I have been reading this one for uh, a while now (and it turns out I had actually finished it once before back in 2014, thanks Goodreads) and I was disappointed to discover the last story I had left before finishing was the one about the boy who hits his sister who turns out to be a robot who decides instead of letting him go fuck himself to sacrifice her life/brain to become his robot car.
Anyway I apparently hadn’t forgotten THAT one. I did manage to totally forget the plot of Kino the Magician and ah, that was bleak.
So! Astro Boy. Look at all that wacky art mixed with horrific narrative. I’m not gonna get into what happened during that dog story, but the sheer amount of bullshit the robots as a whole go through is very stressful to read. I guess when, in-universe, you’re either seen as a people or a chatty toaster.
Just a little too close to how we treat real people too.
That said, I plan to start Volume 2 pretty soon. I own the whole collection and by god, I am going to read it.