Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Round two of the World Robot Battle continues in the Australian desert, with hundreds of scientists, government officials and others watching from the Great Crocodile, unable to intervene as their robots smash each other apart trying to retrieve one of the nine batons that will guarantee passage to round three. Despite the crisis ending Atom: The Beginning 06, Umataro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochanomizu’s prototype, U-Ran is back in action thanks to her ‘Bewusstsein’ A.I. giving her the ability to overwrite her own internal program. This makes her response to any new situation unpredictable, as seen in The Beginning 05. “Whoa! Her fighting style’s changed?!” exclaims a shocked Ochanomizu. “Your trouble is that you don’t understand the nature of what you’ve created!” Dr Lolo tells him.

This volume sees another jump in autonomous robot evolution. U-Ran faces Mars on the battlefield while Dr Lolo and Ochanomizu argue ethics and philosophies in the bunker, but it’s the reactivated Six who proves to be the catalyst in Mars’ understanding of emotions, leading to a chilling outcome.

A key subplot emerging in this series is the gap between theory and practice. None of the humans know how their robots are beginning to go beyond the bounds of their original programmed limitations or what that might mean. Tenma and Ochanomizu are too attached to their abstract theories to realise what’s happening and Dr Lolo is too cautious to allow any kind of true independence to occur that she can’t control. But as we can see, the ‘Bewusstsein’ is working far better than its creators are aware. Six and U-Ran are developing a profound consciousness and their desire to communicate what they feel to other robots causes potentially dangerous instability whenever they make contact. Six is already unable to explain how he talks with other robots, in a language that his makers can understand. What will happen as his thought patterns grow in complexity? More questions and some answers follow in The Beginning 08.