think it was just a means to move the story along and to fill time, creating drama and something for Atom to do. Maybe not the best way to go around doing that, but by this point in the game I think Tezuka was getting burnt out of doing Astro Boy.

But indeed, Atom does not go about killing animals for fun but rather almost as a necessity for the moment in time.

[Little Brown Fox]

He killed a fish and hid inside it in the manga version of Hot Dog Corps.

I forgot about the freakin' pterodactyl...

[Earthshine]

Yeah... it's really creepy. Effective at getting a job done, but creepy and probably dirty. He probably needed a good scrubbing afterwards.

[jeffbert]

I get the idea he doesn't "see" Atom as "killing" but "eliminating" something/someone causing pain/evil as an actual cartoon character. For example - you DON'T see anyone die in the (admittedly awful) "live action" version of Tetsuwan Atom.

There were plenty of deaths in the live action serial. I uploaded only a few images from the 1st 2 arcs so far, but there are deaths in all 5.

As I recall, Schodt wrote something about Tezuka having lost control over this series; & that being one reason he killed it at #193.

On the other hand, some of those incidents, the Pterodactyl & the fish as examples, may be viewed somewhat humorously.

[tailz]

There was also one episode where some sharks helped astro and then he said "thanks sharks, but i'm not going to become your lunch!" then he killed them all. Lol. BTW, is this episode in english? I found the 1960s series on youtube one day and then I started to watch them.

[jeffbert]

No, tailz, the English language version ends somewhere are episode 120. There were quite a few that were rejected between episodes 100 & 120, in all, only 104 were dubbed in English.