Pluto

Episodes 4-5

Does hatred ever leave you, or does it stay a part of you forever?

PLUTO's thesis on hatred and war begins to coalesce in these episodes as the vengeful robot takes down the beloved Atom, the formidable Heracles, and we meet the childlike robot's progenitor, Dr. Tenma.

Naoki Urasawa's reimagining hones in on hatred as an ever-increasing boulder, obliterating everything in its path. It also posits, by way of Dr. Tenma, that it is an emotion that defines humanity, and any attempt to emulate humans necessitates a capacity to hate. It's for this reason that Brau-1589's artificial intelligence is considered perfect despite the robot becoming the first of its kind to murder a human.

The advanced robots in the series frequently grapple with their own burgeoning feelings of hatred. Hercules didn't understand it during the war but has become more familiar with it while reconciling the death of Brando. Many of the characters are united by their hatred, even when it's directed at one another. It's more accurate to say they're united in their feelings of injustice, as all the characters' hatred is borne from a miscarriage of justice against them that has set them at odds with one another. You can trace a line from each character's tragedy to their perpetrator and from that perpetrator to another tragedy. This has set the likes of folks like Adolf on the path to extermination and extremism, but even that didn't sprout spontaneously.

Arguably, the initial miscarriage of justice lies at the feet of the United States of Thracia, who, despite no evidence to support its claims, invaded the Kingdom of Persia and planted the seeds of terroristic resistance. They've learned nothing from their actions and apparently have no qualms about their hypocrisy; as early as episode two and repeatedly in episode four, they're shown calling Professor Ochanomizu to move forward with their own plan for more weaponry robots. It was Thracia's indiscriminate violence against non-combatants that led to the deaths of Professor Abdullah's family, and we now see he is working with Dr. Goji on the Pluto killings.

You could also view Adolf's extreme bigotry against robots as a misguided indictment of the system that allowed his father to become obsolete. Unable to find new work, he turns to petty crime and is eventually apprehended. Adolf's brother follows in his footsteps, but it's not until episode five that we get a much clearer view of what led to his death. His brother wasn't a petty criminal but an actual serial killer who explicitly targeted robot children. There's a whole psychology there to dig into: how a man began to target the happy children of robots, the same robots he blamed for losing his own family as a child. No one denies that Adolf's brother was a horrid individual, including the robot extremists. He obviously considered robots sub-human, which, given everything we've seen thus far, may as well be an allegory for regular old bigotry. Robots are functionally human; even primitive models can experience sadness, except for lacking fleshy bits and the capability for murder. It's better to look at Adolf's brother as a child murderer; it doesn't matter that the children were mechanical.

But Adolf's hatred is still borne from injustice. Gesicht murdered his brother when he was unarmed and submitting to arrest. We can understand why Gesicht killed him for all the reasons mentioned above; in addition, it's heavily hinted that his latest victim was Gesicht and Helena's own child. Gesicht, in a moment of "humanity," delivered capital punishment. It's not unlike the final confrontation in David Fincher's Se7en. To keep their investment clean, Gesicht has only fragmented memories of this, and it's unclear if he doesn't remember his child at all.

Despite their different origins, Gesicht and Dr. Tenma aren't so different. Almost as much of the story hinges on the Central Asian War as it does on the death of a child. Lauded as a genius by his peers, Tenma is a man drowning in anguish after the death of his son, Tobio. The singular event, an unfair accident, becomes the axis of his entire world. He uses all of his capabilities to create Atom, a profoundly empathetic robot who is too diligent to be a facsimile for Tenma's picky, messy Tobio. He is convinced that Atom is a "failure," but his metric is twisted. Atom is a failure because he lacks the capability for hatred. Atom has not suffered like Tenma, Gesicht, Adolf, Abdullah, and, of course, Pluto have suffered.

Tenma's search to recreate humanity with a mechanical shell may have set everything in motion. His perfect robot who never awakened may have stirred when he wasn't looking. Who knows what suffering befell it and what it has become?

Pluto is currently streaming on Netflix.