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Mitsuteru Yokoyama is one of my all-time favorite manga artists and I'm a big fan of Tetsujin 28-Go, also known as Gigantor. I made a tribute to my favorite stories, including Robbie and the Superhuman Kelly story arcs. Colors by @ruby_ruberri. #横山光輝 #鉄人28号
The most endearing things about Yokoyama's works for me is how simple and straightforward they are. The hero is Shotaro Kaneda, a boy detective with a gun and car, works with the police, and lives in mansion. You don't get many answers other than that, you just go along with it.
Tetsujin 28-Go is a very long series. In a lot of ways, the title character reminds me of Godzilla. In his first appearance, he's the villain, a massive weapon of death and destruction. But after a few years, he turns into a hero who fights for good against rival criminal robots.
After Tetsujin, Black Ox is the most popular robot in the series. Many people assume Black Ox is Tetsujin's arch-nemesis because of his menacing look. But after a quick quarrel during their first encounter, they become allies and fight alongside each other on many occasions.
Robbie is my favorite villain in the entire series, he's a very sympathetic and tragic character. He's a robot with AI who is forced by humans to do evil. He grows to hate humans and wants to create a robot utopia on Earth. He cannot understand Tetsujin, who allies with humans.
Another tragic character is Superhuman Kelly. He was a lab assistant who was forced to become a cyborg meant for space exploration. The experiment fails, killing Kelly, who is then buried by his brother Johnson. He is brought back to life by a strike of lightning upon his grave.
Tetsujin contains many references to the Universal monster movies. If Tetsujin was Frankenstein's monster, Kelly resembles that and the Invisible Man. Eventually, Kelly takes control of the robot Gilbert, the newest creation of Dr. Dragnet, the man who made him into a monster.
There's lots of misconceptions about the Tetsujin manga in english, likely conflated with the 2004 series. One is that Tetsujin was always created by Shotaro's father. This element was added for a re-release of the manga, which cuts out several important arcs of the original run.
A lot of the original Tetsujin series has been cut, edited or completely modified over the years and different editions. This was made either to simplify the stories and make it easier for new readers to get into, or possibly for Yokoyama's own personal reasons.
