Tezuka’s Character Designs

Osamu Tezuka was responsible for Astro Boy, Leo the White Lion, Princess Knight, Ambassador Magma, Dororo, and many others at large. His character designs are just as diverse. 

What's The Problem with Digital Destruction?

Digital destruction happens to lots of works the world over. 

Let's look at the kind of Digital Destruction known as Theakstonisation. 

Theakstonisation has affected a huge majority of pre-1950s comic books and manga. 

Unofficial Tarzan Films

Unofficial Tarzan Films (1969 onward) 

Tarzan and the Golden Grotto: Sort of official; featuring Cheeta, his friends and rivals.  

Kadina Raja ‘69: has a Jane Porter expy and her sidekicks, plus an Ayesha expy and her fellow Mooks such as one played by Tiger Prabhakar. Funnily enough, it’s the first ever Kenya Boy knockoff in India! Also known as Kadina Rahasya, it also has a lost Hindi remake called Jungle King. 

Tarzan and the Brown Prince: sorta official and tying in with a Pinoy graphic novel by Franc Reyes, also featuring Cheeta the chimp, her/his friends and rivals. 

Tarzan and the Jungle Mystery: filmed in the Ivory Coast; also featuring nuns, Cheeta and her/his friends/rivals. 

Tarzan and the Treasure of Kawana: a sequel to Tarzan and the Jungle Mystery, similarly filmed in the Ivory Coast; also featuring Cheeta and his friends/rivals. 

Tarzan the Mighty Man: is a partial compilation film; featuring a nice and kind Tarzan faithfully based on Joe Kubert’s Tarzan illustrations, a stubborn Harry Holt expy and a whiny Jane Parker expy named Ayse.

Mon Jare Chay: is both a surviving Bengali-language dub and a partial compilation film, which has a speechless Tarzan; also featuring a pair of Jane Porter and Jane Parker expies, an Ayesha expy and her fellow Mooks. Along with Dara, Love in Jungle ‘70 and Kadina Raja ‘69, it also serves as one of the four partial bases for the Kadina Raja ‘85 reboot. Its original Urdu counterpart and predecessor is the horrid Love in Jungle. 

Kadina Raja 85: Tiger Prabhakar played the hero this time; also featuring a Korak expy, a pair of Jane Porter and Jane Parker expies (one played by Deepa Unni Mary Fernandes and the other by an unknown actress) an Ayesha expy and her fellow Mooks. The first ever Kenya Boy Knockoff in colour. 

Adventures of Tarzan: is an unofficial localisation of all three films named Tarzan, the Ape Man; has a rather different (but still brief and at times rather iffy) take on the titular hero’s backstory and burrows the circus subplot from Pinocchio (via Buratino, Baruuba and Astro Boy); also featuring a Jane Parker expy named Ruby and a flamboyant Harry Holt expy.

Boner Raja Tarzan: has a backstory inspired by that of both Zimbo and Adavi Donga ‘85 (but with the mother unintentionally abandoning her toddler son in the jungle); features a Kerchak expy and a Jane Parker expy covered in leaves, plus an Ayesha expy and her fellow Mooks.

Tarzan the King of the Jungle (Aka Tarzan Raja Rimba): The protagonist is Sambo instead of his mentor, Tarzan, and a part of his backstory had his parents be killed by beasts in the jungle when he was a young boy; also featuring an Ayesha expy named Karina, plus a pair of Jane Porter and Jane Parker expies named Gina and Laura, themselves buddies. 

Tarzan the Treasure Watcher (Aka Tarzan Penunggu Harta Karun): the protagonist is the same Tarzan who mentored Sambo (but younger this time, as it’s a prequel), but another part of his backstory reveals that he is a tribeswoman’s and a Japanese dissident soldier’s son; also featuring Tarzan’s loving adoptive sister Dita and two major animal Expies; a raucous Siamang standing in for both Cheeta and N’Kima, and a Sun Bear standing in for Jad Bal Ja. 

Tarzan in the Jungle: nothing else but Tarzan and Ruby Expies. 

I Am The Jungle (Aka Jangli Mera Naam): the protagonist is Faisal Annu instead of Tarzan and his backstory involves science like in Kadina Raja 85, features a pair of Jane Porter and Jane Parker Expies, a Moon Bear standing in for Kerchak, an Ayesha expy and her fellow Mooks. Also known as the second ever Kenya Boy Knockoff in colour after Kadina Raja 85.  

Raja and Rani’s Love in the Jungle: Has a foul tempered Tarzan, a lovely Jane Porter expy and a sympathetic Ayesha expy. 

Jungle Love Story: Although based loosely on Tarzan and the Lost Safari, it is thematically inspired by Mon Jare Chay, Kadina Raja and I Am the Jungle. Interestingly, the Tarzan expy wears more conservative clothing this time; also featuring a Terkoz expy, a Jane Parker expy, a guy in a Tyrannosaurus rex-monitor lizard mix costume, an Ayesha expy and her horde of Mooks. 

Jungle Diper Tarzan: steals a considerable amount of stock critter footage and has an unspeakably edgier plot than Boner Raja Tarzan; featuring a primarily speechless Tarzan and a tubby Jane Parker expy. 

Nepali Tarzan: borrows some scenes from both Disney’s Tarzan and Adventures of Tarzan; has a mostly speechless Tarzan like in Jungle Diper Tarzan and a foul tempered Jane Parker expy; also featuring a wisecracking corvid, who follows the steps of the Gooney bird, and a Rhesus Macaque standing in for both N’Kima and Cheeta. 

The Bad Seed isn’t always a bad plant

William March’s scathingly stealthy and unintentionally comedic masterpiece deserves both a series of expanded remake light novels (known as The Rhododendron Maze) and a stunning anime adaptation (also called the Rhododendron Maze). 

Sure thing, what it sorely does need is to have its remake novels contain far more scientific accuracy than usual due to recent studies slowly expanding the scope of how mental disorders work. 2025 is going to be the year that the Bad Seed novel will become public domain worthy not only in the European Union, but also in most nations of the world. It’s been in the public domain of Australia for nearly two decades now, so it can be adapted into new stuff when needed. 

Hunterwali

Hunterwali is a relatively little known but ancient cinematic franchise with only eight films. Each of the films were made years or decades apart. 

The original Hunterwali had a sequel released in 1943. The film itself got remade and was spun off a couple of times in Hindi, but the Urdu, Telugu, Punjabi and Bhojpuri variants are all standalone and quite different. Hunterwali is the only predominantly consistent legacy character in nearly all of the films, although other recurring characters do appear, such as Chabukwali and Pistolwali. 

A possible light novel/manga/animated adaptation will instead be set in what’s now the Tanzanian part of the Swahili coast. In this version, Hunterwali, the daughter of a commoner merchant and a former slave, is trying to ensure that her lovely superiors Nana and Pinku survive the deadly antics of fellow related aristos. Meanwhile Chieftain Ilam and most of his fellow screwed up male offspring (Ramallah and various others) got assassinated in subsequent parts by their fellow relatives (including Kahan), who in turn killed the benevolent Abdullah El Atrash earlier. 

Kahan’s main plan was to turn Hunterwali into a concubine for the rest of her then uncertain future life, which still isn’t funny even by modern standards, and that’s also to the chagrin of Hunterwali’s two other good natured Friends, The ditzy airhead Sharifa Haq and the benevolent late Sahib Abdullah El Atrash’s daughter, the bookworm Asha. Village man Gamal and the former’s filthy rich son Ishar sort of lust for her, even though they initially don’t know her well. Later on, the rather dishonest jesters Banwari and Behemoth Rashid Bin Said come in to contest the huge marriage proposal, which means that not only aren’t they even knowing that their actions are definitely bad for anyone, such actions, which reduce their actual masculinity into a piece of highly limiting crap, do not make sense without a warning. Much to the reluctant dismay of Kahan, they unfortunately have to fight almost to the point of nearing death over Hunterwali and Nana instead. For all the heavies, they do not all learn that a serial defiling attempt isn’t good for either men or women at all, whereas Kahan - in a rather egregious way - simply operates above what’s considered good, neutral and bad to most of society. 

Another heavy named Adam Haider comes into the marriage battle trying to serenade Hunterwali, only for her to seriously whip him in the ass. While Kahan gets away with the rules of society, the very unlucky heavies will all bear the brunt of karma as they truly lose the battle and leave in a sickly fashion, culminating in Hunterwali introducing her own two sisters to the reality of mitigating the rampant crime in the coastal Tanzanian states. Near the end, Kahan appoints his even scarier relative Hamid to become ruler of the poor town, much to the dismay of not only Hunterwali and her friends, but also most of said town’s population. No matter which moment plainly rolls into Hunterwali’s own angry eyes, it ends with Hamid offing most of the Husseins to death and technically succeeding; resulting in the once brilliant town being utterly rendered defunct. At the end, she married a childhood friend of hers, named Mavuno. 

The sequel Hunterwali Ki Beti focuses on Hunterwali’s own daughter Maisha, a girl who looks after injured wild animals and treks through the coastal jungle to find a boyfriend.

Two Fisted Tales

Two fisted tales as we know them are incredibly popular with geeks and nerds of all kinds. 

Two fisted tales are not just associated with pulp novels and filthy romances, but they also nest in a lot of other formats. These formats include: potboiler story papers, run of the mill Kamishibai plays, decent Emonogatari volumes, boring light novels and the like.

Preserving Old Video Formats

I’ve got a pretty interesting video format collection consisting of animated, live action and stop motion works. Not only have I also learnt from big mistakes, I am unintentionally preserving the various kinds of forgotten pop culture that are being lost to the sands of time. A healthy amount of preservation piracy is key! 

The old formats

My sole Cartrivision is of the documentary classic Jesse Owens Returns To Berlin, as it is one of the first American films in home video history. 

My only VHD is of a movie compilation of the groundbreaking OVA Dallos, which itself rhymes with Dallas. 

My sole Video 2000 is of the Canadian comedy classic Meatballs. 

I need to grow a VHS collection, so my sole VHS as of this writing is for an episode of the HK Cantonese dub to the legendarily notorious anime Super Pig. 

I have a Laserdisc collection, so my only film Laserdisc is of Columbia Pictures’ Hamlet.  

I have a small VCD collection, so my sole complete Asian VCD is of the Taiwanese Mandarin dub to two Popeye short films.