ASTRO BOY (2002)

Everything's been coming up Astro lately: Dark Horse Comics is releasing English-language reprints of Osamu Tezuka's groundbreaking original manga, the black-and-white episodes that stunned U.S. youngsters in the early 1960s are now on video, a big-screen treatment is en route for 2004, and now the second animated-series version -- made in color for Japanese TV -- is hitting video. Not to mention that Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg seem to have swiped half of A.I. from little Tetsuwan Atom -- if you doubt it, check out ''The Birth of Astro Boy'' and ''Robot Circus.'' Not as weird or influential as the '60s version, but way more compelling than ''Pokemon.''