Tick and Tuck

"These two were not characters with personalities like Lamp, Higeoyaji and Ham Egg, they were just habitually happy. Their role resembled that of Abbott and Costello in the movies, but they were even more happy-go-lucky, even simpler than that. I would deliberately bring these two on whenever a story became overly serious or dark. I even occasionally gave them roles that threatened to eclipse the lead." Tick and Tuck were exactly that, as Tezuka Osamu says himself (in a postscript to Queer Arabian Nights, The Complete Works). This type of role is what's generally referred to as comic relief.