Osamu Tezuka is reshaping Japanese pop culture with his manga Astro Boy. In the future world, Japanese science minister Dr. Tenma loses his son Tobio in a car accident. He recreates Tobio as an android, Astro (known as Atom in the original Japanese language). It's the manga a futuristic re-imagining of Pinocchio which becomes a superhero story.

You can trace Japan's love affair with robots back to Astro Boy - modern mecha and shonen manga/anime wouldn't exist without it. Despite being a staple in Japan, Astro Boy isn't much of an icon in the United States. One attempt to import it, the 2009 CGI-animated Astro Boy by Imagi Animation Studios, failed and left Imagi under water.

Imagi was founded in Hong Kong in 2000, first producing the 2002 CGI cartoon series Zentrix. In 2007, they secured a three-picture distribution deal with Warner Bros. - the first fruit of that deal being the 2007 animated film TMNT. "TMNT" was a success, so Imagi moved on to the No. 1 picture. 2: "Astro Boy."

The film was directed by David Bowers, the co-director of Dreamworks' claymation film Flushed Away is no longer one of the studio's best films. (After Astro Boy failed, Bowers directed only live action Diary of a Wimpy Kid Movies.) The cast includes Freddie Highmore, Bill Nighy, the late Donald Sutherland and Nicolas Cage as Dr. Tenma.

Astro Boy cost $65 million, but grossed just $42 million at the box office when it premiered in October 2009. By February 2010, Imagi filed for bankruptcy. Does Astro Boy deserve a second chance? Is it a forgotten masterpiece waiting to be reassessed? No, the audience had it right on the first call with this one.

2009's Astro Boy makes huge changes to the source material, presumably in the name of a more "universal" film. Character names are Americanized; Tobio becomes Tobi, Umataro Tenma becomes Bill Tenma, and Dr. Ochanomizu becomes Dr. Elefun. The setting is also changed from 21st century Japan to a post-apocalyptic future, where the wealthy live on a floating "Metro City" above the polluted surface. (All of this is closer to "WALL-E" and "Battle Angel Alita" than "Astro Boy".)

The script bristles with broad archetypes of children's films, and like other Imagi films, the CGI is dark and primitive. (The tactility of "Astro Boy" is on par with "Toy Story," a film fourteen years older.) The flat animation undercuts Tezuka's distinctive character designs; compare "Astro Boy" to the underrated 2001 anime film Metropolis, which stunningly brought his world into 2-D animation.

Astro Boy has a truly rare feature - a telephone performance by Nicolas Cage. This guy would go on to give some of the weakest performances of screen grief I've ever seen in Mandy and Pig. Like Tenma, he just goes through the motions.

Basically, as far as the reimagining of the Mighty Atom goes, Imagi's "Astro Boy" is no "Pluto." Drawn by Naoki Urasawa, Pluto retells the Astro Boy World's Greatest Robot arc as a cyber-noir detective story - read my review of "Pluto" here. (And yes, Dr. Tenma in Urasawa's horror-thriller manga Monster is named after the one in Astro Boy.)

Due to the failure of "Astro Boy", Imagi's plans for more manga/anime adaptations on the silver screen remained unrealized. We should probably be thankful that they were.

Astro Boy has an open ending, with Astro flying off to face an alien monster that has come out of nowhere to attack Metro City. Obviously no sequel followed, but the film ends with room for more. While Astro Boy was in production, Imagi was already working on their next two films. One would be "Gatchaman," an adaptation of a 1970s anime about a five-person superhero team of "scientific ninjas." (Gatchaman is the original Super Sentai, aka the original Japanese version of the show Americans know as Power Rangers.) Imagi's Gatchaman was far enough along that a two-minute teaser was released (see below). However, when the studio went under, so did the film.

Imagi also planned "T28", an adaptation of others OG Japanese robot franchise: Mitsuteru Yokoyama's manga Tetsujin-28, about a scientist's son who operates a remote control robot. (The series was published as Gigantor in the US) As Gatchaman, a teaser is all that came from "T28".

Demo reel by former Imagi animator Mak Ching Lok also indicates that the studio may have wanted to adapt "Trigun," Yasuhiro Nightow's space western manga/anime. The reel includes an unfinished and uncolored segment of "Trigun" hero Vash Stampedeto making his way to the bar and asking for a drink refill. No other details have emerged about the potential "Trigun" movie from Imagi.

In 2023, Studio Orange has produced a new Trigun anime - 'Trigun: Stampede' - that depicts the world of Nightow with 3-D CGI animation. On that alone, Imagi was ahead of its time. With "Astro Boy" they were not.