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.
Friendly Fandoms: As the one who was most inspired of him, fans of Mega Man are friendly to the fans of Astro Boy-
Australians make up a large fanbase, partly due to being one of the few countries outside Japan that got the 1982 series.
Astro Boy and Osamu Tezuka's othercharacters are very popular in Europe, Latin America, Mexico, and especially French-speaking regions. The series is known as Astro Le Petit Robot ("Astro The Little Robot") in France, with the manga and various anime incarnations being very beloved by French audiences. During The New '10s, France worked on the animation for Little Astro Boy while Go Astro Boy Go! was a French-Japanese co-production. The upcoming CGI reboot series is not only a French animated series by Method Animation/Mediwan, but French television network TF1contributed to the show's development.
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)
Common Knowledge: This series is widely thought to be the first ever anime to ever make it to America. However, that's technically not true. While it is the first full length anime TV series that came to the US, it wasn't the first piece Japanese animation to have a western release. That honor goes to 1959’s Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, distributed as Magic Boy by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1961.
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.
At one point in the series, Astro's classmate Alvin gets in trouble for watching a "pocket TV" in class. The series takes place in 2030, and it's pretty funny because IRL such devices exist now, such as watching videos on smart phone and tablets and the like, and many streaming subscriptions have access to TV channels as well. The video phones shown in the series also predicted video chats irl.
Alvin's mother's voice sounds similar to Mrs. Puff in the dub.
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.
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.
Uran's Twin is a bit dated nowadays. The entire episode centered around her parents wanting Uran to be more "ladylike" and she's put into piano and art classes when she'd rather do robot wrestling. Granted, robot wrestling was presented as extremely dangerous, especially for a child robot like her (and even Astro when he comes to save her), so it's reasonable why her parents wouldn't want her to do that, but nowadays it's not uncommon for girls to take up sports and have tomboyish interests.
"True Blue" by ZONE is the first opening theme in the original Japanese dub, featuring lively electric guitars and uplifting lyrics about finding your place in this life. It's also the source of Astro's personal leitmotif, and gains orchestral remixes in the forms of the heroic "Astro Boy" and the more whimsical "Atom's Waltz".
"Boy's Heart" by Fumiya Fuiji is the first credits theme in the original Japanese dub, is a melancholy yet hopeful song about Astro learning about emotions (mainly about why people cry out of sadness and happiness).
In the Japanese version, the famous "Astro Boy Theme Song" from the 1960s series is brought back for the second and third endings. The second theme is a slow but emotional rendition, while the third theme is more energetic and fast-paced. Both credits shows a montage of Tezuka's illustrations and evolution of Astro Boy over the years.
Jerkass Woobie: Dr. Tenma. He is a maniacal misanthrope who does a lot of scummy things through the series, yet with his painful history and how broken he becomes, he still comes across as pitiable and tragic.
Narm Charm: The English dub tries at times to make Astro into a sassier character, adding in one-liners not in the original script. Unlike most cases of American Kirby Is Hardcore though, these one-liners oddly are effective thanks to the amusingly cheesy writing and the strong performance of Astro's voice actress.
The attack of the giant alien at the end, whose only purpose was to give Astro an action shot.
Astro makes a funny cowboy animation dance with math equations, with him enjoying while Tenma looks at him disappointed. This never comes back in the movie and is not something Astro uses to distract the Peacekeeper robot.
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 machine guns 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 Okay, 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 got most of its source material right, not unlike Speed Racer (2008), both of which still have a cult followings to this day.
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.
Played with. While Freddie Highmore did have a notable career as a child actor during this time, there are many modern watchers that are surprised that Astro Boy is voiced by The Good Doctor!
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.