Astro Boy in my home
On a manga superhero, Fleetwood Mac and the nature of daylight.
We have a natural tendency to romanticise the past and magnify the present. Humans are likely to overestimate the significance of our time; believing our challenges harder, our achievements more seminal, our progress unprecedented. Equally, we have rose-tinted glasses at the ready when looking back, whether for our personal past or societal journey.
These seem to be two sides of a complex coin. The idea of ‘presentism’ describes a tendency to interpret past events through the lens of present values, knowledge, and experiences, leading people to exaggerate the uniqueness or difficulty or significance of their era. In some ways the opposite (but also potentially, oddly complementary?) is what might be called a ‘Golden Age Fallacy’, a belief that there was a superior, idyllic past, which is now lost, due to modernity.
I got to thinking briefly about this while writing this week about a comic and animation from 60-70 years ago that echoes questions of today; while elsewhere the rarefied space of 70s rock continues to beguile.
Stranger Addendums: I realise many of you (especially on email) might have found two sections missing from last week’s drop. Its a pity, because I kinda liked the ‘strange’ thread that ran through last week’s pieces. I add them here this week, though for your edification.
Comic Book Resident: Astro Boy in my home.
Friday Find: On The Nature of Daylight
Go Your Own Way: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours
With: LLMs to LRMs, Honey Singh, cute aggression.
1. Comic Book Resident, Astro Boy
Over a decade has passed since I visited Japan. In the Kyoto Museum of Manga, after strolling through fascinating but largely unfamiliar exhibits, we prepared to exit through the gift shop. Despite generally being testy about these, we succumbed and bought a coffee mug. Though often the subject of debate and demand, that solitary mug began carrying (usually) my weekend coffee.
Astro Boy has been in my home ever since.
In April 2017, in the quiet city of Niiza, just outside Tokyo, a peculiar ceremony took place. A residency certificate was formally presented. The official card listed the birth date as April 7, 2003, with the address ‘1-1-1 Atom Town, Niiza City’.
The Birth of an Icon
Rewind to a post-war Japan of the early 1950s. A nation rebuilding, both physically and spiritually, from the devastation of World War II. In this unprecedented age emerged Osamu Tezuka, a young doctor-turned-artist. His pen would remake and revolutionise Japanese storytelling.
In 1952, Tezuka introduced readers to Tetsuwan Atom (or ‘Mighty Atom’), a sentient robot boy with incredible powers and a remarkable heart. This hero was equipped with extraordinary abilities, including 100,000 horsepower strength, jet-powered flight, high-intensity lights in his eyes, adjustable hearing, instant language translation, a retractable machine gun in his hips, and a high IQ capable of determining if someone is good or evil. Set in a world where sentient robots are common, but mostly treated as objects, he was a protector, and also a symbol of technological optimism.
Tetsuwan Atom was entertainment for children. His was a futuristic world, filled with towering cities, flying cars, and robotic innovations. Yet, his escapades went beyond action, adventure and humour; beneath its high-tech surface lay societal struggles, prejudice against robots, themes of identity and discrimination, and the consequences of unchecked technological progress.
Despite his innocence and the generally child-like tone of the manga, Tetsuwan Atom’s origin story was altogether darker. He came from tragedy.
Consumed by grief at the death of his young son, robotics expert Dr. Tenma creates a robot duplicate of his lost son: Astro Boy. But, once Tenma realizes that Astro will never age, he rejects him, selling to a cruel circus owner. Eventually Astro Boy is rescued by Professor Ochanomizu, who becomes his guardian, clearing the path for his superhero like exploits.
Osamu Tezuka
His real guardian, of course, was the visionary artist often called the ‘God of Manga’. Tezuka’s prolific output (estimated 150,000+ pages across 700 titles) fundamentally reshaped Japanese visual storytelling. Born in 1928 to a family that encouraged his twin interests in medicine and illustration, Tezuka abandoned medicine shortly after qualifying as a doctor. What marked this great creator was his humanism; a deep interest in life's ethical complexities, with an optimism around humanity.
The distinctive visual language Tezuka pioneered, seen in Astro Boy and elsewhere, like the iconic Buddha series- those large, expressive eyes; the dynamic action sequences; the blend of humour and pathos- would influence manga and anime for generations to come. Creators from Hayao Miyazaki to Naoki Urasawa have acknowledged their debt to Tezuka's groundbreaking work. (Please don’t look for AI-powered Tezuka memes, though).
Tezuka, who passed away in 1989, often expressed a vision of technology that could enhance humanity rather than diminish it. Throughout his career, he remained consistent in his belief that the most important qualities- compassion, sacrifice, moral courage- could potentially exist in any being, organic or mechanical.
Tetsuwan Atom’s wasn't merely a superhero tale. Through his adventures, Tezuka was exploring profound questions about what it meant to be human in an age of rapidly advancing technology. (Humankind often seems to find itself in ages of ‘rapidly advancing technology’).
“A life must be saved as long as it can be no matter whose it is"
From Page to Phenomenon
A huge jump occured in 1963. Tetsuwan Atom leapt from the manga page to become Japan's first animated television series. The series was dubbed into many languages and became popular worldwide, particularly in the United States, airing from 1963 to 1975 as ‘Astro Boy’.
Through animation, Astro Boy reached audiences who might never have picked up a manga. His stories crossed borders- before Hello Kitty, before Nintendo, before Studio Ghibli, there was Astro Boy, Japan's first global pop culture ambassador.
What made this little robot so universally appealing? Perhaps his duality—immensely powerful yet childlike, technological yet emotional, Japanese yet concerned with questions that transcend his roots. In the USA, Astro represented a different vision of the future than the often-threatening robots of Western science-fiction. Here was technology imbued with compassion, strength tempered by wisdom.
“Even though I am a robot, I feel the joy and sorrow of humanity.”
Cultural Context
Astro Boy’s roots are significant. Tezuka's creation arrived at a time when Japan was reimagining its place in the world. The only nation to have experienced nuclear devastation, Japan's post-war embrace of technological advancement carried unique tensions.
Astro Boy was powered by atomic energy, yet committed to peace; maybe reflecting both the promise and fear of nuclear technology. Generally portrayed as a pacifist who tries to resolve conflicts without violence, he echoed Tezuka's anti-war stance. Astro Boy offered a vision of technology infused with humanity, power guided by conscience- a blueprint for progress that resonated with a society in transition.
Before Japan became synonymous with robotics and electronics, Astro Boy was already imagining a world where machines could possess hearts. In the decades to come, Japan would lead the world in developing humanoid robots and exploring artificial intelligence with distinctively humanistic concerns.
Official Resident
So, to that ceremony just outside Tokyo, where fiction and reality had a curious handshake. The new resident was given a card, listing his birth date as April 7, 2003, and his address as 1-1-1 Atom Town, Niiza City.
This was no foreign dignitary or distinguished citizen, but our atomic-powered Tetsuwan Astro aka Astro Boy, now an official resident.
Civic whimsy? Tourism ploy? Probably a bit of both (and it certainly attracted visitors). But this curiosity also represented the culmination of a decades-long relationship between Astro and the real world he helped shape. Osamu Tezuka had once lived in Niiza; the creator and creation both were honoured in a place that had nurtured one, now formally welcomed the other.
The ceremony was attended by local children and lifelong fans, some who had first encountered Tetsuwan Atom in their youth and were now watching their grandchildren develop the same affection for this ageless robot boy.
Robot Vision
Throughout the original manga series, Tezuka regularly placed Astro in situations where his robot nature came into conflict with his increasingly human-like emotional development. In a time when AI chatbots engage us in all-too human conversation, Astro Boy may not be quite the relic of mid-century sci-fiction he seems. The march of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, and Astro Boy's questions stay relevant. What responsibilities do creators have toward their creations? Can synthetic beings develop something akin to emotion? What rights might they deserve?
“In a world that increasingly values machines and progress, we must never lose sight of the human heart—compassion is the true measure of progress.”
Now, Astro Boy wasn't the first fictional character to receive this kind of recognition in Japan. The city of Kasukabe in Saitama Prefecture had previously granted residency to Crayon Shin-chan, another popular manga and anime character. But hey, Shin-chan wasn’t on a mug that has pride of place in my kitchen!
Which beings us back to the most important part of this story- my lonely coffee mug. For reasons that now seem quaint, only one was bought at the time, though there were at least two designs available. I wait in hope, that one day my mug will have a companion, and together they can witness the dominion of our technological overlords.
So if you are headed to a manga or Tezuka museum, you know who to call.
“Judge me by my actions, not my origin.” _Astro Boy
2. Friday Find:
“luminosity and brightness… from the darkest possible materials.”
On The Nature Of Daylight is a track I love but do not listen to often. From one my favourite composers, Max Richter, this a powerful wordless song with layers of grief and dappled melancholy rippling through its expanding, rising strings, released more than twenty years ago.
It has repeatedly appeared in our pop culture consciousness by featuring (sometimes beautifully, sometimes wastefully) in films like Shutter Island, Arrival and most recently in The Last Of Us.
While not a commercial success initially, it was critically acclaimed. It is also that rare example of a neo-classical piece that has its own music video. In an appropriately minimal film, a woman walks alone through mostly unremarkable streets, alone with her mind and who knows what else; in a stellar performance that wraps itself both comfortably and gut-wrenchingly in the soul of the music.
Co-produced by the actor Elisabeth Moss who is the single subject of the video, this came nearly fifteen years after the track was made. Yet I have stayed away from it; as I alluded to, the layers in the song are too many for me to revisit it often. I was nudged to it last week, and am glad for it.
Back in 2003, Richter composed it as a part of The Blue Notebook, which he called, "a protest album about Iraq, a meditation on violence– both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict."
With On The Nature of Daylight, Richter described how he wanted to “create something which had a sense of luminosity and brightness but made from the darkest possible materials.”
I think I think those words are most apt.
3. Go Your Own Way
This Week That Year: in 1977, Fleetwood Mac’s album ‘Rumours’ went to No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100, and stayed there for 31 weeks.
Rumours’ best known tracks are probably ‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’, but the entire album entered rock lore, staying in the Top 10 biggest selling albums of all time (depending on the list, its the sixth or eighth or ninth or fourth). Its legend, though, was as much for its creation. The band of five had two couples, both relationships on the rocks. The studio recording happened at a time fraught with tension and limited interactions. Songs from Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie were built on lyrics attempting to exorcise their relationships demons. Each would play or sing on songs that were about themselves, or their broken affairs. Incredible.
Here’s the layout: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham- longtime lovers and musical partners- had just split; Christine was in the process of divorcing husband and bassist John McVie; separately, drummer Mick Fleetwood‘s marriage was on the rocks. In this light, we can hear brutally honest lyrics, replete with messages and confessions.
Consider Buckingham’s “Packin’ up, shackin’ up is all you wanna do” in ‘Go Your Own Way’, a line Nicks always hated, though she did say the the song was “a little angry, it was also honest”. Her ‘Dreams’ was a more gentle piece (“when the rain washes you clean, you'll know”), its philosophical mood maybe a glimpse to the sanguineness allowing this album to be made in the first place?
“Now here you go again You say you want your freedom Well, who am I to keep you down?”
While ‘Go Your Own Way’ reached a respectable Number 10, it must have pleased Nicks that ’Dreams’ floated right to the top of the charts. It remains Fleetwood Mac’s only Number One single in the US.
The musicians’ personal lives permanently fused within the grooves, and all who listened to Rumours become a voyeur to the painful, glamorous mess. _Rolling Stone
Another side note? Cocaine (the powder, not the song) was at the heart of this production so much, the band even seriously toyed with thanking their dealer in the album credits. “Unfortunately, he got snuffed – executed! – before the thing came out,” Fleetwood wrote in his first memoir, 1990s Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac. So much for that.
Pitchfork brilliantly described Rumours as “a flawless record pulled from the wreckage of real lives”.
Go give it a listen today.
Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting).
Read: Have you ever held a puppy that was so unbelievably fluffy and adorable you didn’t know how to convey the strong urge to squeeze its head without sounding like a maniac? Well, now there’s a word for it. Gigil: word for ‘cute aggression’ among new Oxford English Dictionary entries.
Know: In Artificial intelligence learns to reason, looks at the move AI models are making from LLMs (large language) to LRMs (large reasoning). There has been substantial debate in the AI community on whether LRMs are “genuinely reasoning” or “merely mimicking” the kinds of human reasoning that is in the pretraining or post-training data.
Read: Hridhesh Singh is making a comeback. Ok, so you might know him better as Yo Yo Honey Singh, the brash (some say trash) hip hop megastar in India. More accurately, once-megastar who disappeared amidst addiction and depression. This piece traces the contours of his desire to become a star once more.
“Thunder only happens when it’s raining.” _Dreams, Fleetwood Mac