The 100 Million Year Old Crime

The 100 Million Year Old Crime ("Ichiokunenmae no hanzai" 億年前の犯罪) is a chapter of the Astro Boy manga which originally ran in Shonen magazine in March 1967.

Plot Summary
Astro Boy is assigned to the task of capturing five boys in France. They all possess dangerous psychic powers and combined they create a devastatingly strong force that helplessly controls people to do anything they want. They break into a military complex, steal a huge robotic tank known as the Karabusu and wreak havoc upon the nearby communities. Professor Ochanomizu is taken hostage and threatened with a bullet through his big nose if Astro interferes with their plans. They intend to use the Karabusu to demolish Paris, London, New York, Moscow, Tokyo and other major cities of the world just for fun and enjoyment.

Suddenly, Astro comes across two aliens with bodies resembling pools of water. They can take on a humanoid form, but their bodies are pure liquid, and they generally revert to puddles when they move about and carry things slithering along, they female Parma and her father. He explains to Astro that he first visited the Earth 100 million years ago as a research biologist. He once decided to modify one of the animals and taught the ape how to walk, talk and use fire. This was very wrong as species modification is highly illegal under universe law and even worse, he left the modified ape on Earth where it quickly evolved into the modern human being and began abusing other species with fire and finally corrupted the planet, even waging war and killing each other. This therefore was his crime, and so he has returned bringing Parma to exterminate all humans and put things right again. Astro tries to negotiate with him, and he does agree to a term of testing. If Astro will capture and deliver those five boys over to him for one year, he will see if they can be rehabilitated. With the help of the alien, Astro succeeds in rescuing Ochanomizu, the boys are all taken away and the Karabusu is destroyed. Ochanomizu is very worried because he can't see the boys reforming in one year.

In three months, Astro goes to see that the boys are going crazy caged up in a huge bubble with nothing to do. Parma is feeling rather sorry for them, but her father insists on keeping them for the full year. He has a device that if turned on will emit powerful rays making all humans everywhere kill themselves. If the boys are reformed after a year the human race will be spared for their sake.

The boys beg Astro to set them free and he can sense that they truly are no longer bad humans, so he smashes the bubble and tries to sneak them out. However, as they pass the alien's spaceship, the boys suddenly charge at it. Out of hatred towards the aliens, they jump inside and smash it in the name of humanity until it explodes causing the underground cave to collapse burying everything. Astro shelters Parma inside his body from the falling debris while her father slithers up to the surface with the extermination device. Before he can activate it, however, a herd of thirsty cows drink him. Astro digs his way out of the ground and finds the device, permanently deactivating it.

He reports back to Ochanomizu at the hospital that the boys are all dead and so are the aliens, except Parma was saved. While he and the Professor fly back to Japan, he produces her inside a sealed jar. Astro explains that since the spaceship was destroyed, she wants to stay on Earth. So Astro unscrews the lid and dumps the jar out of the plane over the ocean where she'll be able to live out the rest of her days in peaceful solitude.

Characters

 * Astro Boy
 * Professor Ochanomizu
 * Parma
 * Parma's father
 * The five psychic boys
 * Karabusu

Collected Volumes
This story has been collected in the following volumes:


 * Astro Boy, Volume 17 (Kodansha)
 * Astro Boy, Volume 10 (Dark Horse)