I like Ambassador Magma, the one manga that both The Space Giants and its OVA remake are based on. In the live action/animation version, Magma could shrink into a human size (when standing behind the scenes), but in the manga and almost alway in the Ova, he still remained a clunky, heavily armoured and almost robotlike giant anyway.
In both manga and live action/animation versions, he transformed into a rocket (via his hidden head, arms and legs), but in the OVA, he simply (and quickly) morphed into the same thing, probably as a blessing in disguise. Many hairstyles are part of the character too: a scruffy wig in the live action/animation version, a bundle of achingly long but lightly coloured bangs in the OVA, and the original manga hairstyle which grew into a big flame.
In his first manga appearance, Magma was probably (and inappropriately) slate-coloured with dull hair. As the chapters go into their first climax, he became gold coloured and blond haired. Later on, a then-unlikely pair of simplified 'four fingers-single thumb hands' got added to the body part roster, which is very thankfully cost effective because a pair of actual human hands is still so hard to draw. The reason why they got added was (and still is) the demanding handiness of the character's creator. At the same time, the hair also grew into a flabbergasting flame of locks and bangs!
In all versions, he could talk like a human! He can wrestle a shapeshifter in dinosaur form, can attack a Godzilla-sized crayfish-like monster, and can roar.
Am I thinking about the classic Magma in most of my crapped out blogging time? Oh yes, my mentor Tim Danko had watched what is now the really boring 'Kimba The White Lion/Leo The Lion' show as a kid. I agree with him that the late Osamu Tezuka's first major success is (relatively speaking) the dullest and most ordinary of his major works.
Even though the whole classic meta-show was loosely based on an equally boring manga called 'Jungle Emperor', its titular character Leo (who was nicknamed 'Kimba' in the first two seasons of most dubs) was a rebellious young antihero, who evolved into a sensibly intelligent if supposedly vegetarian beast!
This led to two medium-length films, as well as a blandly dark reboot show (which flopped miserably or had some success in most countries) and its considerably more nationally unpopular (but more internationally successful) 'film finale' of 1997. Nine years after the film finale's English-dubbed release, a somewhat satirical television special, acting as the franchise’s first and only official continuity reboot, got aired on Fuji Tv as the final (and only almost entirely non-canonical) instalment of the whole franchise's continued existence.
But there's something that any Disney fan will never know about until now. Both Magma and Kimba/Leo have partly inspired The Lion King to become a major hit in 1994, perhaps because 'the circle of life' (Tezuka was fond of this term too!) is also 'the beauty contest of life' according to the Canadian 'In Your Face' author Shari Graydon. Gee, I have read the same term from 'In Your Face: The Culture Of Beauty And You' by that Canadian (Shari Graydon)!
What most likely inspired The Lion King to become a hit is that it was a notoriously costly 'technical ripoff' of Shakespeare's Hamlet, amongst many other tales about the poor fallen hero and his fellows. Fairy tales get ripped off very easily and are pretty much prone to significant and at times adaptation decaying variations, since they're very ancient and out of copyright.
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