Pluto – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Episode 5

Episode 5 of Pluto begins with a flashback of Adolf’s brother running from Gesicht. He tosses a bag of a robot’s remains Gesicht’s way, angering him. Adolf continues throwing shade at Gesicht for murdering his brother. Gesicht drops Adolf off at the safe house and promises him he’ll return in an hour. Adolf recalls more tidbits from the droid he murdered at the restroom. The droid told him he’d find a weapon near the safe house that would assist him in murdering Gesicht. 

Suddenly, his wife (Ilsa) and son (Hans) arrive. Gesicht revisits Brau who realizes Gesicht remembers being a murderous robot like himself. Hans explores the safehouse and admires it. Adolf tells Ilsa the truth and she can’t believe he’s trying to kill Gesicht. She feels Gesicht was in the right when he killed Adolf’s brother, given all the terrible things his brother did. She says robots can malfunction and doesn’t believe Gesicht killed Adolf’s brother out of hatred. 

We transition to Brau theorizing that possibility during his discussion with Gesicht. We see more of Adolf’s brother’s murder play out and learn that Gesicht killed him because of the cruelty he’s shown to robot-kind. Brau offers Gesicht a chance to scratch that itch again by attacking him, but Gesicht refuses. We cut to Hercules fighting numerous robotic opponents at the WPKKR arena. Several men pick up Hoffman to take him to a safer location. He warns Epsilon and Hercules to stay safe and informs them that Gesicht’s investigating. 

Hercules and Epsilon sense a strong electromagnetic force approaching. Hercules tells Epsilon to flee since he doesn’t want him holding him back. Hercules ponders if Epsilon made the best decision not to participate in the war. He tells Epsilon the enemy he’s about to fight is a ghost of those who fell in the war and feels Epsilon has no business here since he bears no guilt. Epsilon argues Atom didn’t carry guilt but was killed, but after noticing Hercules’s quiet response, he thinks otherwise. 

Epsilon promises to stay 3,000 meters behind as Hercules suits up, readying himself for Pluto. Hercules fights Pluto while a bear commentates on the battle, alluding to Hercules’s inevitable demise. However, Hercules slams Pluto to the surface as we cut to a scene involving the 99th military tribunal swearing in Darius XIV. Darius shares his opinion on God’s views of humanity as a worthless species and feels robots should replace them.

Several attendees belittle Darius for his contradictions as he stands by his remarks. Two men escort him away as more people yell at him as he asks someone to bring him crayons. Meanwhile, Epsilon analyzes the situation as pieces of Pluto and Hercules soar in the sky. He notices Hercules’s human body moving without his head attached to it. Hercules’s body jumps into the ocean. Hercules wrestles Pluto and plans to remove his head. Epsilon believes if he assists Hercules, they may have a chance to win against Pluto. 

Suddenly, Hercules and Epsilon get sent images of the past while being affected by Pluto’s electromagnetic waves. At the same time, the military tribunal’s guards notice Darius drawing the same field of flowers Uran’s friend painted in a previous chapter. During his art project, Darius claims a great flood will occur on Earth and God will choose Pluto to be the planet’s sole survivor. Hercules explodes as Epsilon questions why he’s retreating from the scene. 

Epsilon tries informing Gesicht of what happened but notices Gesicht cut off the channel. We see Gesicht driving somewhere. He’s troubled by the realization that he murdered Adolf’s brother. Gesicht recalls a time when two parental groups, one human and one robotic learn of the news of their offspring’s deaths. While the human parents cry in pain, the robot family doesn’t. They semi-understand the human parents’ dismay for losing their child but don’t display any saddening emotions. 

However, the robot family is thankful they got to experience what having a family feels like. Gesicht introduces himself to other inspectors for a case involving robot children. He promises to look into the investigation from a different perspective to avoid his involvement feeling like a conflict of interest. After going over the case’s credentials and pinpointing Adolf’s brother as the perpetrator behind the attacks, we see the scene involving Gesicht and Adolf’s brother play out again.

Gesicht returns to the safehouse and tells Adolf and Meyer he plans to protect Adolf again and abandon his other mission. While driving Adolf, Ilsa, and Hans somewhere, an unexpected vehicle follows Gesicht and them. Adolf says they’re carrying a weapon that’s capable of killing Gesicht and he pleads with Gesicht to save them despite all the terrible things he’s said to him. The assailant trailing them fires the cluster cannon, causing Gesicht’s vehicle to crash. 

The person following them ends up being the cult leader’s henchman. Gesicht uses his weapon to protect Adolf from the henchman’s attack. He proceeds to knock the henchmen out with sleeping gas. While in bad shape, Adolf thanks Gesicht for saving his life despite all the mean things he’s said about him. Gesicht asks Adolf if hatred ever disappears as the thing he’s most afraid of is himself. Meanwhile, several adults gossip about Uran’s personality change and know it’s due to her losing Atom. 

Uran senses someone feeling immense pain and stumbles upon a cat and a boy on a bridge. She tells the boy there’s no use jumping due to the electromagnetic net below. The boy reveals all the pain he’s suffered from bullying and other dilemmas and feels death is the only option. Uran says she can’t understand what it feels like to want to die since she’s a robot. She wonders if she’d harbor the same emotions if she was human like him. Uran hands the cat to the boy and asks him to get it milk. 

She leaves to help an elderly man with his issue. She senses sadness from another direction and it leads her to a shrine and gravestone reading “Tobio Tenma” (Atom’s true name). We cut to Ochanomizu discussing his qualms against a state funeral for Atom. Suddenly, Tenma arrives and Ochanomizu believes he’s the only one who can save Atom’s life. However, Tenma says he’s only arrived to say farewell to Atom. While looking at Atom in his unconscious state, Tenma recalls a memory he had with him. 

This memory encourages Tenma to work 18 hours straight in an attempt to revive Atom. Tenma praises Ochanomizu for his efforts at trying to revive Atom but Ochanomizu questions why Atom hasn’t awakened from the procedure yet. He informs Tenma about the cases that have occurred thus far involving the other advanced AI and the members of the Bora. Ochamizu asks him if he knows about Goji but Tenma says he doesn’t.

Tenma confirms his robot AI shouldn’t be wasted for robot army purposes. However, he admits someone commissioned him to build a perfect robot in the past. This robot could do everything a human could do and feel, but Tenma said it refused to wake up. Tenma said he knew how to forcefully inject it with unbalanced emotions to wake it up but chose not to. He confirms he doesn’t know what became of the robot and Ochanomizu asks him if Atom could be in a similar state. 

He wonders if it’d be smart to apply Tenma’s unbalanced emotions method to wake Atom up. We return to the dinner flashback where Tenma reveals Atom’s name “Tobio” which is based on his deceased human son. He compares the two and questions if the real Tobio would despise him. Meanwhile, Gesicht arrives at the prison holding Darius XIV. Gesicht interviews Darius in his cell, asking him questions regarding the robot and Bora member murders. 

Darius argues the Bora ruined his country and that the robot from their nation was birthed there. He argues the robot was reborn with a powerful body spawned by hatred. He points toward his field of flowers drawing and name drops Pluto, enticing Gesicht to ask him who Pluto is. Darius attempts suicide, resulting in guards entering the area to retrieve him. Epsilon arrives to show Gesicht things Hercules left behind after his fatal battle with Pluto. He transmutes an image he felt through the battle’s electromagnetic waves to Gesicht. 

The episode closes with Gesicht seeing a man standing in a field of flowers, indicating that this person is Pluto. 

The Episode Review

Pluto delivers another chapter with great depth and intrigue. Although some story decisions may throw fans for a loop, it was a wonderfully crafted chapter throughout. From Adolf’s stellar development to the hints we receive regarding Pluto’s origin, it’ll be hard for viewers not to be hooked by the intel shared in this episode.

At the same time, this chapter contains some aspects that’ll bug audiences. Tenma showing up out of the blue may spark a few concerns from several viewers. The previous chapter alluded to him being hard to reach with Ochanomizu failing to receive a response from him to Hoffman declaring that it’s been years since he cropped up in places. 

For Tenma to arrive at the Ministry of Defense building after years of being missing in action, feels a bit too convenient from a storytelling perspective. While fans will appreciate him putting in hours of effort to save Atom’s life, others may feel like his appearance in the story feels somewhat contrived, given the information we received a prior episode ago. 

In addition to having a weird animation error during the battle between Hercules and Pluto, this episode wasn’t a flawless one. Nevertheless, the themes it touches upon regarding death, grudges, and hatred were handled beautifully through cleverly inserted flashbacks to marvelously written character interactions. With three episodes to go, I’m excited to see how this tale unfolds.