Astroboy Holds Our Secrets

There was this cartoon called Astroboy about a boy robot who had an anime haircut (long before anime was popular) who could fly around on jet legs and did a lot of cool stuff that a normal boy could not do. He had x-ray eyes and a bunch of other stuff. Since he only spoke Japanese and since I watched it in English, his lips moved differently from what he said in English. It all seemed sort of exotic, like something that came from a different culture, with a different set of rules about what constituted entertainment. Here is the opening in English:



I haven't thought of Astroboy for a long time but I think they are probably going to make a Hollywood remake if they haven't already. Hollywood is not known for creative ideas these days. But what was weird about Astroboy is that you could watch him and imagine you are Astroboy. Or you could imagine that Astroboy was your friend. Even though he was just a boy robot, in an odd way you could feel connected to him. Even if his lips didn't match what he was saying.

Sometimes weird things pop into your head at odd times. Sometimes you remember weird stuff that happened a long time ago or people that you met once but have never seen since. I guess we just sew all this together like a big quilt. Speaking of quilts, when they made that big AIDs quilt I went to go to see it. I just wanted to see what it looked like. But I didn't stay long because I could not look at it as a casual observer since you could feel the people embedded in it. It is funny how people come up with the ideas to make things and the results have an overwhelming response to the people seeing it.