‘Astro Boy’ Prequel ‘Atom The Beginning’ Anime Adaptation Will Premier in Spring 2017

Tetsuro Kasahara's "Atom The Beginning" manga will soon be available for anime and "Astro Boy" fans to watch after Tezuka Productions opened a website on Sunday for its anime adaptation. The website has already listed staff and has already confirmed that the "Atom the Beginning" anime will premiere in Spring 2017.

The website opened by Tezuka Productions, according to a report from Anime News Network, has also opened a streaming promotional video which features the narration of the anime that says the anime is about the 'episode zero' story leading up to the birth of Astro Boy which obviously promotes a prequel of Astro Boy.

AniTay has reported that the anime will be directed by Tatsuo Sato. "Atom the Beginning" anime will be animated at OLM, Production I.G, Signal.MD, with Katsuyuki Motohiro as the Chief Director.

"Atom The Beginning" was launched by Kasahara in Shogakukan's Monthly Hero's magazine in December 2014 and served as a prequel of the "Astro Boy" manga by Osamu Tezuka. His son, Makoto Tezuka handles the manga's editorial supervision and the series will be in collaboration with Tezuka Productions.

The story of "Atom The Beginning" is set in Japan, after a great calamity. There used to be two geniuses who dreamed of the future namely Umataro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochanomizu. They worked day and night in researching about robots. The two geniuses, however, was trying to create two different kinds of robot; Tenma was looking to create a "god," while Ochanomizu wanted to create a "friend." This has resulted to creating a robot, A106, being born both from their separate ideas. But the real question of the story line was if the robot A106 was created to be a god, or a friend?

The anime adaptation of "Atom The Beginning" tells the story as to why, and how Astro Boy was created, and what happened up until he was born. This prequel serves as the "episode zero" of the story.