Produced by Tezuka Productions, Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, Dentsu, Animax and Fuji Television, it was directed by Kazuya Konaka, with Marc Handler as the story editor, Shinji Seya designing the characters, Shinji Aramaki and Takeshi Takakura designing the mechanical elements, Keiichirō Mochizuki serving as chief animation director, and Takashi Yoshimatsu composing the music.

Professor Ochanomizu replaces Tenma as head of the Ministry of Science and discovers a boy-like robot and brings it to life and names him Atom (Astro).

Most of the core cast becomes involved in the goal to stop the war between man and machine, until Atom convinces the Blue Knight that humans and robots can be friends.

However, Lamp, who is still paranoid (despite the fact the robots have stopped their crusade against humanity), tries to destroy the spacecraft with a missile, but Atom blocks the attack and is seemingly taken offline.

In one final attempt to reclaim his lost son, Dr. Tenma goes to a laboratory in the Ministry of Science and tries to convince Atom to join him in ruling the world but the latter refuses.

The base of the series is different from the original Astro Boy, as it is more of an epic drama with various episodes depicting the coexistence, confrontation, all-out conflict, and reconciliation between robots and humans in a grounded and serious way.

[9] In North America, Astro Boy was released on DVD in one single box set by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in its United States edited form.

An action video game, simply titled Astro Boy, was developed by Sonic Team and released for the PlayStation 2 in 2004 in Japan and North America and in 2005 in Europe.

Three original theatrical movies were shown exclusively at the 300-inch theater in the Kyōto Station building's "Kyoto Osamu Tezuka World" until its closure on January 16, 2011.

The 2003 version of Astro Boy was extremely well reviewed by Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network, receiving a grade of A+ in every category and comments of, "It's perfect.