Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

The Boy Champion guide mainly refers to the out of story mythos surrounding the postwar version. Created by the man behind both Kenya Boy and Tiger Boy, the story focused on a foundling raised by Grauer’s gorillas in the central eastern Congo Kinshasa. The original Boy Champion was made as Sōji Yamakawa’s first ever major work in 1931. It was the Kamishibai prototype for the wackier and better known postwar (picture story and Kamishibai) version which came fifteen years later, a subsequent version from 1963-64 and a tribute from 1974, and a short faux finale/sequel analysis in 1980. I think it’s due to the fact that it should’ve been made in 30 to 40 volumes during its creator’s lifetime.  While the stories from the 1946-52 sludge period are largely not available for reprinting due to containing controversial contents, the 1961-62+1965-66 Sanpei Shirato and Jirō Tsunoda manga does contain most of them.  The Omoshiro Book+Yonen Book period has more interesting stories than the ...

When Sōji Yamakawa was about twenty four, his original Tiger Boy story was launched to great fanfare in the streets of Japanese cities. Unluckily, that original version was a propaganda piece for the infamous Japanese occupation of Manchu lands during the early Showa period.  In order to reveal the historical context behind the first Tiger Boy story, three currently mainland Chinese states of the far northeast were once in a puppet state ruled by the deservedly infamous imperial Japanese military. No wonder why it might have stopped running when Pearl Harbour came along!  In the early post war years, seminal Kamishibai artist-historian Kōji Kata (1918-98) made a retelling of pre-war Tiger Boy, but only for a brief time since it’s not a totally official one.   Near the end of October 1955, a new Tiger Boy story launched on the infamous Sankei Shimbun newspaper, but only lasted for over three years up until May 1959. Nonetheless, although it hasn’t been reprinted since the ...

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...

Hello Galaxy Hoppers, Dragon Questers and fellow Pulp Freaks. I am a phone addicted underground writer and artist, who will present this article for you to enjoy.  Yoshimasa Ikeda (池田宜政), known by his main aliases Yoichiro Minami and Nobumasa Ikeda, was born on the 20th-21st of January 1893. Before writing a smash hit called The Roaring Jungle for Kodansha’s Shōnen Club magazine, he began his career by making Domestically Japanese books and translating non-Japanese books for his original market of primary school children and a then-untapped market of what are now called preteen boys and girls.  As a chauvinistic Jungle Hunting Fantasy story, The Roaring Jungle not only had follow ups but also spawned a line of loosely related books, which mainly focused on a rather questionable dude, always under the delusion of being a Great White Hunter (which is itself a messed up construct), capturing animals now familiar to Japanese audiences for filthy circuses and cramped zoos.  Th...

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...