Ten's mother is an Oni firefighter who takes great pride in her work. She is rarely seen, even by her son, Ten.
Biography[]
Little is known about Ten's mother's history, though ever since Ten was born, she would tell him stories of her work in the field, expressing her contempt for arsonists and pyromaniacs, whom she feels should be sent straight to Hell. Much of her time was spent working, and she left Ten largely to the care of a robotic nanny, which is implied to be part of the reason for Ten's obnoxious personality. Her precise relationship to Lum's family is never mentioned in the series, but Rumiko Takahashi was once asked in an interview how she is related to Lum, and Takahashi stated that Ten's mother is the little sister of Lum's Mother, making Lum and Ten maternal cousins.
She first makes her appearance into the series when she has a brief lull in her work that allows her to visit Earth, where her son is currently residing with his cousin at the Moroboshi household. She is greeted warmly, and is oblivious to the fact that Ataru Moroboshi is secretly using her presence to torment her son, who is utterly terrified of her.[1]
To make the most out of her free time, she chooses to stay the night, but as the day passes, with Ten having followed Ataru and Lum to Tomobiki High School, she grows increasingly bored and restless. She starts yearning to fight a proper fire, especially because somebody keeps ringing the fire bell only for her to arrive to find a false alarm. She finally finds satisfaction when she gets the opportunity to extinguish a tree that has been set on fire, but soon afterwards she returns to her work.[2]
After this, Ten's mother isn't heard from again for a long while, but she finally does take a break from her work and come to Earth to visit Ten again. At the Moroboshi household, she confides in Lum and Ataru that her visit was prompted by worry; she recently saw a program talking about the connection between children being neglected by their working parents and the rise in delinquency, as many children are taking advantage of their parents' absence both to act out and to hide their misbehavior. Though she knows her beloved son would never act in such a way, she still decided it would be a good idea to spend a little time with Ten. To her dismay, however, Ten suddenly makes an excuse and leaves the house, staying away the entire day. As night falls, Ten's mother is obligated to return to her work, and she sadly boards her space bike, believing that Ten has grown distant from her due to her prolonged absences. However, Ten suddenly comes flying after her and latches onto her arm, revealing he had actually spent the day trying to find her a carnation as a Mother's Day present. Though she really wanted just to spend the day with Ten, she is grateful to see that he is her good little boy after all. [3]
Personality[]
Ten's mother displays a surprisingly complex personality during her brief windows of time with the Moroboshis.
Firstly, she is a doting mother who thinks the world of her son Ten and believes the very best of him. She is also very polite, well-mannered and socially adjusted, easily making friends with the Moroboshi family.
Secondly, she is an incredibly hard worker, who spends most of her life chasing wild blazes and arsonists around the galaxy. Nothing makes her quite so happy as to extinguish a roaring fire, and she leaps into action at the slightest hint that her fire-fighting skills. Indeed, there are insinuations that she may be a kind of "anti-pyromaniac", deriving as much of a thrill from stopping fires as a pyromaniac would from starting them. When she spends prolonged periods without the chance to battle a blaze, she grows increasingly jumpy, restless, and anxious to find a fire to fight.
Regardless of her motivations for battling fires, Ten's mother despises people who start fires either through carelessness or as an act of deliberate malice. Referring to them as "pyros", she considers capturing and brutally punishing these people as much a part of her job as actually fighting fires. She revels in the act of inflicting suffering upon a pyro, and makes no secret of her intense, vehement, passionate loathing for them.
This ties into her one great flaw; Ten's mother displays a remarkable obliviousness in some key areas. She is completely unaware of the fact that her son Ten is utterly terrified of her, due to a combination of having been scarred by the scary stories she would tell him of her punishing pyros when he was a little baby, and the fact that he is very much a pyro in his own right. She is similarly unaware of the fact that Ten is a nasty little brat, leading to the irony when she talks about children who cause great mischief behind their absentee parents' backs only to then behave like little angels when their parents are home, as she is perfectly describing the situation with Ten and she doesn't even realize it.
Appearance[]
Ten's mother has the appearance of a beautiful young woman with a short and practical, yet stylish, haircut, much like that of Lum's Mother. She also sports the iconic stubby horns that characterize the Oni aliens in Urusei Yatsura. In the 1981 animated adaptation, she is presented with amber eyes and hair in the same green shade as Lum and Lum's mother.
In contrast to her sister's sleeveless flowing dress, her brother-in-law's form-fitting jumpsuit, or Lum's bikini and boots combo, Ten's mother dresses in a very practical style; a full-body long-sleeved jumpsuit with reinforced kneepads and shoulderpads, paired with gloves and a bandanna. Her jumpsuit is mostly solid-colored, but has a notable tiger-stripe pattern on each breast, as if she were wearing a bikini over the top of the suit, and a small diagonal slash of tiger-striping at the top of each outer thigh. This suit is colored a dark crimson color in the 1981 anime.
To complete the ensemble, Ten's mother carries two objects with her wherever she goes. The first is a pistol in a holster on her right thigh. More iconic is a piece of Oni fire-fighting equipment that resembles a matoi (纏) - a firefighter's standard used in Japan during the Edo period, the top of which is adorned with either the kanji for sky (1981 anime, untranslated manga) or a stylized English "sky" (Viz Media's English translation of the manga). Whereas the historical matoi was merely used to help direct a firefighting team to the location of a blaze, Ten's mother's matoi is able to disperse enormous amounts of water as she brandishes it, allowing her to easily extinguish even large fires singlehandedly. It's unknown how this item works, but it may function on similar principles to the 4-dimensional bottle that Ten uses in Chapter 64.
Trivia[]
- With Ten debuting in Chapter 63 of the manga and Ten's mother debuting in Chapter 160, that means there is a 97 chapter gap between the first appearances of son and mother. In comparison, Lum debuted in Chapter 1 alongside her father, with her mother debuting in Chapter 51, a 50 chapter gap.
- Nothing is ever mentioned about her husband. Ten mentions in Chapter 160 that his parents both work, but Ten's mother never mentions her husband even in passing.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Episode 76 (Chapter 160
- ↑ Episode 76 (Chapter 161
- ↑ Episode 171 (Chapter 282)
- ↑ Episode 76 (Chapters 160-161), Episode 171 (Chapter 282)