The Run: The Conclusion of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto

In The Run I review multi-volume works over several weeks. This is the seventh of eight reviews of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto, on Volumes 7 & 8. Click here for my other reviews in the series.

Pluto Volume 7 Written & Produced by
Naoki Urasawa & Takashi Nagasaki
Illustrated by Naoki Urasawa
Translated by Jared Cook & Frederick Schodt
Based on Astro Boy: The Greatest Robot on Earth
 Created, Written & Illustrated by Osamu Tezuka
Shogakukan 2009/Viz Signature 2010

Volume 7 of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto is the weakest volume in the series, but even a weak turnout from Urasawa is stronger than most comics. His and Takashi Nagasaki's writing is just as sharp, his art no less emotive and powerful. It's just that not much happens here, especially compared to the extraordinary heights achieved in Volume 6.

By now we know that Pluto is the robot Sahad, manipulated and fed with hatred by his creator, Abullah, and forced into the ultra-powerful body designed for climate manipulation, modified into a war machine. Abullah is seeking vengeance on those who he feels destroyed his family and his homeland. It is here in Volume 7 that we get our first clear look at Pluto, before only hinted, effectively obscured by shadow or clouds. Pluto is a gargantuan, black, armored behemoth, his external appearance reflecting the turmoil within his tortured consciousness.

Another robot whose appearance reflects their inner being is Epsilon, the pacifist sun-powered robot and (apparently) last of the greatest robots alive. Epsilon does not want to fight Pluto - he is not Epsilon's enemy. Epsilon wants nothing more than to be a foster dad to the youths he rescued from the ruins of Persia, but even Epsilon is not free from Abullah's intractable rage. Abullah contrives a kidnapping of one of Epsilon's charges, the traumatized Wassily who witnessed Bora at the end of the War. So Epsilon travels from his home in Australia to Scandanavia where Abullah holds Wassily captive, knowing that this may lead to his destruction.

Pluto Volume 8 Written & Produced by
Naoki Urasawa & Takashi Nagasaki
Illustrated by Naoki Urasawa
Translated by Jared Cook & Frederick Schodt
Based on Astro Boy: The Greatest Robot on Earth
 Created, Written & Illustrated by Osamu Tezuka
Shogakukan 2009/Viz Signature 2010

The battle that ensues is as much between Epsilon and Pluto as it is Pluto with himself. Pluto has grown increasingly unstable, his soul blackened by the hate that has been forced on him by Abullah. But he cannot overcome his orders and the blackness of the emotions driving him, and openly Epsilon meets the fate.

But all is not lost. Helena, Gesicht's widow, delivered his memory chip to Professor Tenma, Atom's creator. Like Tenma's last great creation, Atom lies in a state of nondefinition, in a coma that can only be broken by the introduction of extreme emotion. Tenma had been reluctant to go forward but in the end gives in, introducing Gesicht's memory and personality into Atom just as Epsilon is destroyed, his essence crashing into Atom at his moment of reawakening. Atom is alive, but now he is fueled by sadness and hate. And as we get into Volume 8, he is the only one left that can stop Abullah and Pluto.

Before Gesicht died, he had completely figured out the series of events leading up to the Pluto murders. Just Prior to the War, Abullah - otherwise known as the rumored Goji - created a massive Earth-changing robot, Bora. In this regard, the WMD program that the United States accused Persia of having was quite real, even if it didn't go to fruition before or during the War. Abullah's attempts at creating WMDs met with repeated failure, so he commissioned Tenma to create the greatest robot on Earth. Except this robot could not be activated except by extreme emotion - the emotion provided by Abullah from his own memory when he died. Abullah, Goji, is that robot, made possible by his grief and his anger and his hate of all humanity.

Abullah was an Artificial Intelligence so advanced he lied to himself, keeping his own nature from himself. When his true nature is revealed to him by Tenma, he goes even further down the path of madness than before. Completely overcome with hatred for humanity, he sets out to destroy the world. As Bora, he will ignite the Yellowstone Caldera in the United States, destroying most of the world and wiping out almost all of humanity in the process. Bora's presence as a world-shattering bomb is revealed to the U.S. President by the only sympathetic U.S. character in the story, a weather forecast robot. The president goes to the AI that has been guiding his actions and secretly manipulating all of the events that have transpired, the trapped Dr. Roosevelt, the most advanced AI on the planet revealed by Brau 1589 much earlier in the series. The president is furious, how could Roosevelt keep such information from him? "You know, that weather forecast robot didn't need to feign such alarm. Sure, it will cause almost universal death. But we robots will survive."

With no less than the world at stake, it is Atom that must go out and face Pluto and somehow stop Bora. But that path is fraught. Upon awakening, Atom is mad, scrawling mathematical formulas on walls, formulas for an anti-proton bomb to shatter the world, the same anti-proton bomb at the heart of Bora. Escaping captivity, he catches sight of himself in a window: "You'd better not make me angry" he tells his own reflection. He is driven by hatred and sadness now, but there are other human elements within him. Just like the first time we met Atom, he comes across a snail on the sidewalk. And just like the first time, he gently puts the snail on a leaf and walks away. Gesicht, who is part of Atom now, wasn't just filled with hate, he had decency and deep love in him as well.

Before the inevitable conflict and sacrifices that must come, Atom visits two people, important to him and the story. He visits Brau who immediately recognizes the change in Atom. "You appear to have grown up. You have... a heart." Then he visits Helena, lost in the world, going through the motions of life, alone in her grief. What transpires is one of the story's most heartbreaking moments in a series predicated on loss and heartbreak. And just as heartbreaking, we finally see the genesis of Gesicht's hate. Robots cannot lie, yet Atom does here, not telling Helena of where Gesicht's hate came from, or the mystery of the missing time of her past, just of the love Gesicht had for her, the love that in the end transformed him. Because in the end, love is more powerful than hate.

In the end, the final battle becomes about overcoming nature, be it the darkness that exists in all of us or the programming and orders given to a tortured soul. Urasawa's art throughout this last volume is frankly astonishing. His depictions of human emotion and suspenseful character drama are matched by his world-shattering battle sequences, quiet moments of pain and loss and explosive action. The quiet of Volume 7 is the calm before the storm of Volume 8.

This is a story about the transformative power of loss. It is about the darkest aspects of our nature that makes us human. It is about the evils of war and the scars of war that echo down through the years. It is about the subjective reality of memory. It is a story of evolution and change and becoming human through trial and pain. And it is about the power of love to break the cycle of hate, the beauty within to overcome the darkness.

Next week, my final review in the series, a (lengthy & spoilery) overview of the whole story and all that Urasawa accomplished.