AniWorthKenya Boy
Introduction
It is the year 1941. 11-year-old Murakami Wataru lives with his family, Japanese textile traders operating in British Kenya, when war breaks out between Japan and the Allies. Fleeing into the bush, young Wataru falls headlong into a series of fantastic adventures.
(Source: ANN)
Audience ratings
MyAnimeList / Tenrai : 5.28/10 · 893
| 1/10 | 54 |
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| 2/10 | 67 |
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| 3/10 | 88 |
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| 4/10 | 155 |
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| 5/10 | 153 |
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| 6/10 | 126 |
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| 7/10 | 121 |
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| 8/10 | 50 |
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| 9/10 | 25 |
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| 10/10 | 54 |
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Audience reviews
4 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Animorphimagi
Circa 2024. After watching Kenya Boy I am quite stunned. It uses some standard "boy must survive in Africa tropes" but then had a pacing that only intensifies by the minute. It is one of those movies that most represents what it meant to be an anime in the 80s.
I won't bother with a synopsis, just know a boy gets lost in Africa due to the start of WW2 and must survive nature while looking for his father. This is the basic stuff that would normally make this an average movie, it's how far the writer went from there that truly makes this a classic. Explosions, monsters, and a good vibes ending truly is what makes it 80s.
Music feels classic. Animation is very well done, but had some questionable choices where they remove colors and sometimes backgrounds from scenes that makes some parts l…
Read at the sourcematthigh
There's this concept of a show that is "So Bad It's Good" - as in, it is recognized to be a terrible movie/show, but its terrible-ness is so over the top that it is actually entertaining to watch. In fact, MST3K was founded on this principle.
Kenya Boy is definitely one of those "So Bad It's Good" movies.
As it started, I thought I was in for a standard Coming Of Age story, as a young boy is separated from his father in the heart of Africa at the start of war, and has to fend for himself. Well, okay, I can go along with that.
And then, it starts to go off the rails. Just a little bit at first, with things like giant animals and such. But then it just goes absolutely nuts.
I won't go into all details because spoilers, but soon he (along with his father-mentor-figure) are fighting of…
Read at the sourcevigorousjammer
An odd film based on a manga by Yamakawa Souji, Shonen Kenya (or, "Kenya Boy"), tells the story of 11-year old Wataru Murakami, who gets separated from his father as they are travelling through Kenya. He must then survive the perils that he encounters, with the help of a few allies he meets along the way.
The story is pretty standard when it comes to adventure films, and it seems to have taken much inspiration from classic black & white jungle adventure films of the 30s and 40s such as King Kong, Gunga Din, or the many others that were released during that era. However, the plot here doesn't have much of a structure to it, jumping from one scene to the next without much of any reason or purpose other than to showcase some action or animation. Much of the middle of the film is spent in act…
Read at the sourceliteraturenerd
Overview:
Kenya Boy, along with being one of the more polite things Trump calls Obama, is also the name of a 1984 kids movie considered "one of the worst ever" by older otaku. The founder of animenewsnetwork listed it among his anime Hall of Shame and that guy has seen about 5,000 anime!
Background:
Kenya Boy was based on a 1950s manga that never really gained fame or popularity outside Japan. The manga is basically a Japanese Tarzan ripoff that hasn't aged particularly well. The movie tries to adapt the entire manga and crams WAY too much plot into a 100 minute run time, making the last 30 minutes an absolute blitz of insanity.
Plot:
The plot is basically what you get when you mix Tarzan with a cocaine induced fever dream. Our hero Wataru is a young Japanese boy whose father is a m…
Read at the source