Sunday, 13 September 2020

A Jungly Comparison Part 1

While almost all the other adaptations of Kimba the White Lion/Leo the Lion, including the manga that started it all, still belong to Tezuka Productions, my own continuity reboot will unspeakably be completely different from anything that was released before, with considerably more realistic results and a heavy amount of Franco-Belgian influence. 

My own continuity reboot will be in the form of a six volume graphic novel series set in the border between DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, but primarily southwest Uganda between Lake Edward and Lake George or Lake Edward and Bwindi, during the 19th and 20th centuries. 

A single interlude leading to Ki-GOR, the actual direct sequel to it, will not just be an homage to the Jamie Uys film Animals are Beautiful people, it is also called People are Beautiful Animals Too, aka Tezuka’s Jungle Kingdom. A spinoff sequel called The Akim saga will have a few animals from Jungle Emperor crossing over to meet up with the Akims and their families. 

The main family or clan, which Leo himself belongs, will change from being almost always white lions of Southeastern Central, Northeastern, and/or Northern Central African stock (as usual, white lions are definitely uncommon, although more numerous in captivity than in the wild) to a bunch of diversely coloured ones thanks to science marching on. 

Leo's dead parents are called John and Mira in the reboot, in order to be distinguished from their traditional counterparts Caesar (Panja) and Eliza (Snowene). Mira was a Greyish leucistic lion and John was a cream coloured Lion, thus their son Leonidas was a partly erythristic woolly Lion. 

As in real life, Leo’s rather fickle harem consists of lionesses like Normal coloured Luna, Cleo, Kitty, Marjorie (his childhood friend) and the pseudomelanistic coloured Lydia. The first children, usually from Marjorie, are Bruno and Jack. Bruno however, got eaten by his mother at an early age while chinchilla coloured Jack survived becoming an adult and having children. The succeeding children are mostly females like Lari, Marcia, the isabelline Jann and the wholly leucistic last child Nya, as Lucas, Theo and Eric are in the minority. Marcia also got eaten by the same mother who ate Bruno as well. This also includes Jack and Lyre’s kids Chloe and brown coloured Maximilian the second. Nya grew older and stayed to become her melanistic boyfriend Donovan’s mate and the mother of a grey son named Caesar the Lion. 

The elephants led by Pagoola, though still cruel and antagonistic at times, are generally sympathetic if now more fleshed out thanks to values dissonance. Pagoola, his older son Bizo and younger daughter Penny will be sympathetic as well, due to science marching on. 

He is Aroba's son in law who also has a wife named Kelly Phunt, in turn the somewhat younger sister of Tony Phunt, who has an estranged partner named Shannon and two children named Ora and Wilma Phunt. They also have a much older sister in Tani Phunt, a prude and rather stuffy old lady who has a son named Romeo Phunt and an estranged mate named Bertrand. Bertrand’s older and senile brother Moe will also appear, this time as a busybody guarding and digging off the abandoned remains of the village that Koba was born in. There is another elephant named Marmalade, who herself becomes the senior of her own herd in the succeeding sequel Ki Gor: Jungle Agent for Hire. 

There’s also a porcupine named Becca, a Sitatunga named Sonny, a Ugandan Kob named Kris and a Saturated Meyer’s brown parrot named Samuel ‘Sammy’ who are all friends to Leo the Lion. Neighbours include Misty the porcupine, the fantastically good Bucky the Northern Bushbuck, Wally the Defassa Waterbuck, Sammy’s partner and son Pauline and Peck, Camino the Black collared lovebird, Ansel the African Grey parrot and Emil the Emin’s pouched rat also appear as recurring characters onscreen.

Absent Hero Character: Buzara or Brazza the Mandrill, also girlishly called Mandi or more ironically Dan’l Baboon, is somewhat out of place in almost all versions beforehand and couldn’t appear in the second reboot because of many geographical differences between Republic of the Congo and Uganda, even though they share borders with the DRC.


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