In the Astro Boy manga this cute little pig statue shows up all the time. Is this just a running joke that Osamu Tezuka invented or is this a reference to something that actuallly exsists in Japanese culture?
In SG Gundam (World’s Cutest Robots!) there was this one episode where the robots are helping the human mother make rice balls. What the heck where those black retangular thing in the rice balls?
Bring back Astro Boy!
That should be “SD Gundam”. Sorry.
If it was wrapped around the rice, my guess is that the black rectangular things were sheets of nori (seaweed), which is used to make sushi. You can make a similar food called a musubi, which is a nori strip wrapped around a slab of rice.
If it was mixed with the rice, it may have been a rice topping like furikake, of which there are a dozen varieties.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the pig in Astro Boy so I can’t comment on him, but there’s a new Astro Boy cartoon on the air now. It’s really quite good. Atlas is the only major/semi major character to have his design altered significantly. I think I prefer the new one.
And I think Audrey’s right about the black squares being Nori.
Onigiri, or rice balls, wrapped in nori seaweed.
And those yellow-orange wedges are takuan, which is a kind of pickle made from daikon.
As for the pig, I have no idea. Does it have a wide opening at the snout? If so, it could be a kind of candle holder for mosquito coils.
I didn’t see SG Gundam, but a couple of times in… ahem… Pokemon, I’ve seen rice balls with black rectangles on them. I thought it was laid on like a stamp rather than wrapped around like the nori in the pictures, but after examining the one screenshot I found, I see now I was mistaken.
I should add that sometimes the nori is a small strip down one face and up the other, but often it’s a large sheet folded to completely wrap the rice ball.
