Astro Boy (アトム, Atomu?, lit. "Atom") is a title character and the protagonist of the Astro Boy franchise. Created by Osamu Tezuka, the character was introduced in the 1951 Captain Atom manga. Astro Boy has appeared in animated television shows (notably the 1963, 1980, 2003 series) and feature film adaptations of its eponymous manga, as well as a live-action TV series, other works by Tezuka, and video games. On 7 April 2003, the City of Niiza registered the character as an actual resident. He was also inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2004. Atom (known as Astro Boy or just Astro in the dub) originally appeared as a supporting character in the comic Atom Taishi (Ambassador Atom, sometimes referred to as Captain Atom), which appeared in Shonen, a monthly magazine for boys, in April 1951. Tezuka then created a comic series in which Atom was the main character. Osamu Tezuka created Atom to be, in the words of Frederik L. Schodt (creator of the English-language version of the Ast...