Recurring Characters

I want this to serve as a kind of reading aide to explain some characters that appear in a bunch in Tezuka’s stories. I’ll keep updating this page with time.

Spider – I’ve only seen this guy in Tezuka’s older stuff. He says pretty much one thing: 「おむかえでごんす」(omukaedegonsu). This is what you say when, for example, you know someone is at this cafe and they’re supposed to go to your house so you go to the cafe to pick them up and kind of escort them or just walk with them, whatever. His way of speaking (degonsu) is as silly as he looks. From what I’ve read he was based off a drawing one of Tezuka’s brother did when they were kids.

I just saw on the Japanese wikipedia that official English translations turned Spider’s line into “At yer service!”. I’ll have to do that from now on.

Hyoutantsugi- This is a pig-like guy based off of a scribble that Tezuka’s sister did when they were young. Hyoutan is the Japanese word for “Calabash”…? Don’t know if you know what that means but it’s a type of gourd, which kind of make’s this guy’s shape. Tsugihagi is a Japanese word for something being patched up, which is where the tsugi part of his name comes from.

Hyoutantsugi is supposed to be the fallback comic relief in any Tezuka story. I think he’s funny about 15% of the time. Ha. The use of Hyoutantsugi can be infinite though. Sometimes in the Crater characters would have Hyoutantsugi faces, in Angel’s Hill Akemi’s mother makes a living (or, tries to) off painting them.

Acetylene Lamp – One of Tezuka’s villain characters. Usually almost goes by just Lamp, but can go by other names as well. Appears as a stock villain character in just about any manga Tezuka wants him to. He’s in W3, Angel’s Hill, Crater… always making lots of cameo appearances in everything.

The Japanese wikipedia page says he’s supposed to be a good-evil character. But don’t know exactly how I feel about that. I think he’s very resolved. He doesn’t seem like he doubts his decisions. He always follows through with what he thinks he should do without hesitation, that kind of character. Strong willed. Not as sneaky as the other Tezuka villains, which I think earns him some respect.

Ham Egg: This guy, in contrast to Lamp, is just slimy. He’s a Tezuka villain as common to find hanging around as Lamp, but doesn’t seem to have the locomotive spirit Lamp does. He’s sneaky in just about everything he does. He’s exactly the type of character that you’d corner, he’d beg for forgiveness, you’d let him go, he’d try to kill you and you’d corner him again, he’d beg for forgiveness again, and you would be stuck in an infinite Ham Egg loop.