I saw Astro the first time on a french TV channel back in 1986. It was the french version of the ep '
Outer Spaceport R45 (french title '
Le pirates de l'espace'). I remember tuning in just as the opening credits passed by, hence I had no idea about what kind of series awaits me. I was sitting on the couch quite impressed about Matthew Tenisson's rocket battle with the space pirates (I was very fond of animated science fiction stories at that time), and then suddenly this cute little robot was appearing, along with his cute french voice - I immediately fell in love with him
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
. He captured my heart even more firmly as I saw him running along the rockets' runway to eventually taking off doing his arm-wise astroboy flying pose.
The scene as he emerged on the escalator also had stuck in my mind through all those years, and of course, Astro's summary at the ep's end in which the viewer had to find a mistake Astro deliberately had built in just gave me the rest for my now 20 year lasting boy robot passion. After the ep was over I immediately made a few attempts of drawing him on some sheets that were lying around.
Although I was regarded as 'uncool' by my former classmates for watching the show I didn't care about their opinions and started watching nearly every following episode.
I had a short rediscovery in 1996 as I spotted a picture of him in a science fiction cyclopedia, thereafter I bought some Astroboy-mangas in french published by the french distributor 'Glénat' , but it wasn't until september 2002 Astro got me again for real when I strolled through an anime store suddenly spotting some german dubbed VHS tapes containing the 80's eps 2 to 6.
Thanks to the internet I was able to order the whole bunch of Astroboy VHS tapes by Siren Entertainment. They had become collector's items since.
That was my "close encounter of the boy robot kind".
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)