"Astro Boy" fans will now be able to watch its prequel, "Atom The Beginning" from a manga series by Tetsuro Kasahara after Tezuka Productions opened a website on Sunday for its anime adaptation. The said website has reportedly posted a list of the staff and confirmed that the "Atom The Beginning" anime adaptation will premiere in Spring next year.
According to Anime News Network, Tezuka Productions' new website also has a streaming promotional video which features the narration of the anime that says it is about the 'episode zero' story of "Astro Boy" leading up to the birth of Astro Boy. "Atom The Beginning" anime adaptation will be directed by Tatsuo Sato, and will be animated at OLM, Production I.G, Signal.MD, with Katsuyuki Motohiro as the Chief Director, as reported by AniTay.
On December 2014, "Atom The Beginning" was launched by Kashara in Shogakukan's Monthly Hero's magazine and served as a prequel of the "Astro Boy" manga by Osamu Tezuka. The storyline of the "Atom The Beginning" is set in Japan, after a great calamity. Te story also shows two geniuses who dreamed of the future, Umataro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochanomizu. Both worked day and night researching about robots. The two geniuses though, has two visions on the robot that they are going to create; Tenma was thingking of creating a "god," while Ochanomizu wanted to create a "friend."
The ideas of the two geniuses has resulted to creating a robot, A106 being born. The storyline then questions if robot A106, which was created out of two different ideas is meant to be a god or a friend. The anime adaptation of "Atom The Beginning" serves as a prequel and "episode zero" of "Astro Boy" which will answer and show why, and how Astro Boy was created and what happened until he was born.