rock from the 2003 astro boy series is the first incarnation of him i had ever seen, and to be honest, episode 34 was the first astro boy episode i had seen completely. you could say that the 2003 incarnation is the one i first fell in love with, even if rock in this incarnation might not be my favorite out of the stuff i had seen, but this one has a really special place in my heart!
basically, my feelings for 2003 rock holmes can be summed up as;
i really like how smug and haughty he is, i personally find that there's two different flavors of this smugness depending on whether you watch the dub or the japanese version (with hong kong subs but even then). rock is a lot more 'cool' in the japanese version i find, while he's more snotty and such in the dub aka WALLY WINGERT POWER HOUR.
i'll probably update this later, but, here's the (awkwardly cropped) screencaps i took of rock in episodes 34 and 35!
ep 34: deformation of moopie / shapeshifter
click for spoiler
anyway, i have a dumb headcanon (to be honest, i stole it from Fauna) where rock had lied about redeeming himself and that he lost his psychic powers at the end of the episode. which was something that never really made sense to me, why would "fire bird" take away his powers? why would he lose them? where would they go? how would he know that they were gone?
but here's to rock holmes/macbeth/makube, the character that got me into tezuka's works in the first place! and special mention to the 2003 version for entrancing me!