Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Book three of Atom: The Beginning sees our heroes, the young geniuses Hiroshi Ochanomizu and his partner Umataro Tenma trying to figure out exactly what’s happening with the ‘Bewusstsein’ A.I. they have installed in their prototype autonomous robot A106, called ‘Six’ for short. Wrecked by its encounter with explosive forces on a mysterious island base, when Six is reactivated it says the word “Daddy” when it sees Ochanomizu’s face. “Daddy… Is that… me? You said that with your own free will?” Ochanomizu thinks this could be “an evolutionary leap … caused by the shock from the explosion and water”, but Tenma disagrees. “Perhaps it was a bug caused by a malfunction in the language circuitry. Shut up! I’m just a realist!” And when fully rebooted, Six reverts to calling him “Mr Ochanomizu”, just as Tenma originally programmed.

The cast of characters expands again in this episode with a few new protagonists including a faculty professor who seems to recognise Six’s assailants and another mysterious young woman with at least three different kinds of secrets.  There are several more high-speed encounters with Mars-type robots but who is sending them after Ochanomizu and Tenma, and what do they want? And just how is Six acquiring all the new skills that nobody programmed into him?

A long philosophical conversation between the boys and friends while they try to find a good place to hide means some of the answers are beginning to emerge, but then an even bigger menace arrives. Masami Yuuki adds another set of twists onto the plot and Tetsuro Kasahara’s art keeps pace with more of his complicated action scenes. These lose some effectiveness by being hard to decipher, but there’s no denying the energy. Another challenge for Six takes us to Atom: The Beginning 04.