It was serialized in Shogakukan's seinen manga magazine Big Comic Original from September 2003 to April 2009, with its chapters collected into eight tankōbon volumes. The series is based on the Tezuka Osamu's Tetsuwan Atom/Astro Boy classic manga series, specifically a reboot of "The Greatest Robot on Earth" (地上最大のロボット, Chijō Saidai no Robotto) story arc, and named after the arc's chief villain.
Urasawa reinterprets the story as a suspenseful murder mystery starring Gesicht, a Europol robot detective trying to solve the case of a string of robot and human deaths.
Nagasaki Takashi is credited as the series' co-author. Tezuka Macoto, Tezuka Osamu's son, supervised the series, and Tezuka Productions is listed as having given cooperation. The series was licensed and released in English in North America by Viz Media under the name PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka.
PLUTO was a critical and commercial success, winning several awards, including the ninth Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, and selling over 8.5 million copies. An original net anime series, produced by Genco and Tezuka Productions, and animated by Studio M2, premiered on Netflix in 2023.
