THE FIRST ANIME CHARACTER to conquer a large audience outside of Japan, Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy gained a huge popularity in the US and other countries as early as in the 1960s through comics and television. Furthermore, Astro Boy was one of the first robot characters with human looks and qualities.

© Tezuka Productions

Created in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka - often called "the father of Japanese comics" - Tetsuwan Atom or "Mighty Atom" is today one of the major icons of Japanese popular culture. In his original manga form, Atom was a little boy robot created by a scientist who has lost his own son in an accident. The robot boy lived a normal family life and went to the same school as his human friends, but had powers and abilities far above those of an ordinary boy. Gentle and cute, Atom devoted his life to fight for peace for his home country. Tezuka created Atom as a 21st-century "reverse Pinocchio": an almost perfect robot which strives to become more human and emotive, to combine the two worlds of technology and humanity. The enormous impact of the character played a large part in making human-like robots a natural part of popular culture, and of the public consciousness in general.

Through an animated television series produced from 1963, the character soon also began conquering the world outside Japan when NBC picked up the series for the US market. Renamed Astro Boy, the character was the first anime character to gain a huge popularity outside the Japanese market. The Astro Boy series was aired in more than 30 countries, including the US, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, preparing the way for several Japansese anime series in the English-speaking world!

The first Astro Boy television series, produced in black and white, ran for 193 episodes, ending in December 1966. A second series of 52 episodes was produced in 1980-81, and a third debuted in Japan on April 6, 2003, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the original series. An Astro Boy manga series drawn by Akira Himekawa and based on the 2003 television series has been published in Denmark by Carlsen, in Sweden by Bonnier Carlsen and in Finland by Sangatsumanga/Kolibri.

Plus Licens represents Tezuka Productions for merchandising, promotion and publishing rights to Astro Boy in the Nordic countries and Central and Eastern Europe.