Fiction House Public Domain

Fiction House is known as one of the most famous budget publishers of pulp mags and comic books. The characters created at its aegis and zenith aren’t yet public domain friendly in the rest of the world. 

Sheena has been hit the hardest, as her personality and body template are amongst Will Eisner and Mort Meskin’s many creations, whereas the whole conceptual story centring around her was unfortunately a brainchild of Jerry Iger. As a result, various incarnations of the character, or more accurately, many characters of the same name within a legacy roster, are simply waiting to become public domain in various nations at various stages. Also, she is currently trademarked by Dynamite Comics. 

Ki-Gor was a Tarzan Competitor who appared in nearly 60 official instalments for the Jungle Stories mag. He and Helene Vaughn were created by the late, great John Murray Reynolds late in 1938, so the first classic stories won't ever become public domain until 2064 for much of the world including Australia. Also, Ki Gor is already trademarked in America by CreateSpace, so that we don’t really use him (nor his likeness) much without his current owner’s permission. 

Kaanga was another Tarzan Competitor, this time from the comic books, who appeared in hundreds of comic book issues. He, Ann Mason and their shared origin story do not become public domain until 2040 in Australia and much of the world. The rest of the comics will wait until 2050, 2054 and 2083, assuming it’s for countries with life+70-71 years. 

Kenya Boy dubbing comparison

Kenya Boy 

Japanese (少年ケニヤ), English, Korean (소년타잔), Portuguese (Jungle Boy: O Menino Da Selva/Jungle Boy: O Garoto Da Selva), Swedish (Djungel Pojken), Norwegian (Jungel Gutten), Mandarin Chinese, Dutch (Jungle Boy), Finnish (Viidakopoika), German (Jungle Boy Kenia), Arabic, Greek (Το Παιδί της Ζούγκλας/Παιδί της Ζούγκλας). 

Considering that the anime film adaptation of Kenya Boy has a bit more success outside of Japan than any other incarnation so far (with the occasional exceptions of the classic Sankei edition and Kyuuta Ishikawa’s same name manga), it’s long been misleadingly marketed as Jungle Boy (not quite true, even though the jungle indeed is a recurring location), Jungle God (surely because he is mistaken for one), Tarzan Boy (still not true, even though the titular protagonist does scream like Tarzan, as said title is used in South Korea), or Bush Boy (which is the most accurate International title, although it’s largely been used in the Arab world).

There are two very different dubs of the film in Arabic, but both are named Bush Boy. There are two different dub variants of the film in Dutch, but both share the same cast and are thus named Jungle Boy. 

For the forgotten Brazilian Portuguese dub, only its own VHS cover is considered found media, at least in online spaces. Something similar can be said for the South Korean dub. 

The rest are only found in Japan, with the odd exceptions of the Classic Sankei edition of Souji Yamakawa’s Emonogatari (which has a heavily abridged unofficial remake for the South Korean market) and Kyuuta Ishikawa’s manga variant of the same (which has a heavily Woolseyfied unofficial remake for the Taiwanese market!). 

All of the twelve other Kenya Boy dubs are simply hard to find, while the original Japanese version remains the main exception since it not only had been physically released on Betamax and VHS, but also on Laserdisc, VHD, VCD, and DVD. Its own soundtrack, despite only being released in Japan, is also an exception, since it’s been physically released on vinyl LP, compact audio cassette and CD. 

Let’s recommend some Japanese pop culture classics!

Hey pop culture nerds! I’ll recommend you a lot of the relatively lesser known classics from Japan. 

Blazing Transfer Student - before he designed the characters of Bandai’s infamous Mobile Fighter G Gundam, Kazuhiko Shimamoto made his first major hit in the form of this over the top yet surprisingly dark Shonen manga. It gained a series of image albums, a duo of unintentional OVA ‘pilots’, a glut of live action adaptations and manga spinoffs galore. The franchise’s main theme song is not only written by said creator as a parody of old anime songs (made before the bubble era came along), but also the best hair metal song ever recorded. 

Tomorrow’s Joe: a Generation Z perspective

Tomorrow’s Joe is a huge hit of a cash cow franchise in most countries of the world, except for the Anglophone Minority World nations. 

Apart from its now apparently gross and unfair (albeit somewhat sympathetic) depictions of South Koreans and Malaysians in general, something different clearly made it a standout. Along with the Noboru Kawasaki drawn Star of the Giants, the Tetsuya Chiba drawn Tomorrow’s Joe is somewhat more enlightened for its own day than many sports mangas of the 1960s. It helps that a lot of Latinos are fans of Tomorrow’s Joe, as the second part’s two main antagonists, in spite of their infamous stereotype status, are shown to have a few good intentions as well. 

The main characters in the story have several kinds of variable mental disorders and who inevitably tend to suffer from blindly following mainstream society’s rather constricting approach to many masculinities and femininities.  

The first part of Tomorrow’s Joe basically lasted up until Tōru Rikishi’s untimely demise and largely served as the basis for the manga’s first televised adaptation. Said anime adaptation got dubbed only into Hong Kong Cantonese, Castilian Spanish and Italian because of how boring and crude it is in comparison to the second part. While Almi Television was responsible for the meh and ultimately scrapped first English dub, Hong Kong Company Tai Seng was responsible for co-distributing both the Cantonese and (bland but alright) second English dubs, as well as being one of the studios behind the horrendous animated adaptation of Return Of The Condor Heroes. 

The second part of Tomorrow’s Joe lasted up until the bloodied Joe sat down on a chair and partly served as the basis for the manga’s second anime adaptation, itself a much better and more clean soft reboot (continuation) of the first. As it is the more internationally successful televised adaptation amongst the classic two, it has been dubbed into South Korean Standard Korean, Latin American Spanish, Italian, European French and Egyptian Arabic. 

Hopefully, G Kids distribution definitely has to include a shared English dub for both shows in the near future, which is thanks to MegaloBox being so popular with a relatively niche fandom of Anglophone Westerners. 

Disorders in the Mazinger franchise

Almost every main character in the Mazinger franchise has an equivalent of ADHD, hyper empathy, OCD, depression, sociopathic tendencies, the ptsd spectrum or narcissistic tendencies. 

For Toei Animation’s usual incarnation of Tetsuya Tsurugi, he definitely has a moderate but still agitating mix of depression and OCD as well as having a pretty mild (though still traumatic) case of emotional dysregulation disorder and fluctuating (albeit generally modest) narcissistic tendencies, which are mostly coming from being pressured to near death and from the considerable dysfunction that his late birth parents might have inflicted on him before they died. Even by Toei’s usually relatively fluffy standards, his self esteem can indeed be treatable but remains fairly notoriously damaged, albeit not to the nasty extent that has plagued Asuka Langley Soryu’s manga incarnation to smithereens. The other manga and anime incarnations, usually written by Go Nagai but not often animated by Toei, are probably just as edgy or troubled, if not more so, while their Toei Animation-based Shin Mazinger Zero counterpart is both a bioengineered clone and a terror who deserves more respect than what he gets. 

Of the many incarnations of Koji Kabuto, the original Shueisha manga incarnation probably tops them all in traumatic backstory terms; he both unknowingly and possibly had a much milder but still agitating case of complex ptsd, which was coupled in tandem with a home life nearly as awful as that of Asuka Langley Soryu in the classic Evangelion manga. Heck, even Shin Mazinger Zero’s own Toei Animation-based incarnation of Koji Kabuto is a fairly close second to this one, though the latter’s premise is far darker and more depressing than those of most incarnations. 

For both the Shin Mazinger and Shueisha manga incarnations of Juzo Kabuto, they mostly share a tie in terms of unintentional mental illness related moments that were outrageously funny for their time, but are now considered to be pretty much harsher in hindsight than they were when the original Shueisha manga was made, though there are some differences. Almost all the other incarnations are considerably saner than these two. However, Shin Mazinger Zero’s Shueisha manga-based incarnation of Juzo Kabuto is the only one to be a deadly unhinged psychopath outright, which isn’t any better in comparison. 

Hey, even Toei’s own Sayaka Yumi variant is also mentally unstable, just not to the extremes of Asuka Langley Soryu in the old Evangelion manga as written above. Although considerably saner variants appear in numerous official Mazinger mangas and anime spinoffs, there is a Mazinger Zero equivalent of the same name which has outpaced even the Toei version in terms of mental instability. 

Dubtastic!

Here’s a gorgeous amount of possible dubs for my roster of plausible projects. This includes the countless plausible English dubs to many lesser known shows and films.

The Secret of Cerulean Sand is a huge favourite amongst young French and Norwegians, mostly due to the fact that the French and Norwegian dubs are incredibly decent. I found an unofficial DVD release from Taiwan at the Glebe DVD collectibles store. Even though said release contains a variant of the whole show on its own, said variant quite clearly has some problems with both its animation and colours. As with many unofficial Taiwanese home video releases, it strongly contains both middling Mandarin subs and much more awful English subs. Although it did pretty well in both France and Norway, it quite clearly needs some attention in the Anglophone world due to its animators trying their best at animating it (albeit digitally outside) during its production. Even then, it’s frequently trounced in terms of international success by fellow Sega property Sonic X. 

The proposed (and pretty much) uncut English language gag dub of what’s now Kadokawa’s own Buruuba movie (co-released in 1955 by Daiei and Samuel Goldwyn) will predominantly be made in Seattle, Washington of all American cities. Such a film dub will be co-distributed by Aniplex and Sony LIV, even when given a chance of having its own possible trailers and posters! Given its relatively infamous production schedule teeming with bored actors on a paycheque, it’s a fairly ideal film for the growing numbers of preteen nerds in most nations.

Let’s sneak a reference into something old!

Due to differing copyright and trademark laws around the world, lots of people without WIFI tend not to watch Dawson’s Creek. As my dad is a fan of said Sony Pictures show, I nickname it ‘Leery’s Creek’. 

Dawson’s Creek and its spinoff Young Americans are owned by Sony Pictures. 

It’s Theatre Time!

Certain kinds of theatre productions are very popular. 

The 2.5D format: The 2.5D format comes in three major types, comedy, drama and musical. 

German Weinachtsmärchen Pantomime: Aka German Panto, this format, which is both a somewhat lesser known cousin of British Isles Panto and a distinct speciality from the German speaking parts of Europe, is definitely for general audiences but is mostly aimed at primary schoolchildren. 

British Isles Pantomime: British Isles Panto is the best known member of the Pantomime family. 

Canadian Pantomime: 

American Pantomime: 

Maltese Pantomime: 

Jamaican Pantomime: 

United Arab Emirates Pantomime: