All Animation Is Disney: Thanks to his Disney-inspired look, Astro is occasionally mistaken for a Disney or otherwise western cartoon.
Audience-Alienating Era: Astro Boy might be a classic, but even it is not immune to audience-alienating eras. In the sixties, Tezuka had Astro Boy go through a Face–Heel Turn, and wrote a story where a construction error turned Astro Boy evil. Instead of being a champion of justice who never wanted to hurt a human being, the evil Astro didn't care a bit about human lives anymore. Though Tezuka was fully aware that violent anti-heroes were the latest trend in manga, he didn't feel that it was the way to go for Astro Boy, but his editor insisted that an Astro Boy who killed people and destroyed buildings would be more interesting. Tezuka himself was convinced that the readers preferred Astro to be a good-hearted robot, and was proven right when the readers turned out to have zero interest in reading about an evil Astro Boy. Tezuka changed him back, but it took a lot of time and effort to get the series' popularity back.
Astro Boy (manga)
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Australians make up a large fanbase, partly due to being one of the few countries outside Japan that got the 1982 series.
Genius Bonus: The goofy looking planes piloted by the Hot Dog Corps in the first volume of the collected edition may look like something made up for a sci-fi cartoon, but they're actually a real design, specifically the Convair Pogo, a very early prototype VTOL fighter.
More Popular Spin-Off: Astro first appeared in Tezuka's comic Ambassador Atom in 1951, and spun off into his own, vastly more popular standalone series the following year.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: There's a story arc about a group who skins dogs and turns them into cyborgs. While it's not actually shown on-panel, it's still incredibly dark. Likewise, other stories explore topics like racism (through anti-robot prejudice), war, and child abuse (as in Astro's origin). Nevertheless, it's still aimed at children, likely because Tezuka respected his audience and didn't want to talk down to them.
Astro Boy (1963 TV series)
Heartwarming in Hindsight: In episode 193, after Astro goes into the sun to save the Earth one last time, Dr. Ochanomizu states that, even if our hero doesn't return, he'll build a second and third model of Astro, right where he was activated back in episode 1. Throughout nearly four decades, we DID get two new anime adaptations.
Woolseyism: The original title theme was instrumental. When NBC dubbed the show for their English audience, lyrics were added, sung by a children's chorus.
Retroactive Recognition: In the Latin American Spanish dub, this was the debut role of Mónica Manjarrez as a voice actress, doing many random voices during the series.
Values Dissonance: The episode "Saving Our Classmate" ends with Alvin's mother embracing her son after he almost died via sneaking onto an unfinished ride… before his father starts spanking him in front of everyone. Even back in 1980 when this show first came out, Corporal Punishment was heavily frowned upon.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The attack of the giant alien at the end, whose only purpose was to give Astro an action shot.
Complete Monster: President Stone is a man whose apparent stupidity and childishness truthfully mask a murderous and ambitious personality. Stone alienates, withholds resources for, and threatens war against the downtrodden surface-dwellers out of an insane belief it will assure his reelection, and commissions scientists Tenma and Elefun to develop the powerful Peacekeeper robot to better serve in his useless war. When his own carelessness and power lust result in the death of Tenma's son, Stone shrugs it off and continues to force Tenma and Elefun's compliance under threat of execution. After Tenma rebuilds his son as a robot named "Astro", Stone endangers countless people to capture the boy, mocks him over his lack of true humanity, and tries to rip out of his power core to power the Peacekeeper. Upon merging with and assuming control of the Peacekeeper, Stone begins destroying the city and threatens to crush Astro's numerous friends to death to draw him out and kill him, focused solely on finalizing his plans to lay waste to the surface-dwellers and continue his rule as president.
Toby's death. He sneaks in to see the Peacekeeper demonstration and decides to get closer, but the robot starts to go rogue. When his father activates a defensive barrier, Toby gets trapped behind the barrier and yells for help. Tenma desperately tries to override the barrier, but he fails, and can only reassure Toby as the robot tries to vaporize the barrier. When Elefun successfully deactivates the robot, all that remains of Toby is his hat, which thankfully has some of Toby's hair in it.
Hamegg tasering Astro several times, first to knock him out and put him in the ring, and the second to make him fight Zog. It hits home that Astro may be a Nigh-Invulnerable robot, but he's also mentally a child and Hamegg thinks he's justified because Astro isn't human.
Older Than They Think: Quite a few people complained that giving Astro butt lasers was disrespectful to the source material and Astro's creator... Astro actually had them in the original work, they just weren't featured in later adaptations.
So OK, It's Average: The film suffers from a weak villain and some Idiot Ball moments regarding the power cores, but it's still a visually pleasing animated film that at least gets most of its source material pretty competently for being a Western adaptation of a manga/anime, unlikeothers.
The Problem with Licensed Games: The tie-in game tried to borrow gameplay from Astro Boy: Omega Factor and failed miserably. Everything from the original's controls and mechanics is implemented in a gimped or even outright broken way: Astro is limited to basic short-ranged attacks and useless also short-ranged charged attacks. No finger laser. His basic movement ranges from clunky to uncontrollable as you use powerups. With no ability to Lag Cancel into and out of air dashes, a critical feature of Omega Factor's mechanics, the difficulty escalates really fast the moment bosses start putting up a fight. It is not possible to air dash in diagonals, and in the shoot 'em up levels, you can't air dash at all to avoid bullets!
Rainbow Lens: Astro Boy's secret of being a robot resembles most Coming Out Stories, especially the nighttime scene when he almost "comes out" to Cora.
The Scrappy: President Stone is generally considered the weakest part of the movie if not an outright detriment to it overall due to his shallow and unsubtle villain motivation that he reiterates over and over again with no actual elaboration, with his actual villainy coming across more as him being an absolute reckless idiot rather than ruthless and cold-hearted like the movie attempts to frame it as. Donald Sutherland's shockingly dull voice performance does not help matters. It's not uncommon for many viewers to have found themselves wishing that Hamegg had been the main antagonist of the film instead.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Inverted regarding the Peacekeeper. While it isn't an outright scrappy like President Stone, some fans feel its design is kind of bland and that Atlas or Pluto could have easily served its role.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Say what you will about the film, but its visual effects were top-notch for its day despite not being a Pixar or Dreamworks film and still hold up today.
is wonderfully upbeat and energetic, which extends to the French version performed by Franck Oliver.