Where Does The Astro Boy Anime End In The Manga?

As the series that helped shaped the industry as we know it today, Astro Boy cemented Tezuka Osamu’s reputation as the progenitor of modern anime and manga.

However, while many skip Astro Boy for being dated, there are plenty who still appreciate the history and like to see where many modern tropes and storytelling used in anime and manga began.

Where To Start The Astro Boy Manga After The Anime?

Astro Boy, the main series, has come in three primary forms of anime over the years – the 1963 anime, the 1980 anime, and the 2003 anime.

TL;DR for those uninterested in Astro Boy history – Read the manga from the beginning no matter which main series you watched. None are full adaptations, and all are hard to “just jump into the manga” story after due to how the anime episodes and manga chapters have been remixed and/or censored over time.

Astro Boy 1963

The original Astro Boy anime from 1963 is a diligent anime adaptation to the original manga series. However, at the time the 1963 anime was being created, the Astro Boy manga is not quite the same volume-organized product it is today.

The Astro Boy manga started life as being a newspaper comic and would not go on to be published in manga magazines as we know them today until the 1970’s and would not be compiled into volumes until 1980. Furthermore, the manga series would not be compiled with all the chapters until the early 2000s.

Why is any of this important? Because the 1963 Astro Boy was based on the chapters that existed in 1963, a manga series that did not end until 1968, and those chapters from pre-1963 have since been re-ordered.

As such, there is really no clean place to pick up the Astro Boy manga after watching all of the 1963 anime. You will find that the anime jumps all over the manga that you can read today.

Astro Boy 1980

The original Astro Boy anime in 1963 was in black and white, so with the advent of color television, they gave Astro Boy another shot with a 1980 anime adaptation.

Like the 1963 anime, the 1980 Astro Boy is fairly diligent to the manga. However, it remixed the often episodic Astro Boy story to have more of a linear plot line to the arcs and events. It also often changed the tone to make things much darker than the more cartoonish manga (that still had some decently dark moments considering its younger target audience).

Astro Boy 2003

Created to celebrate the birthday of Astro Boy (since the original series takes place in 2003), the 2003 Astro Boy anime is the favorite anime adaptation of many fans – but it is also the worst adaptation of the manga.

The 2003 Astro Boy series may have the best animation and an overall enjoyable story, but it made a number of changes to the story, characters, and events. If you enjoyed Astro Boy from the 2003 anime, you may find the manga more difficult to consume since it embraces a lot of more modern anime sensibilities and the manga, obviously, does not.

The 2003 anime did spawn a 2003 manga reboot that follows the 2003 story, but it is only three volumes and is just a condensed version of the 2003 anime story.

Go! Go! Atom 2020

The most recent attempt at Astro Boy came in the form of Go! Go! Atom that premiered with 11-minute episodes in 2020. This is a completely rebooted canon that is aimed at preschoolers, so not really so applicable.

Where Does Atom: The Beginning Anime End in The Manga?

Atom: The Beginning is a newer manga series that launched in 2014 that serves as a prequel to the original Astro Boy story. It follows two robotic engineering students who would go on to develop the artificial intelligence that would be refined from their mistakes and birth Atom.

The manga was created by Masami Yuuki (Art) and Tetsuroh Kasahara (Art and Story), both of whom have previous works strongly inspired by Tezuka’s Astro Boy. As Tezuka Osamu had long passed, they consulted his son and partial owner of the Tezuka Productions anime studio, Tezuka Makoto, on story elements.

Atom: The Beginning also has an anime adaptation. If you finished the Atom: The Beginning anime and want to continue the story with the manga, you can start at Chapter 8.

The anime adapts two chapters of the five total chapters in Volume 2.

As a note about the Atom: The Beginning anime, it is almost half anime-original filler, which means you may just want to read the manga from the beginning for a better – and better paced – story experience.

Atom: The Beginning is a darker Astro Boy re-imagining like Pluto, so it is easier for modern fans to consume. You can also enjoy it without much knowledge of Astro Boy, though it does have quite a few references to the original series.

Does The Pluto Anime Adapt The Whole Pluto Manga?

Perhaps more accessible and – at this point – possibly more beloved by younger fans than the original Astro Boy series is mangaka Urasawa Naoki’s Pluto manga.

Pluto was Urasawa’s darker and gritty re-imagining of Astro Boy’s The Greatest Robot on Earth arc, which is Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 which make up the entirety of Volume 3 in the Dark Horse official translations. (“Unofficial” translations use the Dark Horse numbering as well.)

The Pluto anime fully adapted the Pluto manga, and did so very well.

Astro Boy Manga and It’s Many Spin-offs

Do you want to read everything else Astro Boy?

• Atom Cat (1 Volume, Complete, Tezuka Created) – Astro Boy, but cat.
• Atom Konjaku Monogatari (3 Volumes, Complete, Tezuka Created) – Atom, but in another dimension fighting a robot-fueled Vietnam War.
• Pluto (8 Volumes, Complete, Has an Anime) – Grittier retelling for The Greatest Robot on Earth arc by a different manga artist.
• Tezuka Gakuen (1 Volume, Complete) – Anthology of Tezuka characters in a school.
• Astro Boy – Tetsuwan Atom (3 Volumes, Complete) – Manga adaptation of the 2003 anime that condenses the anime story.
• Atom-chan (1 Volume, Complete) – Gag manga tribute.
• Team Phoenix (4 Volumes, Ongoing) – Story told remixing a lot of Tezuka characters into a new universe.
• Atom – The Beginning (20 Volumes, Ongoing) – Prequel to the original Astro Boy story.
• Akio Morita, Chiaki Mukai, Takashi Yanase, Thomas Edison, Yukichi Fukuzawa, Florence Nightengale, Tezuka Osamu (Single volumes for each person, Complete) – Atom is an educational guide in these manga detailing the lives of these historical figures, including his creator.

Will There Be More Astro Boy Anime?

While Pluto celebrated success and possibly revived a bit of interest in Astro Boy, I don’t think it is much of an indicator that more Astro Boy anime is coming.

It is certainly a beloved story, but anime and manga have changed a lot and many modern viewers don’t appreciate or much care for this historic entry.