Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

Not many non-Indians know that Zimbo as a makeshift franchise had begun with a trio of very obvious knockoff prototypes in the end of the 1930s and their female focused, Hunterwali related spinoffs.  Named Toofani Tarzan, the first film’s plot is nearly always the same as that of its somehow more famous reboot, but with slightly less violence. Then came the more fun Tamil variant Vanaraja Karzan, which was released in June 1938. Meanwhile in 1939, both spawned another film variant called Jungle King, which is basically a hipper Toofani Tarzan in a few more western clothes.  In 1942, a female focused spinoff called the (first) Jungle Princess made its way onto some Indian screens, while the Jungle ka Jawahar and the (second) Jungle Queen films, both loose spinoff sequels to the first one, were made about eleven and fourteen years later. A fourth film in the makeshift Karzan/Mala/Bama/Pedro series, named Mala The Mighty, was released in 1948. It is a (likely lost) loose soft reb...

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 common junk (often mid ...

Once upon a time, manga artist Katsuji Matsumoto (1904-86) made a cliche storm-filled spiritual prototype of what would become the story of Hunterwali, a Shōjo manga named the Mysterious Clover, in 1934.  In 1935, a pair of late Raj period Indian brothers from an industrialist Parsi family, JBH and Homi Wadia, made world history with the first Bollywood action film featuring a female protagonist. That film was the first Hunterwali movie, featuring our Australian nation’s iconic Scottish-Australian Miss Badass, the Wadia brothers’ long serving collaborator Fearless Nadia.  In 1937-38, a Hindi and Urdu pair called Chabukwali was released, albeit with two different actresses, a North Indian and a Pakistani, playing the titular characters. While the 1937 Chabukwali was directed by A.M. Biswas, the 1938 Pakistani Chabukwali was directed by little known film industry veteran A.M. Khan.  Then in 1942-43, there was also the first Pistolwali movie, featuring Fearless Nadia herself...

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, himself inspired by Alexei Tolstoy, 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 unfortu...

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 charac...

Bizzarre 

Despite the canonical ERBU 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....