I felt like jabbering about one of my favorite works of fiction because it's currently hot on twitter upon news regarding a reboot that's been in development hell for no joke 12 years. A reboot that I don't have faith in.

Anime is humongous in America, but ask any average otaku what pioneered the genre, they would likely ignorantly say Dragon Ball or One Piece and if they do get it right, their response will likely be "Oh yeah. Astro Boy. It exists." and not elaborate. or ask who pioneered manga and anime, they'll likely be like "Osamu Tezuka" and not elaborate. Or ignorantly say Toriyama or Oda because they only watch modern anime.

To put it into perspective, imagine if Mickey Mouse wasn't the most iconic fictional character but still existed yet people give more credit to guys like Bugs Bunny or Fred Flintstone for being animation pioneers. Yeah they are 100% significant in pop culture influence, but the one that they owe their existence to is rarely appreciated in a significant way.

Osamu Tezuka was the Godfather of manga, considered Japan's equivalent to Walt Disney except he made works for every single type of audience, age demographic and genre. THE creative influence to future mangaka and of course, his most famous work is.....The Mighty Atom........

then the changed it to Astro Boy in the west because the fact that it came from Japan with the word Atom.....yeah, also apparently a notable bodybuilder at that time had that name?

Reason for sad irrelevancy? Lack of real content over the years for as big of an icon as he should be.

- Character debuted in Tezuka's 1951 manga "Ambassador Atom" as more or less a supporting character

- 1952-68 manga that told the story of essentially a robot Pinnochio Superman boy. Instant hit. Even after the main manga ended, Tezuka would occasionally come back to it on certain occasions. It took until 2002 to finally get official english translations

- the 1963 black and white anime. Definitely not the first animation in Japan, but the first animated show on Japanese TV and the first anime to get the attention of America to be imported. At the height of it's popularity in Japan, it was watched by reportedly 40% of TV owners in the country.

- the 1980 anime. Was big in Japan of course, but America, not so much. It only aired at certain locations on certain stations in the US. My personal favorite part of the franchise aside from the manga. Faithful to the manga stories and just pure Tezuka. The english dub, while a bit corny is honestly good and impressive compared to other anime dubs at the time in that it legit barely censored anything. It was very popular in Australia, France and Canada though (the latter actually had it's own separate english dub)

- the 2003 anime. One you can really tell that it's of it's time. Mixes things up but in a good way. English dub can be divisive to some despite an impressive line-up of VAs but still really good.

- the 2009 American animated movie by IMAGI that may have tanked the franchise. Many younger people's introduction to the franchise that had the unfortunate fate of being bogged down by studio execs into a generic kids movie with some good aspects and overall misunderstanding the franchise's whole schtick. It did so poorly at the box office that it shut down IMAGI animation only after two movies (they also did the '07 Ninja Turtles movie) when they had many projects in development and had the potential to be the next Pixar or Dreamworks.