The Baruuba no Bōken series and its strange history

It’s hard to believe that Baruuba no Bōken is a once-domestically popular but now largely retired franchise, which was created initially as both an unofficial Tarzan retelling and a spinoff book series by Yoshimasa Ikeda for his own Tarzanesque character, the first Baruuba himself. In fact, it is likely the first franchise to be publicly acknowledged as a series of unofficial Tarzan retellings. 

The classic Baruuba and his official expy, the Hideo Oguni created Buruuba (actually an honorary call and response title for a full-Japanese orphan named Joji Shiga, aka Zamba), are two different characters who have similar backstories, but otherwise end up becoming different heroes due to different circumstances. 

There are technically seven books in the Baruuba no Bōken series, but only six are numbered as such because the first one was likely a partial prototype. The last one by the creator, a largely complete novel, wouldn’t be released until 1992, likely because there are too many complicated circumstances behind its freaky development hell. Good examples of the original Tondo Shinsosha prints are still slightly less common than those of the Poplar and Ikkosha prints, mainly because of how much wear and tear they have, not to mention being quite abridged in comparison to later editions.

The 1954-59 Poplar prints are still a good read, even though their biggest disadvantage was that the covers are still somewhat inferior to the originals. 

Meanwhile, a rather unremarkable film adaptation called Buruuba was released in 1955. It came in with a more comedic manga tie in (for the now defunct Nakamura Shoten) by Kunio Watanabe, a famed Showa period director and illustrator who also made a Dumbo manga earlier on. Despite the odds, they were nonetheless mildly popular. In both that year and in 1956, there was also a pair of picture stories for Shōnen Club by Hisao Yukawa (湯川久雄), named Shōnen Buruuba (Brooba) and Buruuba (Brooba) no Bōken. 

There was also a lower budget Baruuba manga by the little-known Jun Toyama for the still extant Kinensha in 1957. As with the later Shōnen Buruuba (Brooba), some cast members and their expies are more prominent in both picture story and manga half-fillers beforehand. 

3-4 years later, a sequel to (both picture stories and) the manga tie in, Shōnen Buruuba (Brooba), was drawn by the late Kyuuta Ishikawa, who not only made a Kenya Boy manga adaptation and a (similarly related, if otherwise also semi-official) Zamba manga, but also made a Kibaoh manga adaptation and a Ghenghis Khan manga. Except for the bigger prominence of a younger hero and his female friend, the cast is otherwise similar to that of their film and literary counterparts. 

The Zamba prequel was serialised (for two and a half years) instead in Akita Shoten’s Bōken O magazine, which had long been a competitor of Kobunsha’s ailing Shōnen monthly until the latter was gone forever. The backstory involves Shōnen Buruuba’s dad Zamba (the movie Buruuba as it turns out) being raised mostly by lions and later chimps, before teaming up with a herdsman (who definitely happens to be a Songoora as indicated by what he wears), a young forager (who is most likely a Twa, even though he’s named after one of Attilio Gatti’s unwilling subjects during his Congo expeditions) and later on, a Japanese girl (formerly kidnapped by angsty Bantu locals), in battling many kinds of villains. 

In 1966-67, the Ikkosha (Ikko Shoten) prints of the same books reissued in 1954-59 contained some then-new page and cover artworks by a more senile Omizu Suzuki (1898-1982). Frankly, unlike the older and somewhat more muscular design, the skimpy redesign wasn’t as popular, even though it’s still just as good. 

It was partly due to pop artist and writer Tadanori Yokoo’s hardworking efforts that in 1988 and 1992, the Sanichi Shobo compilations featured six out of seven together for the first time. Even when the Heisei period began, they contained somewhat questionable changes which make people outside of Japan scratch their heads to this day. 

In 1999 and 2004, Baruuba was featured in a pair of internationally obscure but stunning exhibitions dedicated to Japan-made Tarzan boys like him. 

In terms of being aimed at what’s now the current Shōnen demographic of mainly teenage boys, Baruuba and his expies Shōnen Buruuba and Zamba (also called the OG Buruuba) have long been significant but forgotten breakouts since their first major appearances in the middle part of Japan’s Showa period. 

In fact, due to how legendary he still is within some Lupin fan circles (he’s got mad translation skills in a time when the internet wasn’t even there for us nerds and geeks!), his own original content works just aren’t reprinted as much anymore. 

But something different can be said for his small but significant influence on the now late manga grandmaster Akira Toriyama, even though the latter wasn’t from a Samurai family. It helps that like Yoshi-San, Akira-San mainly wrote stories for the middle and high school Shōnen demographics. 

Also, amping up their utter irrelevance is that the visibility of messed up mockbusters (and other unofficial adaptations) based on them remains the most successful (long term) result of his ever-looming influence on the multicultural world of (anything considered) pulp style fiction.  

The 2020s and the succeeding decades are when the whole series will go outside of Japan for the first time ever. Nonetheless, it’s fair to acknowledge that Yoshi Ikeda was such a good localising translator for his time, as he’s long been associated more with Lupin than with his own (more cliche stormy) original works.