Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

Here’s my words on the evolution of Sōji Yamakawa’s best known work not related to Isamu of the Wilderness.  Behold the official instalments! Not many people know that they have inspired two bootleg translations, a couple of Taito video games and a bunch of live action knockoffs. They are in turn inspired mainly by Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel In Desert and Wilderness and Don Moore’s international smash hit Jungle Jim comic strip.  The Kenya Boy franchise likely began with a proposed Kamishibai play by the Ishinomori school progenitor Sōji Yamakawa, which was so forced and so sleazy that it luckily got canned due to WW2 and various other factors. Thank goodness, it’s good news that the picture story strip came first instead.  The hit picture story strip series was made from the 7th of October 1951 to the 4th of October 1955 on the ever infamous Sankei Shimbun newspaper. Children, teens and young adults were addictively reading the unfortunately disposable strips and their longer lasting

Tarzan as a character has clearly appeared in numerous Spanish speaking musicals, with some being based on either the Weissmuller films, the Disney film or the Broadway musical.  The most popular Tarzan musical in Spain is simply called Tarzan: The Musical, which in fact is a Castilian Spanish folk-jazz fest based on both the Disney instalments and Johnny Weissmuller films, as indicated by the addition of Tamara Agudo voicing a puppet for the ever-infamous Cheeta the chimp! It’s rather distinct in that Guillermo Pareja played its own bearded Tarzan, who is the orphaned son of enterprising castaways Mr and Mrs Smith. His girlfriend is Jeanette Bishop, played by Alba Mesa, who is simply another exclusive character with the sass of Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane Parker and the nerdiness of Disney’s Jane Porter.  A somewhat older companion musical was made by Rafael Brunet for regional audiences in the Balearics and mainland eastern Spain, which features its own exclusive animal characters, a g

Barumba sequels  Barumba’s Sleepover  Japanese (バールンーバのお泊り会) Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumbino Spavanje), Dutch (Barumba's logeerpartijtje)  Barumba’s Rampage  Japanese (バールンーバの大暴れ)  Foreign, non-English versions (Barumbino Divljanje), Dutch (Barumba's Razernij),  Barumba Journeys Through America  Japanese (バールンーバのアメリカを巡る旅) Barumba and the Underworld Japanese (バールンーバと地底)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumba i Čudovišta Podzemlja), Dutch (Barumba en de Onderwereld),  Barumba and the Abandoned City  Japanese (バールンーバとそして廃墟の街)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian ( Barumba Builds a Home  Japanese (バールンーバが家を建てる)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumba Gradi Dom) Barumba’s Footprints  Japanese (バルンーバの足跡)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumbine Stope), Dutch (Barumba's Voetstappen)

Despite the canonical Tarzan being trademarked by his rights holder, it seems that the tv shows, comics, books and movies surrounding him are insanely flexible and have the shared tendency to blend into local tropical settings really well.  Guess who is the definitive South Asian Tarzan? It’s Hemant Birje, who is also the definitive Indian Tarzan due to how influential the Adventures of Tarzan movie has become in the past few decades. It is a perplexing fact that while Adventures of Tarzan is definitely entertaining and ballsy enough to feature a Tarzan variant compatible enough to match the books’ own intensity, its long dormant (and likely also scrapped) true sequel named after The Return of Tarzan is likely just a rather bad cash grab, partly because of how troubled its production was and partly because Babbar Subhash wasn’t even there to direct it! What’s also not helping matters? Hemant Birje is one of the most infamous unofficial (live action film and tv) Tarzan actors.  The clas