Bolt Crank
Bolt Crank (ボルト・クランク) (voiced by Masashi Ebara), is the best "explorer" in the world. In the manga, "Explorers" are a kind of mercenary. Although mercenaries in the manga do any job, even assassinations, the explorers were employees with principles.
Bolt has a bizarre power, the ability to eat anything inorganic and then later recreate it (even fixing the item ingested) from any part of his body. The item usually comes out from his arms and hands, but sometimes can be created in other body areas, like his head, chest, or legs.
In the manga, it was implied that inside Bolt's body was actually a void of space. Objects that he's consumed float around in a seemingly endless space, much like the inside of Doraemon's fourth-dimensional pocket.
A man of few words, Bolt doesn't show his feelings and always keeps a cool head. However, his cynical personality and his "always get the job done" attitude can make him seem like a very cold and dark character but, in the end, he always finds a way to do the right thing. He never appears to look back on the past or regret it in any way.
Although Bolt's past remained a mystery in all the series, some stories gave clues about his past, including some characters that appeared in various episodes. The end of the manga series revealed a lot about who and what Bolt is, but his exact identity still remains a mystery.
Here are some hints in the series:
- Bolt never ages, but the end of the manga series revealed that he is biologically immortal (he does not age but can be hurt and/or killed).
- There is a character identical to Bolt called Leon. His creations include an gynoid (Stella) with human feelings who loved him (an antagonist of Bolt in various episodes, trying to transform all living things into machines) and a weird robot capable of assimilating any mechanical part (it has a parasitic relationship with Bolt and keeps annoying him in various episodes from inside his body). It is implied that Bolt is his clone, or he is cloned from Bolt.
- Other possible origins are shown in other stories, where Bolt "worked" in a research center that performed tests with human beings and created humans with odd powers, like an immortal woman (with instant regeneration), a girl that turns into a monster, and another girl that generates electricity. Bolt's job there remained unexplained, suggesting he was just another test subject.
- The series suggests he was created before the beginning of mankind. In a story about the downfall of two old winged races before mankind arrived (white and black winged from the same species, one called Angels and the other Demons, with the Demons ruling the world), there is a prophecy that said that, with a union of an Angel and a Demon, the world will be free from the rule of darkness, and be guided by "the one who eats" until the end of times.
- The final chapter heavily implies that he may actually be God himself, "the creator" as he is seen throughout his final adventure in the last volume consuming orbs of light given to him by a mysterious angel, which each contain the elements necessary to create a world (life, light, etc.) and at the end, he consumes death to complete the necessary ingredients, (who had taken physical form to hunt him down and kill him due to his agelessness being "unnatural") and at the end of the manga, creates a doorway in the middle of the desert and walks through it, ending the series as he walks into a new universe.
