Pluto Books in Order

Pluto is a landmark manga series written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, created in collaboration with Takashi Nagasaki and based on Osamu Tezuka's classic Astro Boy story "The Greatest Robot on Earth." Urasawa reimagines the source material as a serious, adult science fiction thriller: in a near-future world where robots and humans coexist, someone — or something — is systematically murdering the world's seven most powerful robots and the human robot-rights advocates connected to them. Gesicht, a German robot detective with human-like emotions and a buried trauma he cannot fully access, leads the investigation, while Atom (Astro Boy) becomes increasingly central to the mystery's resolution.

Urasawa uses the robot-as-person framework to explore questions of consciousness, memory, hatred, and what it means to feel grief and anger when you are a being designed to serve. The series is a meditation on war — specifically on the way democracies can be manipulated into unjust conflicts through manufactured fear — that is both politically pointed and emotionally devastating. The source material's innocent optimism is transformed into something far darker and more morally complex without betraying the spirit of Tezuka's original.

Comprising 8 volumes published from 2004 to 2009, Pluto is a complete, finished masterwork — arguably Urasawa's most perfectly structured long-form work and an ideal entry point for readers new to his output. The Netflix anime adaptation (2023) is excellent. Essential reading for any serious manga reader and highly recommended for science fiction readers with no prior manga experience.