Another One for the Scrap Pile

Yeah, but at least it's his hatred, right? It'd be worse if it was someone else's.

Volume 7 is the penultimate chapter of Pluto. By this stage, Epsilon, the solar-powered, peace-loving robot, is the last of the great robots left standing, and he knows his clock is ticking. Inspector Gesicht is dead, and Atom is comatose, unless Professor Tenma can introduce something to help his mind break its stalemate. He knows what to do, because he's done it once before, he just knows there's a risk involved.

But most of this volume is focused on Epsilon, who did get involved in the military action against Persia, but didn't fight. That's not an option he's going to get this time, Professor Abullah makes certain of that. Abullah's well round the bend by this point, to the point threatening orphaned children is no big deal to him. He's locked in on destruction, and determined to get it, no matter who has to suffer. He jammed his robot son's brain in a giant battle robot and sends it off to kill.

Naoki Urasawa's very good at suggesting different emotion in Pluto with just minute shifts. Just that little upward slant on the mouth in the left panel to give Pluto a very unfriendly smile. Also, with Epsilon, most of his responses and reactions are muted, so when he arrives for his "surprise" birthday party and pretends to be surprised, you can tell by how expressive he is, the way his hands are positioned to suggest shock.

(One thing I'm curious about is that in a flashback, Tenma comments Abullah had also adopted robots as children, but alter in the book, Abullah calls himself Pluto's creator. So did he build himself some children, and officially adopt them, or is that meant to be a sign of his degrading mental state? Sahad was his son once, and now he's just something Abullah made to carry out his will?)

The pieces of the mystery start coming together a little more, or maybe I was just slow in not realizing Bora and Pluto were two entirely different things. The question is whether there's anyone left who can figure out what endgame is, and whether there's anyone who can do anything to stop it.

One of these days, I'll get around to scanning actual fight scenes from these, because there's some pretty cool stuff in there. But I'm kind of trying not to spoil it if you decide to go hunt these volumes down yourself.