ATOM: The Beginning Vol. 1

ATOM: The Beginning is an aesthetically striking series that blazes its own trail and also speaks to fans of the iconic Astro Boy and God of Manga Osamu Tezuka. It’s a story chock-full of both heart and humor for fans of action-packed science fiction, robots, and manga.

ATOM: The Beginning is an original manga based on the God of Manga Osamu Tezuka’s world-famous series Astro Boy. It works both as a prequel to the original series, telling the stories of the developers of the artificial intelligence that would eventually give birth to the iconic Atom, and as a stand-alone sci-fi manga about the turbulent lives of two robotic engineering students and their latest revolutionary project: the unassuming yet insanely strong A106, or “Six.”

Osamu Tezuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator whose revolutionary comics earned him the title of manga no kamisama (“God of Manga”). His body of work is one of the largest and most prolific in all of Japanese culture, and he produced several of the country’s greatest drawn stories for both children and adults, including the iconic Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, Black Jack, Dororo, Message to Adolf, and Princess Knight. Tezuka passed away in 1989.
 
Masami Yuuki is a manga artist and member of the artist group Headgear. He is most known for his celebrated manga series Mobile Police Patlabor, which has spawned many spin-offs and adaptations into anime, movies, live-action projects, novels, video games, and more.

Tetsuro Kasahara is a manga artist whose body of work revolves mostly around the robot and mecha genres. One of his most famous works, RideBack, was adapted into an anime in 2009. Now, he is focusing on ATOM: The Beginning, a prequel to Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy.