Jetter Mars

A journey through MadHouse chapter 3: A watered-down version of Astro Boy.

It's not a joke or a mockery, this anime was actually intended to be a reboot of Astroboy, only Tezuka had problems with the production and decided to create Jetter Mars instead.

The anime has Mars as its protagonist, a robot created for war but that has a chip that allows him to process human emotions. Therefore, he will have a constant learning about ethics and morals to use his powers correctly.

I know that the anime was made by Toei but I watched it because MadHouse was part of the production. In fact, the scriptwriter ... of this work was the sometimes loved and sometimes hated Masao Murayama. The work begins being what one expects, a super powerful robot with no sense of ethics or morals while a third person teaches him to be more human. All this changes after chapter 10, from here the issues escalated too much. We're talking about the consumption of illicit substances, terrorism, discrimination, marginalization, dictatorships and political persecution in African territories. Very advanced for its time if you ask me.

The characters evolve quite well, you can see a real growth within the protagonist. It's a shame that all the development was done by Mars himself and the secondary characters are a bit relegated in most of the chapters. At the end of the day, it's clear that it's an anime aimed at a children's audience. It's just that the anime prefers to speak to children face to face instead of treating them as if they were stupid. It explains topics that even for an adult would be difficult to process and that it does so in such a digestible way is what makes its script so good.