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.

Robots aren't supposed to be any good at art, that's what differentiates them from us humans. But it looks like that might no longer be true thanks to a piece of classical music that was unveiled during Future Technology Week at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The piece, titled'Ode to Dubai', is the world's first theme song for a city composed purely by artificial intelligence. The AI, affectionately known as AIVA, reportedly used algorithms based on 30,000 symphonic music scores to create the unique composition. It mined the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, and you can definitely hear the resemblance.

As the deviously puzzling first half of HBO's "Westworld" has unfolded, sleuths on fan sites and reddit threads have spun elaborate theories about what is really going on in the futuristic, Wild West-themed amusement park of the title. We know that the park is an adult playground where human "guests" can carry out their most sadistic fantasies on the bodies of the grounds' life-like robot "hosts." We know that each day, after being raped, murdered, and otherwise violated for the pleasures of their guests, the robots are refurbished by Westworld staff, their memories wiped clean--but that, by a glitch in the system (or by some secret design), hosts like the obedient and good-hearted Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and the sharp-tongued bordello owner Maeve (Thandie Newton) are beginning to piece together their traumatic pasts. But there are so many essential things that we don't yet understand. Who was Arnold, the park's mysterious co-creator, who died somewhere within Westworld's borders and whose ghost seems to be haunting his android creations?