Fujiko Fujio were Tezuka's students in the most literal sense. Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko moved to Tokyo and into Tokiwa-so, the apartment block Tezuka had lived in, because he was the reason they wanted to draw manga at all; they sent him fan letters as schoolboys and he answered. Doraemon is Astro Boy's premise softened into domestic comedy: a robot built in the future, sent to live with a child, treated by everyone around him as a member of the family rather than as a machine. Tezuka's central question, whether a manufactured being is a person, is simply assumed by Doraemon, which is what a generation of influence looks like.