【Pluto】Thriller x Science Fiction! Set in the future, the story follows detective Gesicht as he goes after the man who is trying to kill the great seven robots!!

Pluto is a Japanese thriller manga series written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa.

The manga series was serialized in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original magazine from 2003 to 2009. It’s chapters were compiled and collected into 8 separate volumes. The series is based on the concept of Osamu Tezuka’s Astra Boy series. It was a huge success, with over 8.5 million copies in circulation. It won several awards such as the 9th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize and the 7th Japan Media Arts Festival.

Though an anime adaptation of the series was announced to be in production in 2017 by Studio M2, no news has been heard since.

The chapter begins, showing the scene of a mountain under flames. The Firefighters are trying to bring the fire under control, whilst looking for the victims that got caught up in it.

Professor Reinhart shows up looking for Montblanc, the famous hiking robot. But what he finds is the torn up pieces of his body scattered all around.

Two days later, Gesicht, a top Europol agent, Wakes up in his home. Sitting at the breakfast table, he reads newspaper while listening to the tragic news of Montblanc’s death. He gets a call regarding a homicide and leaves immediately for the crime scene.

At the crime scene, he meets up with the area inspector who debriefs him about the situation. Bernard Ranke, a member of the robot law protection society, was found dead in his apartment, with horn like objects protruding from his head. His apparent looks destroyed but nothing seems stolen.

As they look into the scene, the inspector receives a call about a suspicious man who broke through the cordon. Thinking that it is related to the murder, they immediately head to the scene, where they find an injured officer, along with the broken body of the robot cop named Robby.

Gesicht immediately springs into action and runs out on his own, into an abandoned building. There he slowly follows a clicking sound and finds a drug addict with a steel pipe in his hand. Scared of Gesicht, the addict denies anything about the murder while confessing to destroying the robot.

The addict suddenly springs the steel pipe at Gesicht’s head, but upon contact, the pipe just bounces off him, while he stands unfazed. Gesicht pins him down and puts a gun at his face, revealing himself to be a robot. He then apprehends the addict for destroying robby.

After the arrest, he heads to robby’s house to give his wife, who is also a robot, the new of her husbands passing. Though she is a robot, robby’s wife seems sad at his passing and when Gesicht offers to erase robby’s memories from her hard drive, she refuses and requests to let her keep her husband’s memories.

At the German Europol Office, Gesicht and his fellow investigators manage to connect Montblanc’s death with Bernard’s murder, as when Montblanc’s head was found after the fire had died down, he had the exact same two horn shaped objects around his head.

Furthur more, no traces of human tampering were found anywhere around the victims, which could only mean that a robot had killed them.

This is major news, as in the past eight years, there hasn’t been a murder done by a robot.

With a determined look in his eyes, Gesicht sets out to find whoever is behind the robot killings.

And thus begins his search! Will Gesicht be able to solve this case?