Pluto: Episode 2

October 29, 2023 10:33 AM - Season 1, Episode 2

Another horned corpse is found. Gesicht reaches out to Atom, the most advanced of the seven robots, to help analyze the serial murders.
posted by Alex404 (5 comments total)

Another great episode, though I didn't find it quite as impactful as a first. An 8/10 vs 10/10.

I guess part of the issue is that the core of this episode another humanizing story about a doomed robot, which was great, but not as novel. But this episode also did a lot more important stage setting, so maybe things will move a bit faster in the next one.

Still there were a number of interesting things going on:

- I really like how international the setting is. I also appreciate the pseudo-utopic nature of things. Maybe that veneer will get removed, but mostly society seems peaceful and healthy wherever we go.
- It made me a little nervous that we had a despot in charge of Iran at the centre of the past war. It would... lack imagination to have a war torn Middle East in our peaceful retro future. Having Brando be Turkish though eased my anxieties about this.
- I sometimes had a hard time of keeping track of which people were robots and which were humans, but I guess that was the point. The scene near the end where android-Brando gets disassembled and inserted into mecha-Brando was really powerful as a consequence of this.
- We actually spent time with Atom in this episode... so far he's a bit of a cipher, but I imagine he'll come more to to the fore soon.

Who are the 7 special robots, in the end? Definitely Atom, Brando, North #2, and Mont Blanc.

Is Hercules another one? I'm just noticing in the poster for the show there's seven characters, including Gesicht, and then some mystery silver haired person. We'll see!

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I guess I should be including my musings in the post itself. Anyway, as long as a couple people keep commenting I'll keep posting new Episodes. Otherwise we can just do a Full Season discussion at some point.
posted by Alex404 at 10:50 AM on October 29, 2023

It was strange to see Atom without any callbacks to Mighty Atom/Astro Boy. Of course, in Episode 1, we had a robot named Robby without any apparent reference to Robby.

Also strange, why would Gesicht, Atom and Brando feel the need to mimic human eating and drinking?

And why can't robots understand beauty? Or at least, fail to understand it in the same way that humans fail to understand it?
posted by SPrintF at 1:46 PM on October 29, 2023

I keep thinking this show is from the 80s or 90s. Quite well done.
posted by rebent at 6:57 PM on October 30, 2023

Pardon my slow thought and poor memory. Atom is Astro Boy! I didn't tumble to this until they introduced his creator, Dr Tenma, which jogged my recollection of Atom's story. Sumimasen!
posted by SPrintF at 1:52 PM on October 31, 2023

With that weird flashback to someone offering him a body for 500 something and the fact that Atom cried after copying his memory card I was suspecting Gesicht but I guess the fact that he was with Hercules when Brando was killed is a pretty good alibi. But seeing how Brando can put his consciousness into is battle suit who's to say that a robot can't be in 2 places at once.

Also I find it interesting that everyone thinks that Atom's AI is the most advanced because he acts the most human. His AI might be the most advanced at acting human but can't Gesicht's AI be better at investigating?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:19 PM on November 1, 2023