Warning: Contains spoilers for Pluto.2023 saw the long-awaited release of Pluto, the anime adaptation of the dark Astro Boy reimagining by Naoki Urasawa of Monster and 20th Century Boys fame. The series had been in development since 2017 and ended up as a collaboration between Studio M2 and multiple other studios, including MAPPA, so there was a lot of pressure on it to be a hit.

With such a long development cycle, it was natural for people to be wary of how Pluto would turn out, but fortunately, there was nothing to be afraid of. When Pluto finally premiered in 2023, the series was met with unanimous praise from fans and critics alike, and it got to the point that Pluto currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. With Pluto being that well-received, it can be easily seen as one of the best anime of the past few years, and anyone who hasn’t already watched it would be remiss to it up any longer.

Pluto Is An Anime Worth Watching For The Visuals Alone

A Gorgeous Masterpiece From Start To Finish

The first thing that’s bound to draw people to Pluto is its art and animation, and that’s deserving of nothing but praise. Legendary mangaka Naoki Urasawa is famous for his highly detailed art style that strikes a perfect balance between realism and absurdism, and sure enough, Pluto’s anime perfectly translates the manga’s art style into animation with how much consistent detail is put into every scene. Urasawa was the perfect person to add realism to Osamu Tezuka’s signature goofy art style, and it looks even better in animation.

That level of detail does wonders to complement Pluto’s incredible animation. Whether it’s an intense action scene or something more down-to-earth, every scene in Pluto has some of the best animation in modern anime, with the vividness, attention to detail, and overall direction never failing to sell every scene as an amazing spectacle from start to finish. With Pluto taking so long to come out, it could only look like either a complete mess or a gorgeous work of art, and fortunately, it’s nothing but the latter in every regard.

Pluto Has One Of The Most Mature Narratives An Anime Could Ask For

Few Anime Are As Emotionally Gripping As Pluto

As great as the visuals are, what truly sells Pluto as a story is its dark and mature narrative. Another major hallmark of Naoki Urasawa’s style is his penchant for mysteries, with some of his best works involving characters slowly unraveling major conspiracies that take years to come together and reward people for paying as close attention as possible. Pluto is no different, as Pluto reworks Astro Boy’s “The Greatest Robot on Earth” from a very simple arc into a massive, character-driven mystery story, and calling it thrilling would be a gross understatement, to say the least.

What makes that narrative style work is the specific framework with which Pluto was written. Pluto’s story is made out to be a clear allegory for the Iraq War, and not only does it not shy away from how terrible that brutal slaughter of innocents was, but it also takes care to thoughtfully showcase how traumatic it was for both the soldiers and the people who ended up radicalized because of it. Pluto’s unflinching critique of the Iraq War makes for an amazing story, and few stories in and out of anime have even come close to matching it.

Tying it all together is the underlying humanity of Pluto’s writing. Going along with how much realism fuels Pluto’s story, the anime never shies away from making its cast vulnerable or flawed, with the heroes all being troubled by something as they try to do good, and even the villains usually have some sympathetic motives behind their actions, adding to the overall messiness of the aforementioned war story it tries to tell. Pluto is an amazing story because of how thoughtful and mature its writing is, and the fact that it’s also a gorgeous action anime is just a bonus.

Pluto Is The Dark Reimagining Of Astro Boy The World Needs

A Perfect Love Letter To One Of Anime's Biggest Icons

What makes Pluto even better is that it’s as great as it is while working in the framework of the Astro Boy anime. While Astro Boy wasn’t without its serious moments, the series is still a kid’s story at heart, so it could only go so far with its darker elements, and most adaptations kept to that mindset, as well. That’s what makes Pluto so great, though, as Pluto has the freedom to show how dark Astro Boy’s world could be while still paying respect to the original story, a true testament to Naoki Urasawa’s talent as a writer.

As goofy as Astro Boy was with its eccentric characters and Disney-inspired artwork, Tezuka tried to make it a more serious story whenever he could in a similar vein as stories like Dororo and Black Jack, and he even allegedly felt trapped by having to play into fans’ desire to see robot battles over everything else. The influence of Astro Boy on anime can’t be denied, but even so, Pluto is one of the best works for playing into the story Osamu Tezuka wanted Astro Boy to be, and that’s great for Tezuka fans old and new alike.

Pluto Doesn’t Deserve To Be So Underrated

Pluto Is An Anime Everyone Needs To Watch

Much has been said about why Pluto is such a great anime, and that begs the question of why it would even be considered underrated. Being a limited series is one thing, but since Pluto was licensed by Netflix, it was given little ment beyond the bare minimum and couldn’t maintain its momentum for very long due to all of its episodes coming out at once. Pluto is another anime that had its popularity crippled by Netflix’s release strategy, and even after almost two years, it has yet to fully recover from it, despite being one of Netflix’s best anime.

There’s still hope for Pluto to get proper recognition, of course. Pluto has been nominated at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards for Best Drama, and with how big those awards have become in recent years, Pluto winning at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards can help revive public interest in it and give it the recognition it deserves. There’s no telling if that’s how things will go, but Pluto’s mature writing and gorgeous animation make it an anime unlike any other, so even without an award, it’s an anime every person should watch at least once.