Kenya Boy's Impact

It’s hard for non-Japanese geeks to understand that Kenya Boy as a franchise has influenced a pair of bootleg translations, a couple of unofficial film adaptations and a trio of games, with the latter three being much better known than the franchise that inspired them. 

The two bootleg translations of Kenya Boy were from what are now South Korea and Chinese Taipei, aka Taiwan. The former, in Pyojuneo Korean for the pirated picture story volumes of the Sankei Children’s library, was made in the mid 1950s when the nation’s once notorious piracy was really high, partly because Japanese pop culture had long been shadow-banned there until the 2000s. Most older netizens think this is mainly due to the very messy relationship between SK and other parts of Northeast Asia. 

The latter, in Taiwanese Guoyu Mandarin for the pirated manga volumes, was instead made in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Taiwan at the time had become a polluted place where most of the world’s junk (often mediocre or at least run of the mill, as they’re not all horribly manufactured) was made. Despite having long been run by a tyranny until the late 1980s, it has a friendlier but still messy relationship with Japan. 

Here come the video games inspired by Kenya Boy. 

In 1978, the first of a Taito game roster centring spiritually around Kenya Boy was released. Named Safari, it lacked a definitive plot but made up for it by featuring a lot of antagonistic animals in their habitats. 

In 1982, there was Jungle King, a game which was likely inspired more by the live action Kenya Boy tv show than by the canonical Tarzan books, despite unfortunately plagiarising the latter more often. To be frank, let’s bear in mind that ERB. Inc’s viral victory resulted in the game’s similarly coded, but more exportable companion being made with a Safari explorer instead. Known as Jungle Hunt, the game still likely featured animals related to most of the furry antagonists from its 1970s predecessor. 

There are a few non-Japanese films loosely inspired by Kenya Boy. Three from Sandalwood in the Indian south, the next one from Bollywood in the Indian north and another one from Lollywood in the mid northeast of its more messed up rival, Pakistan. 

Then there’s a more well known Canadian-American retelling of the aforementioned Pakistani z-film and a Burmese soft remake of the two Kannada movies. 

The first ever Tiger Boy+Kenya Boy film adaptation in India was released on the end of March 1969. It was a different story from its more famous successor, in which it focused more on a grossly chauvinistic game hunter looking for treasure. The lost Hindi remake-dub could only tell some parts of the same story mainly due to how prominently horrid Hindi-centric chauvinism still is to this day.  

The Kadina Raja ‘85 movie was released near the end of April 1985. It is a rather old Sandalwood popcorn flick not only about preserving even not so important forests, but also about a rough wild man named Raja. Although he’s a Kenya Boy inspired hero, he’s different in which he’s got a hairy face when he grew older. In a twist of badassery, he also prevented a vulnerable tropical forest from its forced destruction by illegal loggers. There is also a Tamil remake-dub of the movie called Maveeran Tarzan, even though it’s otherwise a misleadingly marketed South Indian jungle film set in India. 

In 1994, the just as nutty Pakistani movie was released. Named Jangli Mera Naam, the film is about Raja’s Islamic equivalent Faisal Annu, who began as a boy whose life was saved by a hospital operation, but at the cost of his doctor father’s kidnapping. Despite this, he became a nature loving hero who befriended most of the forest animals. Meanwhile, a bunch of wealthy gangsters tried to burn the forest down, and it was the hero’s turn to fight them. There are two dub variants, one in Punjabi, and the other in Urdu. 

Then came the new millennium, when yet another Sōji Yamakawa+video game inspired film named Son of the Jungle from the disastrous nation of Myanmar, was released into Burmese cinemas in the early 2010s. Even though some of its plot is ripped from both MP Shankar movies, it also is loosely based on another work named The Wolf Fanged Boy. 

Honestly, these five unofficial movies deserve some attention as Schlockbusters in their own right.