Since its debut in 2003, Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto manga has been hailed as a masterpiece – one that has set a standard for all that came after it. Naturally, a plan for Pluto to be adapted for the screen came soon after. Though it took much longer to come to fruition than anyone had anticipated, the wait was worth it.
- READ MORE: The best Asian TV shows of 2023
Pluto – an expansion of the ‘Greatest Robot on Earth’ arc in Osuma Tezuka’s original Astro Boy manga – follows Europol robot detective Gesicht as he attempts to solve a string of robot and human murders around the world. The case takes a turn when it is revealed that all seven of the world’s greatest robots – including Gesicht and the iconic Atom – are targets and that the murdered humans were working to preserve laws that grant robots equal rights as humans.
In October, a long-awaited anime adaptation of Pluto finally debuted on Netflix – and was today named our top Asian TV show of 2023. In Tokyo, Japan, NME chatted with its executive producer Masao Maruyama, a veteran animator who was on the original Astro Boy production team and the founder of renowned anime studio MAPPA (Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan and more), to tell him the good news and speak more about the show. Warning: Pluto spoilers below.
Pluto has been named NME’s best Asian TV show this year, congratulations! How does that feel?
“Thank you so much! I’m a bit surprised, shocked and very happy. What a wonderful Christmas gift!”
Pluto’s manga has been acclaimed for so long without any attempts to adapt it into anime. What made you feel like now was the right time?
“The idea was always there. There had been many plans and pitches over many years, but nothing came to reality enough so everyone thought it was just impossible for the scale of this to be created in the anime production system at the time in Japan.
“For a long time, we were planning and preparing but we weren’t able to fit the story into the regular TV format because of the length that we needed to properly tell this story. With the arrival of streaming services, the length of each episode became more flexible and there was this openness of telling the story the way we wanted to. That allowed us to make this into reality, but the preparation required a lot of time and effort and so it did take 10 years to finish this after we started the planning process.
“The manga came out 20 years ago. What’s told in the story still resonates today, and is still very real in our current society so we are facing the same issues even now. So we really felt that it was necessary for us to put this out there into the world. Issues like conflicts and AI – it’s even more real now than it was 20 years ago.”
“The original story’s already perfect, so that was the hardest thing to tackle”
On that note, what is your take on the current increase in use of artificial intelligence in the creative industry?
“I’ve always appreciated the traditional 2D method of Japanese animation. However, in terms of AI, there are people who are looking into the possibilities of what computers can bring into the Japanese style of animation in a very natural way. I have focused on 2D, but AI is an area we are starting to try out.”
An eight-episode count can be quite limiting. How did you decide what to cut out from the source material to make this work?
“The original story’s already perfect, so that was the hardest thing to tackle for myself. But reading the manga, you have to go back to the previous page and read it again and it’s very time-consuming. Whereas with visuals, you can go through it at a much faster pace, so I think it brings a different form of entertainment… The quick pacing can be an advantage for animation media.
“The original author, Naoki Urasawa, was very happy with what he saw and what we brought to the table, so I think in terms of cutting things out, we did a good job. We just took out the small bits that would work in manga but not animation.”
Were there any other possible directions that you thought of taking Pluto in?
“It’s more in the visual side that we did that, not so much for the storytelling aspect. Animation is a visual art form, so we experimented with different ways to express different movements or effects in scenes that we added to the manga panels to bring Pluto to life in the best way we could.
“I’ve been involved in all of the animation adaptations of Urasawa’s manga works – I’ve done three in the past and when Pluto first came out as a manga, he actually came to ask if I would be able to lead an animation. I told him it would be very challenging because the manga was perfect, so there was nothing more I could’ve added by making it into an animation.
“People would already have been fully satisfied with the manga, however, Urasawa said to me that by adding music and dialogue into animation, it adds a sense of breeze and gives it a different feel and pace. That’s something that only animation can do that manga can’t. Him telling me that gave me the motivation to say, ‘OK, maybe one day I can do the animation for this.’”
“It’s a very full-circle experience for me, from starting my career with Atom, and now towards the end of my career, once again having the chance to bring him to life”
For casual viewers, Atom has always been the star of the Astro Boy franchise. Makoto Tezuka said in an interview that the initial plan for the Pluto anime would have seen Atom as the lead protagonist instead of Gesicht. Were you worried that not leading with Atom would alienate fans from this anime?
“I’d never thought of that, to be honest. When you look at the original manga, Atom appears at the end of the first volume and it’s not Tezuka’s version of Atom: it’s Urasawa’s version, who is a very cute-looking boy.
“When I read the manga, I was so pleased to see Atom in this form and then he dies somewhere in the third or fourth volume, and people would be shocked and wondering what happens next, especially since Atom was the biggest hope to save the world. He does come around again at the end to save the day, but I think this way of having Atom appear sparsely in the story, I fully support because I’m team Atom.
“When I first joined the animation industry, I worked on Tezuka’s Atom when he first started the Astro Boy animation process. But I fully support the way the story is told with how they treated Atom in this. It’s a very full-circle experience for me, from starting my career with Atom, and now towards the end of my career, once again having the chance to bring him to life.”
The Pluto anime has been very well received. What’s the most memorable response from viewers so far?
“They only shared with me the round-up results and told me that everyone was raving about this, but I personally haven’t seen any concrete or specific comments. But I’m so grateful that people love it and people have been saying this is a piece that accurately lives up to the masterpiece manga. Thank you all for watching and enjoying this work.”
Pluto is now streaming on Netflix. Read NME’s list of the top 10 Asian TV shows of 2023 here.