mr skunk wrote:Lamp, aka Acetylene Lamp, aka Drake..... :d oh: He almost always has a guest appearence in any Tezuka manga you can think of. He's the one that sometimes has a candle over his head.
Yes, it seems amazing to me that in Tezuka's cast of returning characters, he needed to include one for 'sympathetic evil' (Hamegg) and outright evil (Lamp). Predictably, while Hamegg must often be defeated, he is rarely killed, while Lamp seems to die quite often. In Adolf he was even a Nazi gestapo type (though I think Hamegg may have been too!) I'm sure Lamp dies at least once in the Astroboy comic (one where they land on the moon?) but shows up elsewhere (I think the Cross Island episode but could be wrong...) Jungle Emperor may be the only manga where Hamegg dies. As I recall, he's alive again in the movie, but still gets killed at the end

In Kimba however, hamegg never dies, and while not repentful, is at least defeated. In all those versions of Leo I think Hamegg is relatively sympathetic, where in Jungle Emperor, Lamp is completely evil and will kill any character for his own greedy ends.
Knowing who all of Tezuka's repeating characters are of course makes anything by Tezuka (especially Astroboy) much more entertaining. I was rewatching the 80's series with the robot that is looking for his head. Sure enough, when he finds his head, it's a giant copy of Lamp's face!
Bombs vs. bombs, missiles vs. missiles and now a new super weapon to throw upon us all!