University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Tezuka’s literary robot: Instrumentalism, sentimentalism, and mech-aesthesis in Mighty Atom

Milthorpe, Brian

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132440

Description

Title
Tezuka’s literary robot: Instrumentalism, sentimentalism, and mech-aesthesis in Mighty Atom
Author(s)
Milthorpe, Brian
Issue Date
2025-12-16
Keyword(s)
  • Osamu Tezuka
  • Unno Juza
  • Karel Capek
  • Science Fiction
  • Mighty Atom
  • Astro Boy
  • Technoscience
  • Prewar Japanese Fiction
  • Literature And Manga
Abstract
This article investigates how the robot literature of Unno Jûza and Karel Čapek establishes the legibility of Osamu Tezuka’s most influential robot character: the "child of science" Atom from the manga series Mighty Atom (Astro Boy). While critics have noted specific allusions to Unno and Čapek in Tezuka’s work, this article posits that the influence of these authors exceeds limited sources of reference material. Instead, it argues that through Mighty Atom Tezuka performs a strong misreading of Unno’s fiction by re-interpreting themes and motifs of technoscientific autonomy sourced from Unno through a form of humanism derived from Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots (1920). The first section discusses how Unno’s robot fiction entangles technoscientific autonomy and nationalistic instrumentalism. The second section demonstrates how Tezuka transforms this discourse through reading Tezuka's Doctor Mars (1947) and Mighty Atom (1952-1968) alongside the Unno novel Chikyû yôsai (1941, transl. Earth Fortress). The third section establishes how Čapek furnishes a model for the reorientation of technoscientific autonomy toward the sensitive heroism of Atom. The article concludes by reflecting on how this revision of Unno through Čapek inheres within robot science fiction comics and animation succeeding Mighty Atom.
Series/Report Name or Number
The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, volume 6 issue 2
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Articles
Language
eng
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jams.v6.1878
Copyright and License Information
  • Copyright 2025 Brian Milthorpe
  • This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0).

Owning Collections

JAMS V6.2 2025 PRIMARY
Volume 6 Issue 2