Gesicht

Gesicht is the Europol robot detective protagonist of Naoki Urasawa's manga Pluto — a reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy story "The Greatest Robot on Earth" as a noir murder mystery. One of the seven most powerful robots in the world, Gesicht investigates the murders of fellow powerful robots and the humans connected to them, slowly uncovering a conspiracy that reaches into the politics of a recent robot-assisted war in the Middle East.

Urasawa writes Gesicht with the psychological depth he brings to all his protagonists — Gesicht has a life, a wife, a history, and emotions that blur the line between programmed behavior and genuine feeling. The question of whether robots can truly feel, grieve, and choose is the philosophical core of Pluto, and Gesicht is the character through whom it is most directly explored.

Pluto is one of the finest manga series ever produced — Urasawa takes Tezuka's original story and expands it into an eight-volume meditation on war, memory, hatred, and what it means to be human, with artwork of extraordinary technical beauty. Gesicht's investigation into the murders gives the series its thriller structure while the philosophical questions give it its depth.

Published in English by Viz Media. Read Pluto (2003-2009).