During its industry panel at Anime Expo 2023, Netflix revealed that its upcoming Pluto anime series will debut on its platform on October 26, 2023. In addition, a new teaser trailer and information about more voice cast members and production staff were also released.
The additional voice cast members for Pluto include Hiroki Yasumoto as Mont Blanc, Koichi Yamadera as North No. 2, Hidenobu Kiuchi as Brando, Rikiya Koyama as Hercules, Mamoru Miyano as Epsilon, and Toshihiko Seki as Pluto. They join a main cast that includes Youko Hikasa as Astro/Atom, Minori Suzuki as Uran, and Shinshuu Fuji as Gesicht.
The production staff for the anime consists of Toshio Kawaguchi (Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 11 animation director), Shigeru Fujita (Monster) as character designer, Chikako Shibata as art director, Masafumi Mima as sound director, and Yuugo Kanno (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) as musical composer. Masao Maruyama is serving as an executive producer for the series. Studio M2 is handling the animation production for the series.
Netflix’s ONA series is based on the manga of the same name by Naoki Urasawa, with Takashi Nagasaki credited as co-author and Osamu Tezuka’s son, Macoto Tezka, serving as the manga’s supervisor. It was first serialized in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original magazine from September 5, 2003 to April 4, 2009, with a total of eight volumes released. The manga series is a modern retelling of Tezuka’s Astro Boy story arc “The Greatest Robot on Earth.”
Viz Media releases the Pluto manga in English as Pluto: URASAWA X TEZUKA and describes the first volume as:
In an ideal world where man and robots coexist, someone or something has destroyed the powerful Swiss robot Mont Blanc. Elsewhere a key figure in a robot rights group is murdered. The two incidents appear to be unrelated…except for one very conspicuous clue – the bodies of both victims have been fashioned into some sort of bizarre collage complete with makeshift horns placed by the victims’ heads. Interpol assigns robot detective Gesicht to this most strange and complex case – and he eventually discovers that he too, as one of the seven great robots of the world, is one of the targets.
