Atlas

Toby22.jpg Appearances
Atlas is an antagonist who appears in all of the Astro Boy series. He is a robot with the ability to defy the rules of robotics present in the Astro Boy universe and can in fact hurt humans. While his appearances were brief in the original 1960s series, he remains with a major role in the 1980s and 2003 series.

In the 1980s series, creator Osamu Tezuka chose to develop this character's role to be more involved in the story. In this series, Atlas was actually built using the exact same blueprint developed for creating Astro Boy; these blueprints had been stolen by the criminal Skunk, another common antagonist of the more modern Astro Boy stories. Atlas' facial features resemble those of Astro, but his overall appearance varies greatly, with a red body and gold hair.

Rather than simply being a confused robot who carried out the commands of his human creator with no knowledge of the repercussions of his actions, he was given what was known as the Omega Factor, a device that allowed him the ability to hurt humans. Early in the series, Atlas' body was severely damaged, along with that of his beloved robotic caretaker, Livian. It was after this event that Atlas rebuilt his and Livian's bodies into the adult, warrior-like appearances that they remained in for the rest of the series until his final encounter with Astro.

In the 2003 series, his name was originally Dichi, and he was the robot son to Tokugawa and raised to be the first robot to be CEO. At first, Tokugawa cared very dearly for Dichi and even set up a birthday for him, giving him an Atlas for his present (hence where he got his alias) and told them one day they could see the world from the moon, however with work getting in the way he spent less and less time with Dichi and even ignored him completely. Mr. Tokugawa believed he gave all Dichi needed in material needs, completely unaware of the lack of emotional needs to the point Dichi rebelled against him and lead a bike gang to cause trouble all while keeping the "perfect son" image in front of his father. After being rebuilt by Dr. Tenma, he used his new found powers to destroy Tokugawa Industries until Astro Boy stopped him. He later returned to destroy Tokugawa's moon base, but he had a change of heart in killing Tokugawa when he saw the earth just like his father promised him all those years ago. He often sarcastically called Astro Boy "brother", due to the fact they were both built by Tenma.

Manga appearances
Atlas made his original appearance in the manga chapter "Atlas" where he was created by the South American roboticist Dr. Ram rather than Tenma. His purpose was to take revenge on the white men who oppressed Ram's ancestors. Ultimately, Atlas is killed in his final bout with Astro. Atlas' appearance in this chapter provided the basis for Atlas in 2003.

He made another manga appearance in Astro vs. Atlas which served as the basis for his 80's anime storyline. After being created by Count Giss Atlas is tasked with destroying Astro. He finds Astro who is in pursuit of Giss' castle and the two engage in a somewhat friendly rivalry. Atlas eventually decides to end the battle by using his exploding urine attack. Astro informs him that he should go in a toilet and Atlas flies back to Giss' castle destroying it. Atlas is unharmed but Giss' plans are foiled as Atlas resolves to be a better robot like Astro. His appearance here is exactly the same as his child appearance in Shin Tetsuwan Atomu( Astroboy 1980).