For me it's hard to tell because I haven't seen that many episodes from the new series yet. I think a lot of us grew up with the 80's version, and so it's always difficult to accept a remake of somethig which you saw and loved as a kid.
I think it's important to maintain a certain objectiveness to everything new. In my opinion, the new version of Astroboy is still very well made, because Astro still looks like Astro, no matter whether it's the 60's, 80's or 03' anime or even the mangas.
However, people who grew up with the 60's anime have to deal not only with one remake but with two remakes, so actually for them it's harder to look at those in an unbiased view.
In a remake, there's always a lack of certain feelings and atmosphere which came over in a former production. Take Astro's birth for instance:
In the new version as Astro comes to life, there's a lot more technical stuff going on during his awakening than shown in the 80's version, so it's actually a lot more plausible like that. But yet I think, Astro's birth in the 80's version features a certain kind of 'atmosphere'. Maybe it's because of the background music (I like Franz List's 'Prelude' a lot), maybe it's because of the way the scenes are changing, I don't know for sure. However, this is just my personal feeling when I compare these two eps with each other

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Anyway, do you understand what i mean? Everyone has their own personal favourite Anime-versions of Astro, and I think that's quite an interesting thing, otherwise this forum wouldn't be like the wonderful way it is if we all would be at the same opinion every time

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