I grew up with Astro Boy. I remember he came on Global in the mornings before school and then on Saturday afternoons. He was brave and gentle and wise. He had rocket boots and machine guns in his butt. And frankly, if I remembered anything more than that I’d probably lose my mind over all the minute changes made to the mythos as done in the new CGI Astro Boy.

The reaction from the hardcore fan community has ranged from the valid (“It was cute, and fun. A little morbid for kids”) to the debateable (“[Astro Boy] had a quasi adolescent voice”), to the just plain demented (“Astro Boy doesn't look Asian”). No, this Astro Boy is not perfect, but it’s the Superman Returns of anime adaptations with so much riding on it after so many years of development. And for the record, no character, in any anime ever, has looked even remotely Asian.

Another note for the record is that I actually liked Freddie Highmore as Astro, the post-modern Pinocchio who was the real boy Toby until he’s killed in accident and resurrected in a robot body by the brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma voiced here by Nicolas Cage. It’s a credit to Cage as a personality that his lunacy is able to translate to a cartoon character, but of all the veritable actors who contribute a voice to this film –with the possible exception of Donald Sutherland finding his inner Bauer Power as Metro City’s President– Cage stands out the most.

But the who’s who of voices is almost inconsequential, and it should be, because Astro Boy is bright with action, and dark in plot points. If you’ve seen Steven Spielberg’s A.I. or the history lesson The Second Renaissance segments of The Animatrix, then you’ll recognize several winks and nods in Astro Boy. Metro City floats above the Earth living in opulence and the Homer Simpson “Can’t Someone Else Do It” philosophy thanks to robot servants, which are then horribly discarded to the Earth below once then outlive their usefulness.

There’s a lot of Astro Boy that skims the surface of social commentary and historical allegory. It’ll go over the kids’ heads, but damned if some of it ain’t kind of creepy. At this point we get the R.R.F., or the Robot Revolutionary Front, a group of bumbling, English accented, robotic Marxists that believe in equality and liberté for all robots. A cynical person might see this as a sign that Astro Boy is communist propaganda in a new era of leftist oligarchy. But really, the R.R.F. are about as effective as Team Rocket is in the field of Pokémon collecting.

With the insertion of mixed grown-up messages along with the youthful, colourful fun and adventure, Astro Boy comes dangerously close to hodge-podging themselves into a stylistic corner that would have shrunk the target audience down to the six people that get the “Worker and Parasite” gag from The Simpsons episode “Krusty Gets Kancelled.” But as soon as the fascistic Stone gets “absorbed” (as explained through the movies woefully inaccurate science) by the giant Peacekeeper robot and pursues Astro in a rampage across Metro City, you can’t help but find your inner-child again.

Overall, I found Astro Boy a satisfying adventure film that had a few laughs and a decent amount of fun despite dark themes of loss and confusing political and environmental allegories. But the best moment, perhaps, comes at the end. Just as Metro City seems safe and sound, a giant one-eyed squid creature appears in the sky, and Astro takes off with a power punch at the ready. It’s almost at this point that you want to see the movie continue, it’s just such a wonderful tip of the hat to the occasional absurdities of anime. But alas, I guess there must be something saved for the sequel.