A store themed around the work of "Astro Boy" manga artist Osamu Tezuka opened earlier this month in Tokyo's Asakusa district, putting an array of available products on display, from traditional Japanese crafts to artificial intelligence robots. The Tezuka Osamu Shop & Cafe is currently the only store, apart from the artist's memorial museum in western Hyogo Prefecture where he grew up, that sells character goods featuring his manga and anime, according to the shop's operator. With theme songs from his animation work playing in the background, the first floor displays approximately 300 types of merchandise, including wooden kokeshi (Japanese dolls) in the shape of characters including Astro Boy and his father figure Professor Ochanomizu, as well as ties featuring another masterpiece, "Phoenix," made in traditional Nishijin textiles. "Astro Boy" tells the stories of the adventures of a boy android with human emotions. The sci-fi manga series, serialized from 1952 to 1968 and also adapted into an animation series, has many fans in Asia and beyond.

PARIS – A rare series of sketches featuring "Astro Boy," the robot character created by late Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka, fetched a record 269,400 euros ($322,300) for works by the artist at an auction Saturday in Paris. Auction house Artcurial said the successful bid was nearly five times the estimated bid price of between 40,000 to 60,000 euros. Artcurial said it is very rare for the original drawings of Tezuka (1928-1989) to be auctioned, and that the successful bid was likely the largest ever for the cartoonist's work. The drawings comprise six panels of a page of a comic and depict Astro Boy's fight with an enemy. They were published in a manga magazine in Japan around 1956 or 1957.

A kit to gradually assemble an artificial intelligence-programmed robot based on Astro Boy, an iconic work by the late manga artist Osamu Tezuka, will be put on sale, Kodansha Ltd. and other firms said Wednesday. Parts needed to build the 44-cm robot will be available in a weekly magazine to be published from April by Kodansha, the publisher and its partner technology firms said. The AI-equipped humanoid robot, which can recognize the faces of people and chat, can be assembled with 70 issues of the magazine, with a total expense of around ¥180,000 (around $1,600). "This is a dream-like project, connecting fantasy and science," said Makoto Tezuka, the son of the manga writer and a director at Tezuka Productions. The project, launched by Kodansha, the studio, NTT Docomo Inc., Fuji Soft Inc. and Vaio Corp., commemorates the 90th anniversary of Tezuka's birth in 1928.