April 3rd - Astro Boy

Today, 70 years ago, the first chapter of Astro Boy (Mighty Atom In Japan) was published. Astro Boy is a good series to get into if you want to get sad about robots. It's about a man who replaces his dead son with a weaponized robot, and then starts being an abusive father to said robot for not being exactly like his dead son. Anyway Astro ends up getting sold to the circus, but the Japanese government gets him out of there and he ends up becoming a superhero. For the record I don't specifically recommend the original manga, because while it was considered progressive when it was first published in 50's -70's Japan, and was intended to be anti-racist, nowadays… well, there are a number of individual stories that have aged like milk. If you are interested, I recommend the 80's anime that I haven't watched in ten years (I need to rewatch it) but I know is a lot milder, or even the Naoki Urasawa manga "Pluto”, which retells the "The Greatest Robot on Earth'' story arc in a very 00's way.