Sōji Yamakawa’s Sankei period

Sōji Yamakawa’s two major outings on the infamous Sankei Shimbun newspaper are worthy enough to be celebrated outside of Japan, mainly because he had the balls to churn out hundreds of strips for both Kenya Boy and his own fifties reboot of Tiger Boy. 

The strip edition of Kenya Boy has tons of 4 and 8 picture strips, which is quite staggering for a Sōji Yamakawa work which only lasted for nearly four years from the 7th of October 1951 to the 4th of October 1955. In a sad twist of fate thanks to newspaper decay, not many strips have survived even in 2023. Fortunately, most of them have been published and remade into thirteen, ten and twenty volumes of gorgeous books from at least four out of eight primary and secondary school editions. They have also been adapted into a soft manga remake drawn by the late wildlife artist Kyuuta Ishikawa, which only has eight original volumes and two huge collector’s edition volumes, as well as a brief Home Run rerun in total. Most Japanese Collectors prefer the Classic Sankei and Sankei Junior Books editions, primarily because of how widespread they are in Japan even today and how good they also look. To be fair, the Kadokawa edition isn't as heavily Theakstonised as the comics of Warren's Creepy Magazine and has about twenty decent volumes in total, not bad for something quite lacklustre in most Japanese collectors' eyes. There’s also a Fujimi Comics manga tie in of Toei’s Kenya Boy anime film released in 1984. 

These four variants are some of the bases for the proposed uncut forty nine part twenty eight volume edition, as if it's going to be written and drawn by one of the world's biggest Shotaro Ishinomori fans, my honorary idol Naoyuki Konno. The fifty six volumes will represent the main story of an actually complete light novel saga, envisioned and animated in a way that Souji Yamakawa himself would fart with joy!

The strip edition of Tiger Boy, which lasted for 43 months and 6 days from the 24th of October 1955 to the 29th of May 1959, has relatively less strips than the strip edition of Kenya Boy. Many of the surviving strips are found primarily in the private collections of a few hardcore Souji Yamakawa fans, but as for online images, only a 4-picture half of an 8-picture strip has been found (on the infamous Twitter of all things), and it was photographed years ago by a senior fan of Mr Sōji Yamakawa’s works near a restaurant. The Classic Sankei edition has only eleven volumes in total as well, even though they're all easier to find than the strips. 

Along with the five volumes of Jun: Shotaro's Fantasy World, both variants are two of the bases for the proposed uncut twenty six volume edition, which will have books and chapters that weren't there in either the strip edition or the Classic Sankei edition at all.