Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

The Barumba spinoffs  Parts in Barumba’s Journey (バールンーバの旅)  Barumba on the Nile River Japanese (ナイル川沿いバールンーバ)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumba na rijeci Nil)  Barumba visits the Mediterranean Japanese (地中海を訪れるバールンーバ)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumba posjećuje Sredozemlje)  Parts in Barumba the Globetrotter (地球の旅人バールンーバ) Barumba’s Hijinks   Japanese (バールンーバの悪ふざけ)  Foreign, non-English versions: Croatian (Barumbine nesreće)  Barumba in the Misty Isle of Okinawa  Japanese (霧深い沖縄の島でバールンーバ) 

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, a film inspired Tarzan manga series was created by the late Fukujiro Yokoi and was briefly continued after his death by the little known Ippei Teranishi.  In 1949, Illustrator Yoshizo Wada made a rather unofficial manga centring around the youth of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan portrayal, which clearly suggests that such a portrayal was itself raised by Chimps and Gorillas amongst various animals, instead of just by Manganis like in the canonical ERB books. Afterwards, for nearly a decade, a succeeding story named the Jungle Club, which is likely set after Tarzan and the Huntress but before Tarzan and the Mermaids, has him ride a giant eagle friend of his, who’s likely inspired by Argus from the ERB books.  Being made in 1954, the famed illustrator Macoto Takahashi’s first ever manga was a really hard to find unofficial oddball for a good reason. It revolved around a shaggy long haired Tarzan in name only and his girlfriend, a High Priestess La+Jane...

Most of us young people are pretty much tired of the Tarzan Boy trope being associated with both colonialist and classist depictions.  Unfortunately, there is another, much more disastrous issue entirely, when it comes to casting people regardless of caste, class, ethnicity and skin colour, to play Tarzan/Mowgli/Bomba-like hotties instead. Thanks to various entertainment industries in both South and Southeast Asia being always filled with chauvinistic humans, it is also an increasingly colourist trope associated mainly with paler skinned action heroes beginning on their way to stardom.  There are a lot of Indian action heroes, from various ethnic groups, who played Tarzan in nearly the past 9 decades alone, although they’re often lighter skinned and somehow less tanned than the actual canonical character, not to mention having brown eyes, (shivers)! To be fair for the others, the only one who clearly has competed with some of the official Hollywood actors turns out to be Heman...

Warning: the middle eastern political situation is complicated AF.  Let me introduce you to Israel’s big three family holiday musicals featuring the ever magnificent King of the Apes. The first one of them all was a semi-parodic, somewhat official Israeli musical written by Ephraim Sidon, which predated the more famous Broadway musical by 2 years.  They are often a relatively feminist take on the first two Tarzan books, featuring a not so heavily dreadlocked (or even bald like in the 2023 spiritual remake) adult Tarzan, a bratty Jane Porter variant in a different outfit, a local Boy/Tartu/Jai equivalent, a kosher spin on both Terkina and Cheeta, a young Tarzan, as well as a bunch of kosher takes on the gorillas who raised the hero! Also starring are actresses who play Mary and the Wonder Woman Warrior Heroine expy, and a pair of actors who play Kosher Archimedes Porter and Kosher Clayton the logger.  Let’s bear in mind that the actors who first played adult Kosher Tarzan ...