Yes. Pluto is a reimagining of a specific story arc from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) called 'The Greatest Robot on Earth' (1964). Naoki Urasawa took this classic shonen battle story and transformed it into a mature, complex murder mystery thriller, shifting the protagonist from Atom to the robot detective Gesicht.

The entity known as Pluto is the physical executor of the murders, a massive, horned robot capable of manipulating weather and creating tornadoes. However, Pluto is controlled by a mysterious consciousness. The investigation reveals a deeper conspiracy involving a grieving father and a vengeful AI created from pure hatred.

In Pluto, the ability to dream or have nightmares is a sign of an AI evolving to a near-human level of consciousness. Gesicht and Atom both experience nightmares, which are actually fragmented memories or traumatic data that their systems cannot fully process or delete, signifying their psychological depth.

It is a fictional conflict in the series that mirrors the real-world Iraq War. The United States of Thracia accused the Persian Kingdom of developing robots of mass destruction. A peacekeeping force, including the world's seven strongest robots, was sent in. They found no such weapons, but the war caused immense destruction and radicalized the survivors, setting the stage for the story's events.

Generally, no. Robots are bound by Article 13 of the Robot Laws (similar to Asimov's Laws), which forbids them from harming humans. However, the story hinges on a unique anomaly: a robot that can kill a human. The mystery of how and why this is possible is central to the plot.