Zog

Zog is an archaic robot that Astro Boy helps bring back to life. He is one of Astro's biggest allies, literally. Zog appears exclusively in the 2009 Astro Boy movie and its official comic adaptation.

Appearance
Zog is said to have been built 100 years before the events of the 2009 film. He was originally used for construction, with his strength and sturdiness being used for heavy labour. However, Zog was abandoned on the Earth's surface, and sat unattended for many decades. Compared to modern robots of his size, Zog looks very primitive; his design is simple and rounded. Fortunately, his simple design allows for him to be insusceptible to extreme weather. After being reactivated, Astro and Cora bring Zog to Hamegg. He immediately becomes part of Hamegg's robot arena, and Hamegg's adopted children help clean and redecorate Zog. He gets a proper polish, and is hand-painted with patterns and his new name.

Personality
Zog is an AI-enabled robot, but his personality is very limited. He has the ability to speak but does not do so often. Zog also has a strong distaste for humans, due to the treatment he received as a construction worker. At one point, Zog rebels against Hamegg. He was created long before the implementation of the Laws of Robotics, and by loophole, Zog's programming absolutely allows for him to hurt and/or kill a human being. When Zog attempts to step on Hamegg, he says, "I'm old school," implying Zog is well aware of the robot laws made after his time.

In spite of his brutal edge, Zog is a strong ally to Astro Boy. The two are pitted against each other at Hamegg's robot arena, but neither is willing to harm the other. Since Astro's blue core power helped reactivate Zog, he returns the favour by sparing some of his blue core capacity to revive Astro.

Trivia
In North America, McDonald's restaurants included a tie-in toy series with their children's meals. Zog was part of this series, and made into a small figure with limited articulation. Children who got him in a Happy Meal could decorate Zog with a sheet of stickers, featuring some of the graffiti Hamegg's children painted on him.

In more recent years, viewers have associated Zog's name with negative connotations. An American conspiracy theory claims a "Zionist Organized Government", or "Z.O.G.", made of Israeli politicians is running the United States of America. However, given that Imagi Studios was based in China, and Osamu Tezuka was openly against racism and bigotry for all his life, it is unlikely that Zog was meant to reference this.