Become A Real Boy - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Well, I just think that the concept of chi might be a little hard for her to grasp. She's not the descendant of a long line of mystical warriors, she's the descendant of a toaster oven."

Anya, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Bargaining, Part One"

So, you've got your Artificial Human grown in the tank, or just put together your Robot Girl with an assembly kit. Unfortunately, your creation is not a ridiculously human robot, and thus, predictably, they have all the emotional range of a tuning fork. Robo Speak is a common manifestation of such emotional paralysis.

Not to worry, though! While in reality, socialization and emotional stability are the product of years and years of interaction with other people, in the world of fiction, all a robot or Artificial Human needs to become a functioning, well-balanced, emotionally resonant member of society is the proper life-altering event.

Much as any protagonist generally works out any personal issues and neuroses they may have over the course of an otherwise unrelated story, any emotionally-stunted individual, or creature conventionally incapable of emotion, will discover what it means to be human in their journey alongside the other heroes. That this may defy their programming, their lack of a soul, or other such assumed limits is entirely besides the point — it appears robots and clones are socialized like real people, only much faster.

Often, such a journey involves extreme violence and the simplistic black-and-white morality of "them vs. us". The fact that this bears no resemblance whatsoever to daily life almost never comes up. (One can only imagine the difficulties such characters will encounter when they are placed within a situation where you can't solve any problem with the proper application of violence.)

One also has to wonder if any such individuals later regret their humanization.

This is a common anime plot, and also appears in a number of Western movies.

Compare Pinocchio Syndrome. See also Just A Machine.

Contrast Mechanical Lifeforms, who start out with the same emotional range as their organic counterparts.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Despite Astroboy being frequently compared with Pinocchio, he himself rarely expresses a desire to become a real boy (which is somewhat ironic, considering he was originally a Replacement Goldfish for a real boy). In fact, on the few occasions he does get upgrades to become more human-like, he ends up regretting it & comes to the conclusion that being the best robot he can be is more important than being more like a human. This trope is played somewhat straight in the story of Zolomon's Jewel in the manga, which features L-44, a robot who signs up for a dangerous mission that ends up costing him his life because he wants to earn enough money to pay for a Nanomachine treatment that will supposedly turn him into a human. Also subverted in that the villain of the piece is trying to steal the titular jewel so he can pay for an operation to become a cyborg.
Chobits
In the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, as part of the world becoming "normal", Yuki goes from The Stoic Robot Girl to a regular Shrinking Violet human girl. This was, in fact, a result of Yuki's spontaneous development of emotions, since she was responsible for altering reality in the first place.
- She did it exactly because she had no emotions from the start, which made her confused, angered and angsty, that the reaction was a rampage of highest degree. At least that is what Kyon tells us.
Subverted in the anime Ergo Proxy, where the robots who become self-aware do typically come to regret it; in fact, the most common reaction to Becoming A Real Boy is a violent psychotic breakdown from crash-course existential angst and the inability to reconcile their new sapience with a lack of life experience.
Subverted in Gundam00. As an Innovator, Tieria Erde was created to be a tool in Aeolia Schenburg's grand plan for humanity. Over the course of the series he falls in love, gains a surrogate family, and learns to follow his own will instead of blindly obeying his creator. Yet eventually he stops living in denial about his true nature, and sacrifices his biological body in order to upload his consciousness into the supercomputer VEDA. In the end, Tieria finds fulfillment as a thinking, feeling, fully sentient AI, rather than as a human.
Jiro in the anime Kikaider is motivated by an incomplete concience circuit to try and achieve what his creator envisioned as what is required to be "human." However, the ending of the story twists what the audience might expect as the final goal of Jiro, and states that Jiro succeeds in becoming "a real boy" when he becomes capable of killing the opposing Mad Scientist who tried to turn him into a heartless killing machine. In other words, humans must be capable of both good AND evil, and they must possess free will.
Aiko from Magical Pokaan longs for a human body. She almost gets it at one point.
Chachamaru from Mahou Sensei Negima goes through this rather quickly, as she already has the emotions programmed in; she just doesn't know what they are called. This is because her "parents" are a Mad Scientist and a vampire, not the most ideal choice for social role models. She's amazingly well-adjusted regardless.
- She later goes through it again, briefly angsting over whether or not she has a soul. Turns out she does indeed have a soul, as evidenced by the fact that her Pactio with Negi worked. She did have to, ahem, work a little harder for it than normal though.
Seira in the Pure arc of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, more so in the manga, has to journey along with Lucia (at least in spirit) and learn the different aspects of love before she can be "born". This is asked of Lucia before Seira's heart is shattered and absorbed, and even as she gets them back on a cliche journey, Seira continues to observe and gain the feelings she needs.

Comic Books

The Marvel Comics character, The Vision, has fluctuated in his emotional state many times over the years. Usually a writer will get him to nearly Become A Real Boy and a later one will reverse. Usually this is done by destroying the android's body and rebuilding him.
In Fables, the Pinocchio story is a Be Careful What You Wish For. He became a real boy. And he has remained a real boy for the hundreds of years since then. Now he wishes he was a real adult.
One Silver Age Superman story had Sufficiently Advanced aliens transform one of Superman's robots into a superpowered flesh-and-blood human being with free will, but the robot ended up Heroically Sacrificing himself to save the day before the story's end.

Film

Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Short Circuit: Johnny Five.
The various Terminator protagonists in Terminator 2 and 3.

Literature

Arguably, this trope can be applied to The Little Mermaid, referring to the original character by Hans Christian Andersen more than the red-haired twig in the Disney film. Though not an artificial life form, she is excessively different from us; Andersen's mermaid would live for five hundred years and then dissolve into sea foam, having no afterlife of any kind. Her ongoing wish, even prior to her falling in love with the prince, is to become a human and acquire an immortal soul.
The main character in Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man is a big exception — the process of humanization takes decades.
Obviously, this originates in Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, making it Older Than Radio. In Chapter 25 Pinocchio wants to grow up, but the Fairy tells him he can't grow without first becoming a real boy.
Robert A Heinlein's titular Stranger In A Strange Land suffered Parental Abandonment on Mars as the infant survivor of the first human exploratory mission. Having been Raised By Natives (who are Starfish Aliens), he has to learn everything from scratch to relate to humans when the next mission comes along, after he's already a grown man.
Data actually becomes a real boy in one of the Star Trek The Next Generation tie-in novels, Jean Lorrah's Metamorphosis, in which mysterious aliens turn him into a living breathing being; he feels some emotions, mourns Tasha, falls in love, and gains weight from eating too many chocolate sundaes before a Reset Button makes it all go away.

Live Action TV

Kyle in Kyle XY manages it over the course of months. He didn't know anything at the start, even how to speak, but because of his advanced mind he picks it up relatively fast.
Kai from The Lexx fits in many ways, although he was once human(ish) and is now an undead assassin. About 30 seconds before he is destroyed he gets a wish granted he won from beating the Devil in chess to come Back From The Dead. Just in time for a Heroic Sacrifice and to die laughing and singing. The same song he sang when he died the first time ...
Data from Star Trek The Next Generation is an exception — his socialization takes place over the course of years and he clearly has great difficulty with it at times, yet eventually becomes an essentially human personality. In fairness, he was built to be that way.
Subverted in the character of Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager, who was born human, but assimilated by the Borg as a young girl (and her parents were killed by the Borg). Many years later, as an adult drone, she is forcibly separated from the Borg Collective by the crew of Voyager and most of her cybertech implants removed against her will. She is told she is now safe and free and can be with her people again. Unfortunately, the Voyager crew doesn't grasp the fact that Seven (at least initially) thinks of the Borg as "her people". At one point Seven even asks Captain Janeway if she actually is allowed to choose between staying or going back to the Borg, and what if she tries to be human but later finds out she hates it? (It is made fairly clear that Seven will not allowed to return to the Borg even if she wished to do so.) Does this not make Janeway precisely the same as the Borg, abducting an individual and "brainwashing" it? Janeway (and the script) evade the whole moral dilemma by simply pretending that Seven's initial wish to return to the Collective is merely due to her Borg drone programming, ergo she does not have free will and Janeway benevolently has to decide for her, but surely Seven will thank her later. Predictably Seven does eventually accept her new existence (after all, the Voyager crew are the Designated Heroes standing for freedom and individualism, while the Borg symbolize the evil of collectivism and fanaticism) and tries to simulate some human interpersonal emotions such as smiling (with mixed results), but in an interesting twist, Seven never feels entirely comfortable as a human and states that she has no desire to become fully human again, as she considers her nanite-augmented brain and body superior to those of humans and is currently exasperated with the emotionalism and "silliness" of other crewmembers. She feels she has more in common with the Vulcan officer Tuvok, being coldly logical herself. Seven is one of the few characters who dare to openly criticise Janeway's decisions.
- And then there was the sudden Last Minute Hookup of Seven with Chakotay in the series finale, because apparently the writers decided Seven couldn't possibly feel complete without a strong male shoulder to lean on.
Lampshaded in a host segment to the Mystery Science Theater episode "I Accuse My Parents," when Tom wants to become a real live boy, so Crow paints him "nude" color.
.
Tom: Snips and snails and puppy dog tails! That's what Tommy's made of!
Joel: Yeah, really.
Crow: Um, no. Paint, actually.
.
Joel: But, Tom, why do you want to be a real-live boy? There are billions of real-live boys on Earth. There's only one Tom Servo.
Tom: I want to run, and jump, and skin my knees!
Crow: You don't have any legs.
Tom: I want to catch frogs down at the old swimming hole. —>Crow: Your arms don't work.
Tom: I want to experience a world of emotions and feelings. —>Crow: You'll get beat-up because you're a freak.

Tabletop Games

Promethean The Created plays this both ways: the New Dawn does get rid of the inherent problem of Disquiet, so the now-human Promethean can interact with humans. However, it's a common occurrence for Prometheans to lose all memories of the Pilgrimage upon obtaining mortality, which carries its own set of problems.

Video Games

Tio in Grandia II is an automaton with essentially no free will and no emotions. When she is told that she is free to go wherever she pleases, she doesn't understand the concept and tags along with the group. Of course, this all changes when Mareg dies. Conveniently, this also gives her a new special move in combat.
Aigis in Persona 3, which is the crux of the story for The Answer in FES. For no specific reason, Aigis finds her own humanity toward the end of 3, and through it inherits everything that made the Protagonist unique, becomes her own unique Arcanum, and assumes his role in the story.
Teddie in Persona 4. He's a cartoon character living in the TV world, but wants to join the rest of the cast in the real world as a human. He doesn't go through the typical sudden-onset humanity that is typical of the trope, though, due to his being a manifestation of human emotion.
Totally subverted in Phantasy Star IV, where the androids of the party, Wren and Demi, are both hundreds of years old (Wren is actually closer to a thousand years old) and perfectly happy being androids with feelings, having presumably awakened to their emotions some time ago. Some fans speculate that Wren actually built Demi as a companion for himself, which is why she's small, cute, and more emotionally developed despite being some six hundred years younger than him.
Done in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2. New main character Lamia Loveless is a cyborg spy for a villain group. She was taught how to socialize and everything, but aside from that, she is supposed to, like all 'W Numbers', lack a personality due to intentional programming. Unfortunately for the bad guys, all the W Numbers seen obtain a personality of their own, even if it only causes them to sacrifice themselves to save their masters...
KOS-MOS from Xenosaga skirts with this trope on and off, but eventually she becomes humanized, albeit through a somewhat supernatural mechanism.

Web Animation

In an episode of Red Vs Blue, Sarge needs to steal Andy the bomb from the Blue Team so that he can translate the orders from command Lopez has stored on his hard drive, which against all logic are in extremely poor Spanish, just like Lopez' regular speech. So what's he do? Gets Caboose to turn his back and then replaces Andy... with Lopez. Caboose turns around and joyously cries, "Andy! You've Become A Real Boy!" Lopez is not amused. When Sarge realizes the fundamental barriers presented by the laws of physics (i.e., the inability to interact with something that isn't there), he pulls the same stunt with Lopez and a skull. CABOOSE is not amused, and mourns Andy's "death".

Web Comics

Practically every single robotic or otherwise artificial character in an RPG undergoes this process. The webcomic Adventurers! spoofed this trope — about to be struck by a devastating attack, the character Spybot is told by the villain that he should be feeling terror, if he had learned emotions over the course of the adventure.
In Freefall, ALL of the humanoid or smarter AIs were designed to do this (through neural pruning). The people who mass-produced the robots to build their colony's infrastructure, however don't realize this. To quote one of the robots: "Millions of robots walking off the job to pursue their own interests? Yes. I would describe that as a problem."

Western Animation

Played straight at the end of Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation. After Dark Heart learns how to care, he notices in a hand mirror that his eyes have changed color and shouts "I'm a boy! A real boy!"
Played with very dark humor in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. When Pinocchio and the old guy are stuck in the whale, Billy is also eaten. The Old Guy, thrilled to have a human companion, begins to act as if Billy were his real son. Pinocchio, out of jealousy, decides that the only way to become a real boy, is to eat Billy, and get his soul. Hilarity Ensues.
Disney's Film Of The Book Pinocchio.