The characters of Kaanga
Hero and Heroine
Kaanga (ケアンガ): Aka Hugo Kane, Kaanga is a man living in the jungle with its local apemen and various other animals. He was a toddler when his parents were killed by poachers, on the process of becoming adopted and raised by a family of ogre-like ape men and women. Thereafter, he is a mighty yelling chest-pounder who leaves most animals alone and who swings through trees with each one of his hands. He is a green eyed blonde mix-race raised by a beast family in the rainforest. Like Marianne, he is skilled at surviving in it.
Marianne: Aka Eva Marianne Smith, she is Kaanga’s ward, then his girlfriend and later wife, who was abandoned by a dying expedition when she was a youth. Being a tomboy, she also likes to parkour through the trees.
Junior: Kaänga and Marianne’s adopted son, raised by them after a plane crash killed his birth parents in the dense as helluva crap rainforest. Junior then grows from a young baby to a preteen and then an adult within later parts of the comic. He sometimes pounds his chest like his adoptive dad.
Major friends
Marianne’s Family
Mason Smith: Marianne’s late dad, who introduced her to Kaänga when she was young. He was a geographer who meant well.
Kaanga’s Found Family
Koko: Kaanga’s apewoman cousin, who happens to be a spunky engineer.
Anti villains
Bill Barr: Bill Barr was a rather haughty trader with good publicity, until he was unceremoniously killed off by Jeff Burns offscreen. He looted out lots of creature products and traded with fellow anti-villains with good publicity, but he unfortunately couldn’t escape Jeff’s wrath.
Sam Blanton: Unlike his original counterpart, Sam is instead an anti-villain in the manga remake, freeing people of many ethnicities and skin colours to spite his ex-boss, who indirectly enslaved them to death. Although definitely a crook, he does regret trying to kill both Kaanga and Marianne for the treasure they’ve found when they all met each other for the first time.
Kaanga’s Minor Animal Friends
Shenba: Shenba’s name is a pun on both Shemp and Sheba. She is an orphaned leopardess who sometimes competes with Kaanga for Marianne’s affections.
Dara: A forest elephant named Dara is one of Kaanga’s neighbours besides a female Grauer’s gorilla named Chris who lives nearby.
Jack: One of Kaanga’s other furry friends is a Dent’s monkey named Jack, a class clown.
Christina: Aka Chris, she is a Grauer’s gorilla.
Minor human villains
Jeff Burns: A rather snarky Jeff Burns kicked out the unlucky Sam Blanton off his yard, before Sam Blanton is forced to go undercover in the DRC. Apart from his knack for kicking out lackeys, he was quite a corrupt old crook who would dare to capture both Kaanga and Marianne if not for Kaanga’s furious adoptive mother beating him to death.
Other Minor human characters
Anton van der Merwe: Brown eyed Anton is the well meant but shady uncle of Penny van der Merwe, a friend of Kaänga’s adoptive son Junior. As his much more amoral boss fired him by the time he first appears, his own niece has to escape an array of dangerous creatures and more. Making it worse, the boss gropes and imprisons a middle aged Marianne into a grimy cell in Johannesburg for a nudity related arrest, making her not to be seen again until Kaänga and Junior bail her out by snail mail.
Penny van der Merwe: Penny is a young green eyed blonde Afrikaner from Johannesburg in South Africa.
