male manga heroes - akira asagumo 1963

The hero of Osamu Tezuka’s big x (dai x), asagumo made his debut in shonen book. his grandfather worked with the nazis on a top secret weapon but conspired with a german scientist, Dr. Engel to delay the research and foil their plans. As the end of world war ii approached, Dr. Asagumo hid the secret of big x in the body of his son Shigeru just before he was murdered by his employers.

Twenty years later, in tokyo, the card is discovered. A neo nazi organization steals it and completes the big x project with the collaboration of Dr. Engel’s grandson Hans. Big x is a drug that can expand the human body without limits. Shigeru’s son Akira, retrieves big x from the enemy and uses it on himself to foil the nazi plot and save the world.

Inspired by german weapons research and the evil engendered by german-japanese collaboration, Tezuka created an entirely righteous hero, but later came to view the attitudes and ideas Akira embodied as rather one dimensional and inflexible, and didn’t use the character again. Although still considered by many manga fans as one of the original awesome manga heroes.

Akira asagumo's enimies included the the giant robot Number V3. A green robot with a steel mohawk weapon, this came to represent symbolically the german nazi machine.