Maria

Maria is the younger sister of the Blue Knight. In the Astro Boy canon, she was created by Austrian scientist Dr. Ross and raised as his daughter. Maria and her brothers are robotic "works of art", but they run afoul of the demented Count Burg.

Maria's namesake is the iconic robot Maria from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

Appearance
Maria resembles a humanoid woman in her early 20s. She has strawberry blonde hair gathered into a thick, beehive-like style on the back of her head. Maria's face is framed with thick bangs along her brow and cheeks. As a civilian, Maria wears modest fancy clothing, such as mod shift dresses and long, flowing skirts.

She and her siblings were tremendously realistic robots. This garnered the trio a lot of attention, and Dr. Ross tells Professor Ochanomizu about how Maria was beloved by other robots: "Maria, in particular, was so beautiful that even the robot dogs she passed on the street would blush...even the robot planes flying overhead sometimes crashed at the sight of her!"

The Atom: The Beginning version of Maria depicts her as half-humanoid, half-centaur. Her human half is blonde and fair-skinned, with very long hair and a headband with antennae. Her lower half is a wide vessel with six legs, and housed within this body are all of the bulky mechanics that help her move and emote so realistically.

Personality
Maria Ross is a kindhearted but naive music student, living with her father and brothers in Austria. She avidly practices the piano and reads. She is quite naive due to her sheltered upbringing, and she tends to assume the best in people; this leads to her falling for Count Burg's gentle facade. Maria is very close to her family, and when in trouble, immediately thinks to call her father and brothers.

In Atom: The Beginning, Maria is still an AI robot, but seems to have limited personality and emotions. She is very energetic and outgoing, and works as an amusement park announcer. She is quite popular in the park and garners much attention from passersby.

Story
Maria is mostly limited to appearances within the Astro Boy canon. However, she has appeared in Unico and Princess Knight via the Osamu Tezuka Star System. Maria debuts in Princess Knight chapter 24, playing the goddess Venus. She descends from the heavens in order to prevent Princess Sapphire from recovering her memories, but this is all a scheme to steal Prince Franz's love for herself.

Manga
Maria's first appearance was in the manga chapter Blue Knight, serialized in Shounen magazine from October 1965 to March 1966. Astro notices his classmate, a robot named Tonto, has begun to act erratically around humans. One day, Tonto hits Shibugaki; others are shocked to see such a young robot defy one of the rules of robotics, so before the situation can get serious, Higeoyaji and Professor Ochanomizu pay a visit to Tonto's home. There they meet Maria, who is acting as Tonto's guardian. Higeoyaji is so flustered by how pretty she is that he can barely speak. Still though, Ochanomizu manages to get some information about Tonto from Maria. The two cut their meeting short after Higeoyaji accidentally discovers the Blue Knight's horse powered down in Maria's basement. Later on, it is revealed the Maria and Tonto that Astro's group met are not individual people, at least, not anymore: some years prior, a European scientist named Dr. Ross built three robot children to raise as his own. Maria was the most popular of the siblings, and a wealthy human tycoon named Count Burg came to ask for her hand in marriage. Maria was immediately won over, and married Burg shortly after. This made news as the first wedding between a robot and a human.However, Burg soon revealed himself to be a staunch robot hater. He would demean and physically abuse the robots around his castle, even in front of Maria, and Maria soon realized Burg had only married her so he could own her. Maria attempts to call Dr. Ross for help, but Burg catches her on the phone, and the call ends with a loud struggle. Tonto overhears this and breaks into the castle. However, Burg catches and murders the two. He then drives by Dr. Ross's home and throws the siblings' remains through his front window. Horrified, Ross secretly amalgamates Tonto and Maria's faces and CPU into Blue Bon's body. This allows all three of them to take turns operating once again, thanks to Dr. Ross's advanced transforming mechanisms in their host body. However, Blue Bon did not consent to the operation, and is horrified to discover he shares a body with his own siblings. He demands Ross build him a set of blue armour that can hide his body, denounces him as his father, and flees.

While Blue Bon primarily uses the body to operate as the Blue Knight, he has also allowed Tonto and Maria turns so they can live as civilians. It is also implied the siblings have been in control while acting as the Blue Knight.

Anime
The Blue Knight arc was adapted into several episodes for the 1960s Astro Boy anime series. However, these were not dubbed into English due to the more mature themes presented in the story. The anime adaptation closely follows the story of the original manga, but gives slightly more screen time to Blue Bon's family.

Maria also appears in the 1999 short film Tetsuwan Atom: Tome of the Blue Knight. In this version, Maria and Tonto were gravely wounded by robot-fearing humans. This initiates Blue Bon's transformation into the Blue Knight, though Maria and Tonto's machinery is not incorporated into his own.

Atom: The Beginning
A new version of Maria appears in the Atom: The Beginning manga and anime. She is a robot announcer and hostess at Mecha City, a robotics-themed amusement park. She is owned by the park and sometimes works as an announcer for several Mecha City-funded robot arena battles.