Someone Has Decided Astro Boy Was Not Fat Enough
Meet Astro Boy. He might have put on a few since you last saw him.
I have no words, so you only get quotes from Mainichi:
In a collaboration with decorated illustrator Lily Franky, Tezuka Productions has produced a version of Astro Boy (known as “Mighty Atom” in Japan) with fleshy jowls and a belly that wouldn’t look out of place on Japan’s other icons, sumo wrestlers.
Tezuka Productions insiders are calling the fat hero the “AvoCali Style” Astro Boy, taking the name from U.S.-created sushi dishes avocado-maki and California rolls. “Once upon a time, Americans never ate raw fish, but now they really want to find a delicious sushi,” Shimizu says. “In the same way, we want the collaboration that led to ‘AvoCali (Astro Boy)’ to take the character worldwide. There’s no future for Tezuka Productions surviving on Tezuka works alone.”
I would like to have been in the Tezuka Production conference room for that meeting. Mainly so I could have beaten them all with baseball bats.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.