Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Atom: The Beginning was billed as an all-new manga series using elements from Osamu Tezuka’s Tetsuwan Atom (Mighty Atom) aka Astro Boy, and freely adapting or adding others to create a prequel to the first appearance of the heroic little robot Atom. However, from the first couple of volumes it was clear that the density and novelty of Masami Yuuki and Tetsuro Kasahara’s storytelling was going to drive their versions of beloved characters Hiroshi Ochanomizu, Umataro Tenma and the others in a wholly new direction. This is no bad thing, and part of the great enjoyment is seeing how elements of Atom’s original stories are referenced and woven in to the composite structure of this new, more elaborate series. The two young inventors are charismatic, contemporary versions of their namesakes and their trajectory hasn’t had much to do with our familiar Mighty Atom until the end of The Beginning 07 and the surprise arrival of another, older Dr Ochanomizu – who has already met and worked with the boy robot via a time paradox!

In the original Tezuka stories ‘Living on Earth, 101’ and ‘The Birth of Neva # Two’ (Volume Six of the reprinted Astro Boy series) an explosion throws Atom fifty years back into the past, to 1969 where he meets the younger selves of people he knows in the future. As Grandpa Ochanomizu tells how Atom helped him design and build his first few robots – the N-Eva series – a nice touch is that his face is never shown. Grandpa is convinced Atom is still hidden somewhere in Vietnam so he, the boys and Six travel to Ho Chi Minh City to find him.

Several excellent new characters appear in The Beginning 08, including the dynamic hacker heroine Pink, protector of her best friend Dr Tam who runs a free clinic on the Mekon river that a corrupt hospital administrator nearby wants to shut down. Dr Tam has built a medical robot, Dian, with self-repair systems for continually learning medical techniques and skills from the internet, and upgrading itself, but Dian has recently acted oddly. While the boys decide on how best to fix Dian, back in Nerima U-Ran and her namesake Ran Ochanomizu are visiting Lab 1 with Motoko Tsutsumi. U-Ran is continuing to evolve and her interaction with one of the robots she destroyed in The Beginning 05 is quite something to see. “So this… is the power of Bewusstsein,” says Lab 1’s leader Haido, amazed. “Tenma and Ochanomizu… They may indeed be geniuses…” But when their repair of Dian goes wrong, can the geniuses bear to sacrifice Six to save it? More dilemmas in The Beginning 09.