Prince Fan: The Taiwanese Kenya Boy Manhua

Hello Safari Freaks. Today's instalment is a manhua remake to one of the first Weekly Shōnen Sunday manga adaptations in existence.

The manhua, by the way, is the rather obscure Prince Fan, aka Fan Wang Zi. As its name suggests, it is an unofficial Taiwanese (Complex Mandarin) localisation of the Kenya Boy manga written by Souji Yamakawa (1908-92) and drawn by Kyuuta Ishikawa (1940-2018), but the print that it descends from is Toho/Tobo Tosho Shuppansha's Home Run edition. Like its Japanese counterpart in both serial and tankobon forms, it began when Fan (who's likely a rebadged Wataru for reasons related to how much of Taiwan's postwar history worked out) and his sulky father were out into the wild (unlike in the picture story, where they escaped from an army of despicably colonialist Brits) from a somewhat alternate history version of Mombasa, modern day Kenya.

Even more so than the Japanese variant which it was sourced from, the unintentionally derogatory caricatures of actual Kenyan natives (often from various groups loosely inspired by actual cultures) are one of the Taiwanese manhua's many outdated quirks, even though it's not the biggest problem. The actual biggest problem with the manhua itself is that it still is a heavily pirated, poorly redrawn trainwreck. Also not helping is that the Japanese variant is in much better quality, which explains why it has at least three prints in book form and a print in eBook form, whereas the Taiwanese Mandarin retelling cannot be reprinted in any shape and form to this day.