#I would rather defend Astro Boy's parent's existence then give Tenma any benefit or credit when that all deserves to Ochanomizu and Ban.

[r0bita]

I get that a lot of people prefer Ochanomizu as Astro Boy's default parent over Astro's robots parents. But I always thought it made sense because he's pretty much already old and he kind of plays as a more grandfather-type role than anything else. I see this as him thinking ahead on the chance that he may not always be around for Astro, both due to age and occupation - the same reason he has Shunsaku Ban involved in educating him. He doesn't want to make the same mistake as Tenma did with neglecting Tobio and being alone in raising Atsro. So he gives Astro a support group.

I know that his parents are still impressionable and learning, but I would fault that to them being asigned in to dated comic relief roles and setting a lighter/domestic tone in the original manga and anime.

They are basically foster/adoptive (more like adopted) parents. Astro's mother is shown to be more capable but still new to the role than Astro's father, who is frankly a huge goof and susceptible to mistakes and possibly learning from how other human parents discipline their kids (which feels more like Tezuka critiquing on actual parenting methodologies of the time, he does that a lot and it's not that subtle if you look).

I believe that behind the scenes Ochanomizu would have to be the one educating them on how to parent, since he probably has *some* experience as a possible educator. Ochanomizu created them, so they are just as much Ochanomizu's children as Astro, Cobalt, and Uran are.