This Friday, a boy robot named Astro Boy arrives in theaters in the fifth major imagining of the Astro Boy story (including the original 1950s Japanese comic and three television adaptations). Astro Boy is nothing short of iconic in his home country, but we have had relatively little exposure to the character in the West. So, if you’re wondering who this little android is and why he’s so important, we’ve got you covered. Here are the basics of Japan’s favorite robot, from the comic panel to the big screen.

Astro Boy is the creation of Japan's "God of Manga," Osamu Tezuka, and first appeared in a serialized manga called Ambassador Atom.¹ Astro Boy (whose Japanese name, Tetsuwan Atomu, translates to “Mighty Atom”) was not the main character and did not even appear in every installment. In 1951, though, Tezuka gave Mighty Atom his own comic, and thus was born a legend. This comic remains the reference Astro Boy work, the best and most authentic version of the character. It is based on the simple concept of a super-powerful robot built with the likeness, attitude, mannerisms, and even feelings of a young boy. As Tezuka expert Frederik L. Schodt states in his introduction to Astro Boy: Books 1 and 2,² “In an age when most American superheroes fought for a patriotic form of justice and had special powers derived from mysterious, almost cosmic sources, Astro Boy was utterly original. ... [H]is powers were based on semi-scientific or mechanical principles, and instead of fighting for justice, he fought for peace.” Astro Boy was a heartening comic about a purely innocent boy robot hero who wants not to punish bad guys but to simply stop them from doing evil and hopefully turn them to good.

The innocence of the comic was amplified by Tezuka’s artwork, which consisted of smooth, clean lines and plenty of playfulness. Astro Boy himself is especially drawn to perfection, his facial expressions consistently retaining a childish demeanor, assisted by manga-large eyes and prominent eyelashes. When he does look angry, his otherwise innocent features convey the anger to be aimed not so much at the evildoers as at the evil itself. Even the bad guys are drawn with cartoonish features so that they always look redeemable. Everything is drawn to maximize the optimistic nature of the work.

Surprising for most first-time Astro Boy readers is the depth of the subject matter Tezuka injected into the comic. Glancing through the pages, Astro Boy would appear to be simple children’s entertainment; however, throughout the series, Tezuka tackled serious and even radical issues. Ada Palmer, creator of Tezuka in English, tells The Sci-Fi Block, “Astro Boy was largely about prejudice and racism, whether humans could ever coexist with another kind of sentient life [such as self-aware robots] and also the question of whether people would ever stop using technology toward evil ends like war and crime." Palmer elaborates, "Consequently, even though it was for kids, the original comic was often extremely dark. Astro was sold into slavery, imprisoned, tortured, dismembered, and frequently witnessed not only the death of friends but war, mass murder, genocide, and enormous cruelty on the part of humans, both toward robots and toward other humans.”

However, constantly wary (perhaps overly so) of alienating readers, Tezuka employed a number of idiosyncratic techniques to ensure the comic would remain light-hearted, at least on its surface. The artist was known to pull humorous characters out of thin air and simply drop them into panels for comedic relief. One such character was Spider, a funny-looking guy (not a spider) who would randomly show up and say “Here ta met ya” to the main characters. Other times, Tezuka would explicitly remind readers that the events are taking place safely within a comic, using techniques such as having a character come right out and say, “It’s a comic strip, after all,” or by having characters literally interact with the panels themselves.

Tezuka’s Astro Boy manga is somehow simultaneously cute, exciting, fun, serious, humorous, simple, beautiful, and daring. It is unfortunate that the comic never gained mass popularity in the West because it can appeal to virtually anyone. The pure innocence and moral integrity of this little robot, along with his physical ability to take on even the most powerful enemies, makes Astro Boy a work of science fiction that should be as famous everywhere as it is in its home country.

Throughout the years there have been numerous adaptations of Astro Boy in different forms. There were some now-rare movies, an infamous live-action series, and even a handful of comics written by other authors (including a tie-in to the upcoming film). The most famous adaptations, though, have been the TV series. None of them remained completely true to the original (the first series being the closest), but they all had good qualities and helped to popularize the character not only in Japan but in other countries.