AstroBoy Online Forums

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've posted any of my own fan work here, hasn't it? I have recently been working on an original character and a three part story to go with her.

The matter Tobio's mom has been explored a lot of times, and she's usually ill-fated and tragic. (Such as one character I tried to make in 9th grade who died of mercury poisoning while Tobio was a baby?!) I wanted to work with the 2003 series with this character, experiment with body types, and make an updated modern mom who didn't die to further a male character. This is only one fan's idea, though, and you guys are all totally welcome to your own theories and stories.



This Risa Hoshigawa-Tenma, in something based on a scene in part 1/3 of something I'm writing with her. I imagined her as an important businesswoman working in the dealing and trade of robot pieces and construction. Part of her last name comes from the only known name for Tobio's mom, Hoshie, from that alternate universe manga.

I'll have the first part up in some hours from now!

"Look, just tell him we can't go any lower than 3500 wulongs per lot," Risa Hoshigawa ordered over the phone, her free hand pushing through a rack of designer cocktail dresses. "He should know that aluminum lining like that doesn't come cheap."

Tobio, meanwhile, skimmed the jewelry racks behind his mother. He gingerly picked up a set of opalescent blue earrings and turned to her, saying, “Mom, these would look great with the blazer you bought.”

She turned to examine them, and her eyes lit up with approval. “Toto, you’re right! I’ll get these, too.”

Tobio continued to scan the boutique while his mother concluded her business call. His gaze fell upon a modelling robot at the front of the store, sporting an emerald green business suit; it had silver buttons and a vest lined with dark green silk. It looked much like something his father would wear to work or dinner, and Tobio couldn't help but admire how dignified it could make even a primitive android mannequin look. He tried to imagine himself wearing something as dignified once he was grown up.

“Tobio?” She placed a gentle hand on his head, and he turned back to see her. “After I buy these, do you want to go get parfait?”

“O-Oh! Sure!” He tried to contain his excitement. It had been weeks since the last time they’d gone for ice cream.

It had been ages since he went with both his parents.

He winced a little, but pushed the thought behind him. His mother had her hand on his shoulder and was leading him to the cashier booth, and he remembered all the stories of her travels she would tell him over parfait.

Maybe things weren't so bad.


•••


Risa hated driving, especially in Metro City, but she was lucky enough to have her robot assistant. Hachita drove the courtesy car down to the suburbs, and Tobio were sure that if Hachita had expression capability, she’d have a big smile on her face.

Clutching his satchel, Tobio practically tumbled out of the car when they arrived at Tenma’s house, and Risa followed him laughing. She was a small, full-sized woman, but she certainly could keep up athletically. Tobio flung open the doors to the house and called out, “Dad! I’m home!”

Silence greeted them. Risa put a hand to her chin and looked around; the chances of Umataro being called into work on a Saturday in summer seemed highly unlikely. Robita churned by, a small collection of Tobio’s toys in her thin, metal arms.

“Ah, hello-Miss-Hoshigawa,” Robita chirped. Risa secretly appreciated the use of her maiden name. “The-doctor-is-out-in-his-workshop-if-you-need-him.”

Tobio led Risa and Hachita out to the garage behind Tenma’s compound, albeit this garage was certainly larger than the rest of the garages on the block. He must have expanded it for a lab, Risa thought to herself. She watched as her son opened the door and peered inside.

“Hey, dad! We’re back! Check out what mom brought me!”

Tenma was on one knee, his back to them, in the act of tightening the hinges on a home assistant robot’s central access panel. He pulled back from the robot, a tobacco pipe clenched between his teeth, and he hastily removed the magnifying scope from his right eye.

“Ah!” Tenma removed the pipe from his mouth, holding it like a smug scholar as always, even while on a knee in his garage. “What’ve you got to show me?”

Tobio fished from his satchel a stuffed cotton frog. Its big eyes and the line patterns along its back were stitched in a cavalcade of bright-coloured threads in yellow fabric. He clutched it proudly, exclaiming, “Mom worked in Oaxaca last week, and she got me this frog! He’s a piece of traditional folk art! A-And we went for parfait, and she told me all about when she was on the ferry from Los Mochis to La Paz, and on the way back, we saw someone from the Ministry testing a huge construction robot!”

Tenma gave the boy’s hair an approving tousle. “I’m glad you’ve had a good day.”

“I have a quick meeting in a little while, but I’ll be back to pick Toto up around four,” Risa added.

Tobio turned to the door, and then stopped. “I’ll be right back! I have to get something I made for Aunt Hachita!”

Hachita made an approving set of beeps and watched the boy dash off to the house. Tenma got to his feet, almost towering two feet over Hachita.

“’Aunt’ Hachita?” he scoffed.

Risa nodded, suddenly stern. “She’s part of my family, Umataro.”

“I find it a little foolish to let the poor child believe he can be related to a robot.”

“At least all of our robots combined pay more attention to him than you.”

Tenma accepted the jab, turning away to puff on his pipe as if the remark hadn’t cut into him as badly as it did. He could feel his ex-wife’s discontented gaze on him; she was a small woman, at least certainly smaller in height compared to him, but she had a stubbornness and courage that seemed larger than his own. It was part of what had drawn him to her in the first place.

“I suppose…” Tenma started, unintentionally drawling, “…That you feel I neglected you the same?”

Tobio rushed back into the garage, holding a sheet of vinyl decals he had decorated himself. “Here, Hachita! I wanted to decorate you with these.”

Hachita craned her ovaline head, making some pips of appreciation, and output the sound formation, “T-H-AN-K-Y-O-U.”Tobio began applying gold, glittery stars to her midsection, plotting out a solar system against her maroon plating.

“I was reading about the zodiac constellation formations,” he chirped. “I’ll try and build a few on you.”

Risa asked fondly, “Do you know all the legends about them?”

“Oh yeah!” Tobio was in the process of finishing Orion’s Belt. “Like, it started with sailors who needed a consistent way to map out their directions, when…”

Risa and Tenma listened, either one thrilled to find their son was becoming as intelligent as they hoped. Their eyes looked up, meeting each other’s briefly, and Tenma’s look shot back down to focus on the constellations in progress. But the one fleeting second was all Risa needed to know that she was considered his competition.

Risa’s business meeting was in about half an hour. Regardless, she put a hand on Hachita’s shoulder and listened away.

This sounds like an interresting twist on the story where the Tenma's are separarated with shared custody of Tobio. It makes more sense than the other ways that Tenma's fatherhood has been displayed.

Most of the time, Tenma has been displayed as a single parent with little explaination of what happened to Hoshie, or even that she ever existed. Tezuka did one respin where she DID exist, and they were married when Tobio died. This version of the Manga was associated with the "once upon a time" story arc.

I also expanded on a head cannon where the Tenma's marriage was intact in my fan fiction "the unchained melody of life" on fan fiction dot net, that one was based on the movie "Ghost".

The Japanese version of Ghost was better in my opinion.

Tobio sent his mother an email at least once a week, depending on how much homework he had and how much had happened over the week. Usually on Saturday mornings, they’d have a vidcom meeting if Tobio didn’t have a club meeting. His mother would send him a care package once a month with candy and treasures from her travels. Tenma would call her bimonthly to give financial updates and business details.

But then the calls and emails stopped coming.

It was the first month of complete silence; nearly two months if she counted an email of some half-heartedly scanned receipts and deposit information from Tenma. Risa was fully realizing that something was very wrong, idly refreshing her email inbox in hopes of any sign from Tobio. He has a track meet coming up, she contemplated. Did they have to go out of town for it?

Vidcom calls weren’t ever answered. Part of Risa hoped that Tobio’s computer broke down and his father was in the process of fixing it. But what about the landline phone? The phone took her to an answering message input by Robita. There was the option of Tenma’s cell phone or office phone, but—

“—I’ve asked you not to call me at work,” he’d seemed to growl on the other end. “We’re in the middle of restarting an AI demo.”

“Umataro, it’s five o’clock in the evening!” Risa tapped her manicured nails on the tabletop, the click barely audible amidst the shouting of children and their families in the Lupita’s Classic Diner. “We’re waiting for you at the restaurant.”

“What—?!”

“It’s your birthday!” Risa would have thrown some other words out, had the kindergarten-age Tobio beside her not been within earshot, the boy idly playing with his cutlery. “We told you about this a week in advance—“

—But he might not pick up anyway, Risa considered. But she had to try. She attempted to call his office, but oddly enough, only reached a computer-generated voice informing her that the number was invalid.

She tried his mobile phone. It was almost a relief to hear his voice as it recited a message for voicemail. “Hello, you’ve reached the cell phone of Dr. Umataro Tenma. I can’t be reached at the moment, so please leave a message for my consideration after the tone.”

“H-hi,” Risa began, her free hand clutching the pendant of her necklace. “This is just Risa. It’s been several few weeks since I had any contact with you or Tobio, and I just wanted to ascertain how you were both doing. I’m at work right now. Please call me back tomorrow, or…wait, I’ll call tomorrow morning. I’ll talk to you then…bye.”

When she called the next morning, the line was disconnected.

Risa was at the police station within minutes. Hachita hovered beside her while she and the officers discussed in the conference room, with Hachita relaying recordings and photos of Tobio on command.

The officer recording notes glanced up from under her uniform cap. “Do you have any photos of your ex-husband, Ms. Hoshigawa?”

“I think I should…the most recent one is from a year ago at my son’s academic award…?” Risa turned to Hachita, asking, “Load image2-33.jpg, please.”

As commanded, a square photograph of Tobio and his parents in front of his math classroom loaded onto Hachita’s cranial display screen. Risa considered it her favourite that had them all together and happy – or at least appearing to be – even if Tenma had put a hand on her shoulder during the taking of the photo.



The other officer at the table stood up, his hand shaking as it pointed at the screen. He sputtered, “I-I’ve seen that man.”

“You have?!” Risa sat up, her eyes opening wide. “How long ago was that?”

“Just a week ago—!” The officer scrambled over to the computer on his left, his fingers fluttering all over the keyboard as he wrote. The other officer glanced over at first, and then gawked, whirling around to see the screen.

“This is huge news,” she muttered.

“Let me see!” Risa stood up as well, her fingers digging into the table. “What happened to my son?!”

The officer at the computer turned the screen around for her to see. The air in the room seemed to become stagnant as Risa read the news report before her.

Ministry Laboratory Fire Suspect Disappears, it proclaimed, with a photo featuring the charred remains of Tenma’s former office and a lab with a layout that she had once known by heart. She couldn’t focus on a single sentence at once, violent keywords seeming to pop out of the page at her. Unknown cause…failed project…untraceable…mentally ill? What had he done while—

One sentence finally formed together on the page for her. Witnesses report that the minister had been acting oddly after his son’s fatal car accident.

Fatal car accident.

The female officer seemed to realize what Risa’s eyes had finally fallen on. “I…I can pull up the police report on…that.”

Risa sat down.

“Ma’am, I’m so sorry.” She and her colleague looked at the ground, her voice weakening with every word. “I’m...I'm so sorry.”

"Fauna" wrote:The matter Tobio's mom has been explored a lot of times, and she's usually ill-fated and tragic. (Such as one character I tried to make in 9th grade who died of mercury poisoning while Tobio was a baby?!) I wanted to work with the 2003 series with this character, experiment with body types, and make an updated modern mom who didn't die to further a male character. This is only one fan's idea, though, and you guys are all totally welcome to your own theories and stories.



This Risa Hoshigawa-Tenma, in something based on a scene in part 1/3 of something I'm writing with her. I imagined her as an important businesswoman working in the dealing and trade of robot pieces and construction. Part of her last name comes from the only known name for Tobio's mom, Hoshie, from that alternate universe manga.

i know that i said somethings last night when you had posted part two but i'm more awake now and i think i can say something more than "yyEAH ITS REALLY COOL!!! IM TIRED"

i really like her design!! she has a different body type (and looks her age) compared to most of the other women in the series that are petite and such (NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT OBVIOUSLY! [plus my own oc is more along the 'petite' type i suppose]). i also like that she isn't tragic and more modern i suppose, if i'm making sense!!

also the story is coming along nicely. (: it's detailed, but it doesn't hammer in all the (kind of) unnecessary details like my storis tend to do haha. i particularly liked the part in chapter one where risa and tenma were happy about how smart tobio was already. and the parts with the flashback and when risa had found out what happened struck me too ahhhhgfgfh.

i do not have anything more productive to say i am sorry.

I like what you've done with Hoshie's character. The only "official" story from Dr. Tezuka on her is in the "once upon a time" story arc that may or may not be considered as "canon".
I invented my own implementation of her in two different stories that attempted to explain the Tenam's marriage. "Prequel" wasn't as kind to Hoshie as your story, and "Unchained Melody of Life" was a far departure from canon as a crossover with the movie "Ghost".

I think I like your version better.