Kenichi Shikishima

Rock achieved a long life as an actor because of his various defects and his portrayals of the numerous dark sides of human nature; Kenichi meanwhile, is loved as the everlasting youth in Tezuka Osamu's Manga. At any rate, Tezuka Osamu's Manga began in earnest with the meeting of Tezuka Osamu and Kenichi-kun. Kenichi was given the leading role in the majority of the early works, including "New Treasure Island", and was the first star of Tezuka Osamu's Manga. He looked out intently onto the world, was habitually considerate and never forgot to be kind, and in this he embodied the kind of conscientiousness and purity of "childhood days". Afterwards, the Manga world started to focus attention on "realities that cannot be communicated through the agency of simple integrity". Due to the need to exist as outsiders from human society, leading characters, including Atom, came to have other facets to their characters in addition to their innocent righteousness.

Tezuka Osamu himself said, "I was forced to relinquish Kenichi from his role as protagonist because he lacked individuality." In the same way as people even come to feel embarrassed by the innocence of their sense of equity as children when they reach adulthood, the Manga world forgot Kenichi as it struggled to grow up. Nonetheless, no matter how grown up, how adult our faces become, our "childhood days" live on forever in our hearts, and in the same way, Kenichi continued to put in straight performances as the "righteous boy" who occasionally appears in Tezuka Osamu's Manga.

(Source: tezukaosamu.net)