While the size of his posterior amused me (hey, that's where his machine guns were, after all!), something else caught my attention. When they mention "the effort to make the character friendlier to a Western audience", I thought that this extra dose 'friendliness' was not necessary. After all, we are already familiar with Astro Boy (at least, the older fans are), so it will be more like revisiting an old friend, who hopefully hasn't changed into something unrecognizable.

It was a byproduct of ageing him and tweaking his looks.

Well. I was hoping that once they were done aging and tweaking his looks [-__-], they'd be able to work on making him look more Japanese~!! Astro Boy's an anime, 3D shouldn't change that.

So let me get this straight: they're trying to modernize Astroboy? ...I can't say that I'm familiar with the series (because I only know the image of the main character), but I really do hope that these people don't destroy what his character stands for in the process. -_-...

Imagi probably wanted their main character look to distinct their take on Astroboy from the original since they don't own rights to the original character design.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks

First, yay for someone standing up to the Anorexic Silver Screen! =P

Second...

“By request, we needed to have a fuller rear and we added a control where we could control the size of his bum.”

lolbum.

For shame, Imagi. For SHAME! Who cares about the @$$. Where's the original costume? I am not going to watch Astro Boy pull a Lupin III on me!

ARIGATO, COUGAR SAMA!! Astro Boy was designed to be a kawaii six-year japanese automaton with his classic uniform, not a twelve year-old dork who probably looks like any average human being. You want to make a homage to Astro Boy? Give him the same uniform! If the character appears in the same scene everytime you see it and you like it, don't change it!