Wolf Boy Ken

Inspired indirectly by Busuke Akagawa’s The Boy Jungle King, with some elements taken from Wambi the Jungle Boy, Sadao Tsukioka created Wolf Boy Ken (1963-65) for Toei Animation in 1963. Like in its closest inspiration, the classic anime show was about a boy who embarked on multiple adventures and which also spawned two competing mangas, an unofficial non-Mockbuster manga by Kyuuta Ishikawa and a wackier official Gaiden one by Akio Ito. It was a legendarily surreal comedy adventure, which had an all-star cast of voice actors for its time. 

Heck, it even featured a couple of human characters that Ken befriended and contended against. There was a rival raised by Serow (yeah, such creatures related distantly to goats), a reluctant ally from a tribe that’s a frigging cross between South Asian Siddis and rural Kenyans/Ugandans from various ethnic groups, a princess named Isra from Karaba (a Persianate island kingdom), a princely champion swimmer, a rival tomboy raised by Indian lions, a friendly village girl named Nicole (the closest that Shanti from Disney’s Jungle Book likely has had to an indirect spiritual predecessor), and a warm-hearted school marm named Dorothy, yeah. 

It’s also interesting that since Ken is technically a more whimsical take on Zimbo and The Boy Jungle King, all three are friends with a ragtag bunch of animals, but like his American-made counterpart Wambi, his actual ethnicity isn’t stated much, although there is a small chance that the four guys are mixed race children of sailors. 

 






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