What could’ve been: the Tida Wanorn manga project

Tida Wanorn, a highly popular Thai Lakorn (read: drama) created in 2008, is getting a duo of manga books and two international anime coproductions. 

While the live action 3-season original and its reimagining remain stuck in Thailand, the 2 manga books (which act as the screenplay for the anime shows) and both animated tv series, which are all aimed at the Shojo demographic, will deliberately be exported to many international countries. 

The live action incarnations have one annoyingly and melancholically catchy tearjerker of a theme song. Despite the upbeat tune, its lyrics are basically about a lost child anyway. 

On the day I got hurt, I had tears and I was tired.

I Want someone to help comfort me.

I Want to go back to see my mum, who cares about me.

I'll Return to warm love someday.

* Is there anything else? As much as mother's love.

Will there be somebody to help?

I Care about It. I Will Wipe away the tears that flow.

You Console and hold me for a long time.

** But embracing anyone is unlike caring for my mother, who cares.

I'm Warm, safe, and embrace my 'mother' only when I need to.

When you hugged me, I didn't know what it was for.

I can't touch my heart. 

I replace the original lyrics with funny, kid friendly standup rants acting as lyrics for what I call Terk’s House Party Song In Kaniel the Mad Scientist. 

On the day that We first met that Boy, We laughed and Ranted a lot.

We Want Him to stay with us, even when he’s hurt.

We Want to go back home, when he’s not there.

I’d Return to find him someday.

* Is there anything else? As much as friendship.

Will there be someone to help?

I Care about It. I Would meet him again.

He loves to party all the way down the hill. 

** But a friendship breakup is unlike caring for a friend.

I'm Warm, safe, and embrace my best friends when I need to. 

When you hugged me, I didn't know what it was for.

I can't touch my back. 

Deep in the jungle, here comes Mowgli

The jungle book’s Mowgli has various live action incarnations.

Infant and Toddler incarnations

Daniel and David Valdez as toddler Mowgli - the only known twins who played Mowgli onscreen, themselves barely toddlers when the Korda brothers filmed the first live action jungle book adaptation. 
Kendrick Reyes as toddler Mowgli - possibly the only toddler Mowgli incarnation onscreen in the 21st century.

Josue Cerdas as toddler Mowgli - the only toddler incarnation of Mowgli in a tv show.

Kid incarnations
Sean Naegeli as young Mowgli - the first live action kid Mowgli incarnation onscreen. 

Ryan Taylor as young Mowgli - this incarnation is that of a young newbie. 

Yu Zheng Zhang as young Du Zhe Ming - a Taiwanese variant of kid Mowgli or his manga inspiration. 

Yunhao Kou as young Mo Ge Li - a PRC version of kid Mowgli. 

Preteen and Teen incarnations
Jamie Williams as Mowgli - this incarnation is that of a speechless fellow.

Neel Sethi as Mowgli - perhaps the most successful incarnation onscreen. 

Brandon Baker as Mowgli - this incarnation is that of a playful teenager. 
Rohan Chand as Mowgli - this rowdy incarnation is both a quadruped and a biped. 
Sean Price McConnell as Mowgli - the only other incarnation to wear wrapped pants. 

Sabu as Mowgli - known as both the first known incarnation of Mowgli onscreen, and the first one to wear wrapped pants.

Adult incarnations

Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli - one of the two incarnations to actually get married onscreen.

Derek Hsuan Jui Chang as Du Zhe Ming - a Taiwanese variant of adult Mowgli or his more direct manga inspiration. 

Ray Tianyu Ma as Mo Ge Li - a PRC variant of adult Mowgli.

The misadventures of Ken the wolf Boy

The characters
Sylvia Vel - Sylvia is from a dysfunctional elite family. Is the younger sister to Hannah.
Lila Washington - Lila is a survivor of a boat crash resulting in only herself surviving, running away into the savannah to be with friend Shu.
Babu - Before fighting against and then reconciling with Ken, Babu was a childhood acquaintance of Ken at one stage. His real first name is Andrew.
Mariella - Queen of the underground and of all the ghouls in the purgatory. Was born in New Asura, a downward backwater that was once a prototype civilisation in the northeast of Dagon, which in turn was south of the Kazinga Channel.

Disney's Jungle Book: stepping into the lives of villains

Stepping into the lives of villains, or more accurately visualising them for the screen, is a fairly huge task.

It's fair to say that I've briefly read the story that featured Buldeo in a Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book complication. Yes, he's a recurring antagonist, but I can give him more sympathy and make the audience sympathise him more because he's a human character.

In one of my episodic dreams, titled 'The Day Shere Khan Died', the animated version of Shere Khan finally regains a lot of sympathy, even though he lost his prey to poachers, and his estranged mate (she's such a big villainess) taunts him everyday, which I think of as the combined reason why he's the main antagonist for the current two animated Jungle Book films.

Ripoffs and competitors

Here come the rip-offs and competitors....

Soyuzmutfilm made two largely faithful adaptations of both Rikki Tikki Tavi and the Jungle Book eight years apart.

Chuck Jones made two decent-quality competitor adaptations of both Rikki Tikki Tavi and The Jungle Book a year apart.

At the same time, Filmation made a celluloid animated tv show, which was its own decent-quality adaptation of the Tarzan books that lasted from 1976 to 1980.

Nippon Animation made a celluloid anime, which was its own good-quality competitor adaptation of The Jungle Book lasting from 1989 to 1990.

Golden films made two rip-offs of both The Jungle Book and Tarzan nine years apart, even though it was the Tarzan film that fared better in terms of faithfullness and quality. The Jungle Book ripoff with redhead Mowgli was, strangely enough, the first Jungle Book adaptation with Jim Cummings, predating the Jungle Book 2 by 12 years.

Bevanfield films made its own ripoff of The Jungle Book in 1992. It was crude and in poor quality.

Jetlag productions made a good quality and relatively faithful competitor version of The Jungle Book in 1995.

Low budget German cartoon studio Dingo Pictures made its own ripoff of Tarzan in 1999. It was a very crude and poor quality film called Lord of the Jungle. 

DQ Entertainment still makes a 3D tv show and its various film spinoffs, which are its own decent-quality competitor adaptations of The Jungle Book.

Constantin Film made a badly motion captured ripoff version of Tarzan in 2013.

Arad Animation made a disappointing competitor adaptation of the Tarzan books for Netflix, which lasted from 2017 to 2018.

Rulaman: the prehistoric fantasy novel that inspired generations

Rulaman is a popular public domain classic which has been translated into Russian, Korean and other languages, but not into English yet. 

There’s a high probability that Rulaman inspired Joe Kubert’s Tor, Shotaro Ishinomori’s Ryū the prehistoric boy, Jong Jin Yi’s Baba the cave boy, and various other prehistoric heroes. 

The Gora Gopal conundrum

The Gora Gopal conundrum

Gora Gopal is a comic character created by Spanish artist Carrillo. Unlike various other Jungle Guys and Girls out there, it seems that Gora Gopal, in Carrillo's original version, was a post-war Anglo-Indian (albeit of British descent) 'lost child/man' named Tom Colvin raised by elderly mentor and guru Chandenagor in the jungles of Bengal. His girlfriend is Carolina.

My three other Indo-centric projects will be Rikki Tikki Tavi (the mongoose in this version will be a short tailed one) and The Tea Lords. One of which is Rudyard Kipling's story whereas the latter is by Hella Haasse. Rikki will be relatively short for a full length film at 52 minutes, whereas The Tea Lords will be a sprawling tv series set in colonial Java.

The Scrawny Jungle Girl

Barumba’s Adventures is having a distant sequel in The Daughter of Barumba. 

The title character of such a novel is a girl named Jinni, being partly inspired by Mowgli, Goku and real life cases of feral kids in both south and southeast Asian subcontinents. 

Her father and mother were definitely wild people who pretty much had many kids before she was even born. Her brothers were also teenaged or even young adults at that time. Even as a baby, she was quite beautiful to begin with, which is partly due to the fact that she is the youngest of a whole family in the jungle. 

Mowgli's family Tree

It is well noted that Mowgli already has a rather flattering family tree by the time he died along with his wife Nashi, son Nitin and daughter in law Neesa in a house fire late in 1928. By the time they died because they smoked weed too much, their daughter, who was Jinni’s paternal grandmother, Unni, was ten and a half years old and really damn creepy. 

She later married her newly wealthy best friend and had four boys, the youngest of whom was Jinni’s father Nuro. As they aged, they just wanted all of them to leave due to lots of screwed up sibling rivalry. 

Nuro later married his favourite parp Tada and had sex with her about five times. In turn, four frigging boys came out within the interval of fourteen years. 

The daughters of Mowgli lived longer though, and got married into different families instead. Taruna became a wealthy multimillionaire, married Nusa and had two children with her. The daughter and son, both of whom were born into a large birth interval gap of twelve years, were named Manjula and Mohamed, aka Mert. Naira married Bheeka and had six children, four daughters and two sons. The identical twin sons, Ajay and Hamza, who were the youngest amongst them by twenty years apart from the eldest, became notorious gangsters on their own right after their abandonment by them, a sign of neglect. The singular sisters had lived better lives though, becoming independent by the time they reach mid-teens, while diverging in career paths as well. 

His descendant will be a scrawny girl named Jinni.