Trivia / Pluto

• All-Star Cast: The anime’s English dub cast includes several voice actors who don’t often dub anime, notably Adrian Pasdar, Fred Tatasciore, Nolan North, Eric Bauza and Keythe Farley.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The English dub has Keith David playing Dr Tenma.
• Development Hell: The anime was announced in 2017. After six years, it finally premiered on Netflix in 2023. According to animators who worked on it, the production was just as hellish, with frequent interference from Urasawa himself regarding how everything should look. Animator Hirofumi Masuda was particularly vocal about his time on the anime being wasted due in no small part to Urasawa's constant meddling.
• Playing Against Type: A Reused Character Design version. Urasawa gives the philanthropic Epsilon the same character design as the sociopathic Johan from Monster. In the English dub, Johan's voice actor Keith Silverstein voiced Epsilon which goes full circle.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • SungWon Cho, the voice of BRAU-1589 in the anime adaptation's English dub, has cited the original manga as being one of his all-time favorites. Twelve years before the anime's debut, he even voiced and edited a fandub of Gesicht and BRAU's meeting from the manga.
  • Patrick Seitz (who both directed/wrote the dub & voiced North No. 2) became a huge Urasawa fan after working on Monster and publicly lobbied for the opportunity to work on Pluto which, of course, came true.
• Reality Subtext: The Iraq War and Saddam Hussein's capture and execution loom large in the story, despite ostensibly taking place in the future. Pluto debuted in 2003, which in the original Astro Boy manga from the 1950s was the year Astro was created, but in real life was the year the Iraq War began.
• Role Reprise: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Dr. Tenma is voiced by Jorge Roig Sr., who voiced the same character in the 1980 version of Astro Boy.
  • In his cameo, Black Jack is voiced in Japanese by Akio Ōtsuka and in English by Kirk Thornton, just like in the OVAs of his own series.
• You Sound Familiar:
  • Gesicht's wife, Helena is voiced by Romi Park in the anime, prior to this Park had voiced Astro/Atom himself in Go Astro Boy Go!.
  • In the English dub, some of Monster's voice cast were reunited like Patrick Seitz (Wolfgang Grimmer) as North No. 2, Richard Epcar (Inspector Lunge) as Hercules and Keith Silverstein (Johan Liebert) as Epsilon. Seitz also directed and wrote the anime adaptation’s English dub much like he did in Monster. In addition, as an intentional Casting Gag, Paul St. Peter (Reichwein) ends up playing the character who Reichwein is based off of, Professor Ban, using the exact same voice he used for Reichwein.

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