Something strangely sinister about this. Shame the video was so blurry, I wanted to see if Kenichi or Shunsaku got a cameo or something. You can’t see hardly anything by the end. Darn youtube compression.

What? No Ambassador Magma?

Otherwise, this commercial was really cute.

That video looks like it’d be gorgeous in regular TV quality….it’d be nice to see it as an extra on a future Tezuka anime release.
The appearances by Black Jack, Kimba and Princess Knight were nice to see too, alongside other lessknown Tezuka manga characters [I noticed Rock, Phoenix, .

Don’t forget Acetylene Lamp (the one with the candle on the back of his head)! :-)

Wow, and I thought the US was bad…

How sad.

Does anyone know how Tezuka felt about corporate shilling while he was alive?

Yep, sad to see the characters used this way. I wonder who has to approve this? His estate? How does this work in Japan?

And Kimba right next to his adult self? Huh!

I’m surprised nobody’s pointed out the irony that Astro Boy himself is powered by atomic energy.

There tends to be a split among fans over these things. Technically when he was still alive, his character had endorsed a lot of things anyway, so this is nothing new. I really don’t see it as a bad thing personally, it’s not a total sell-out sort of thing IMO (we just have the characters getting all “Ooh and “Awing” and the car and that’s that).