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Jungle Book Shōnen Mowgli

The Jungle Book Shōnen Mowgli (ジャングルブック 少年モーグリ, Janguru Bukku Shōnen Mōguri) is an anime adaption of Rudyard Kipling's original collection of stories, The Jungle Book. It aired in 1989, and consists of a total of 52 episodes.

Music[]

The Japanese opening and closing themes, "GET UP ~ Ai o Shinjite~" (GET UP ~ 愛を信じて, lit. "GET UP ~ I believe in love") and "Chikyuu no ko" (地球の子, lit. "Child Of The Earth"), are sung by the Japanese vocalists Toshiya Igarashi and Hashimoto Ushio respectively. The English opening and closing themes, "Look Up" and "A Child Is Learning", are both sung by the American vocalist Suzi Marsh.[1]

Languages[]

This is Japanese and English version of Mowgli: The New Adventures Of The Jungle Book (Janguru Bukk Mowgli/Shonen Mowgli)

  • English: Mowgli: The New Adventures of the Jungle Book (American Title, Release Date But it's Actually Picked by Olegna Productions in 1996.)
  • German: Mogli: Neue Abenteuer im Dschungelbuch die Serie
  • French: Le livre de la jungle
  • Italian: Mowgli: Il libro della giungla
  • Spanish: Mowgli: El libro de la selva
  • Dutch: Mowgli: Jungle Boek
  • Norwegian: Jungelboken
  • Portuguese: O Livro da Selva
  • Russian: Книга джунглей: Маугли
  • Polish: Mowgli: Ksiega Dzungli
  • Finnish: Viidakkokirja
  • Swedish: Mowgli: Djungelboken
  • Danish: Junglebogen
  • Arabic:  ماوكلي فتى الأدغال
  • Ukrainian: Книга Джунглів

The Japanese anime was dubbed into Hindi and broadcast as "The Jungle Book" by DD National in India during the early 1990s. The Indian version featured original music by Vishal Bharadwaj (with words by noted lyricist Gulzar), which made it quite popular at that time.

The Jungle Book: The New Adventures Of Mowgli DVD[]

Episodes 1-17

  • 1: Mowgli Is Born
  • 2: The Adventure Continues
  • 3: Mowgli Comes To The Jungle
  • 4: Alexander’s Son
  • 5: An Old Wolf’s Visit
  • 6: A New Friend
  • 7: Kichi Is Alone
  • 8: A Devil In Mind
  • 9: More Important Than The Law Of The Jungle
  • 10: Sorry, Baloo!
  • 11: A Cold Fang
  • 12: A Thief In The Village
  • 13: Mowgli Goes Hunting
  • 14: Return Of The Brave
  • 15: Chilly Woods
  • 16: Mowgli’s Journey
  • 17: A Trip Of Adventure

Videos and DVDs[]

  • List of Jungle Book Shōnen Mowgli Videos (UK)

Characters[]

  • Mowgli: The main character of the series. He is still a baby when he becomes lost in the jungle of Seeonee. Alexander adopts him as a son and raises him as a wolf. Mowgli appears to be somewhere between the ages of 6 and 10 during the course of the show, though the first episode shows him as a Baby.
  • Alexander: Mowgli's adoptive wolf father. Blue/black furred. He becomes leader of the wolf pack when Akela chooses to retire. He has a fight with Vermillion. Despite not being willing to do so, Mowgli's father wolf sees a hunting fish and licking his face, to determine the successor to Akela's leadership, in accordance with the Law of the Jungle. During a fire that grazes the forest, Alexander dies defending his son Mowgli from Shere Khan.
  • Luri: Alexander's wife/widow, Mowgli's adoptive wolf mother and maternal mother to Akru and Sura. White furred. She later becomes the official new leader of the pack and the first female leader of the pack when Akela steps down from his position once again, after originally asking Mowgli to convince Vermillion if he'd accept the request of leading. She came up with the plan of getting an ex-member of the pack named Grizzle exiled from it again, this time along with his gang, without having to battle.
  • Akru and Sura: Sons of Alexander and Luri and Mowgli's adoptive brothers. Akru has brown and beige fur, while Sura's is grey and black. They are only cubs when Mowgli is first adopted by the wolf couple but are fully grown in subsequent episodes. They are both very close to Mowgli and stay that way throughout the series, even after they leave home and find mates. Akru has a tendency to be hot headed and does not always look before he leaps, whereas Sura tends to be calmer and more collective.
  • Akela: The leader of the pack, notably when Mowgli is first adopted into the pack and during most of Mowgli's younger days. He is very old but very knowledgeable, and is forced out of his retirement after Alexander died. Near the series' finale, Akela would pass away by the wounds sustained from jackals.
  • Vermillion: Lala's father and Alexander's great friend. He competes with Alexander to be the next leader of the pack, when his father, Akela, chooses to step down. He acquires a scar on his left eye afterwards. His fur is red in colour. It is later revealed that they had also fought previously to decide which one would marry Luri. He later moves away, apparently leaving his daughter behind, and becomes the leader of a pack of wolves in a rocky desert area.
  • Shere Khan: A tiger, who is the main antagonist of much of the series. Cruel and cunning, he violates many Laws of the Jungle, including eating humans and cows, and over-hunting. The injury on his leg is dealt by Alexander in a fight.
  • Bagheera: A black panther, and one of Mowgli's friends. He also serves as one of Mowgli's teachers, like Baloo, though he is more enthusiastic and has a gentler approach in some of his lessons. Bagheera spent part of his childhood in the care of an English family.
  • Baloo: A bear, and one of Mowgli's friends. He is Mowgli's main teacher of the Laws of the Jungle, and is stricter than Bagheera. He is seen as a de facto member of Mowgli's wolf pack.
  • Kaa: A python, and one of Mowgli's friends. He also serves as a teacher to Mowgli on a few occasions.
  • Tabaqui: Shere Khan's sidekick. Unlike the other versions of Jungle Book, he is a bungling hyena (Though still called a jackal) who never seems to get anything right.
  • Bacchus: A fat wolf who can never hunt properly. He is more fitted to babysitting the wolf cubs. He appears more often in the first half of the series, and is occasionally used for comic relief.
  • Fargas: An old wolf who was saved by Alexander from a pack of wild dogs. He steals food from the pack's storage in his first few appearances.
  • Lala: Vermillion's daughter and Akela's granddaughter. She has brilliant red fur, though slightly lighter than her father's. She acts like a tomboy early in the series, and refuses to accept Mowgli as a member of the pack. Later in the series, she grows to her teens and is revealed to be more fond of Mowgli. By the end of the series, she and Sura are the parents of two cubs.
  • Kichi: Mowgli's red panda friend. His parents are killed by humans. Later in the series he lives together with Mowgli in his hut. In the German version, Kichi is called Kiki.
  • Linda: An English girl who adopts a cub Bagheera and keeps as a pet. Bagheera tells Mowgli a story about her through flashback sequences. She has a love for not just any animal, but him especially it seems. She also seems to have a grand understanding of animals through some connection. When her father attempts to shoot Bagheera, Linda shields the panther and tries to help him escape by setting him free. When her father confronts her and Bagheera again, Linda makes another attempt to protect him by shielding him and blocking the gunfire. She literally takes the bullet, but her exact fate is unknown.
  • Linda's Father: A wicked game hunter who is determined to claim Bagheera as his prize and constantly stops at nothing to get him. But after several attempts, they're always thwarted by his daughter, who incessantly interferes with his goal, until she is hit by the gunshots.
  • Bougi: Meshua/Jumeirah's maternal grandfather and Mari's father or Mowgli's Uncle, who Mowgli meets before meeting his granddaughter, daughter and son-in-law. He meets Mowgli when he comes across a trap/hole in which Mowgli fell. Mowgli isn't sure whether he can trust him at first because of all the stories and reputation about humans, and their history with animals, but comes to accepting Bougi's offer to help when he heals him and gives him food. He turns out to be genuinely kind-hearted. Bougi is later slashed in the back by Shere Khan, defending Mowgli and Meshua from the tiger but eventually recovers and survives. Bougi's name in the English adaptation is Rahhar.
  • Mari: Meshua/Jumeirah's mother, Bougi/Rahhar's daughter and Nil/Sanjay's wife. When the family first meet Mowgli, Mari mistakes Mowgli for her son, but despite the fact that it's not really him, she still treats him as if he were one of her own and he grows on her instantly. She comes to love Mowgli so much so that she desperately wishes and prefers that he not take on Shere Khan. Ironically, her name is changed to Meshua (which was Jumeirah's original name in the Japanese variant) for the English dub.
  • Nil: Meshua/Jumeirah's father, Mari/Meshua's husband and Bougi/Rahhar's son-in-law. Like the other family members, he loves Mowgli. When the family is kidnapped, Mowgli rescues them and helps them escape, one way of which is by saving them from the other villagers and he has his animal friends guide them to another town when the animals destroy the residents' homes. Later, in the middle of their trek, Nil succumbs to pneumonia. Nil is renamed Sanjay in the English translation.
  • Meshua: A girl to whom Mowgli takes a liking late in the series. She has a pet mongoose named Rikki-Tikki, in honor of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in one of the short stories in The Jungle Book. Her grandfather originally found Mowgli when the boy was on his own from his wolf pack, saying the boy reminded him of his grandson. Though Mowgli chooses to remain in the jungle at this time, he does meet his human friend later, along with Meshua. Meshua's family later adopt Mowgli into their family as their new son, since their other son had died. Her name is Jumeirah in the English version.
  • Chil: A falcon who served as the messenger for Akela's pack and Hati, the great elephant.
  • Hathi: The great elephant, who serves as the leader of the whole forest of Seeonee. He ius keeper of the Jungle Law and one who Shere Khan fears. Even though humans hurt animals, Hathi accepts Mowgli and willingly helps; including when he told Mowgli about the story abotu Fear, helped to foil Grizzle, and led an army to save the jungle from Buldeo.
  • Sandah: A young female wolf from Vermillion's pack. She is blue-black in colour. Sandah hates the humans after they killed her sister, and resents Mowgli for being a human. She eventually comes to terms with him, and even though he leaves with Vermillion and his pack, she and Mowgli appear to share a close camaraderie. Sandah seems to be a lieutenant, or beta wolf, to Vermillion.
  • Grizzle: A wolf with beige (or grey, even lavender-grey in some scenes) fur and a dark brown blotch around his left eye, an outcast and former member of Akela's pack. He has the distinction of being the only wolf in the series with any markings on his face and is also missing his left ear (or most of his left ear). He got kicked out years ago for not abiding by the law of the jungle, which has since made him bitter as a result, and turned to the dark side after meeting Shere Khan, who put him up to getting revenge for his banishment. Grizzle was the leader of a gang and accompanied by three other lupines, who were also his henchmen. Later, after a battle with Mowgli's friends and some of the other wolves, Grizzle is slain by Mowgli, who stabs him in the jugular with a stone-knife. Bunto is Grizzle's name in the German version, but it's uncertain whether that's his original name in the Japanese version also.
  • Dholes - Marauding red dogs who live in the jungle. Mowgli first encounters a few when they enter Rahhar's campsite where he is. They drive them off by making noise via banging on pots and pans. Later, Mowgli gets rid of a larger number of them driven into the jungle by drought by luring them to a beehive and they're chased off by the swarm of bees. To escape them, they jump into a river, then when they swim their way out of it, they're mauled to death by the wolves.
  • Sargah: A grey and white (or dark blue and light blue in some scenes, the lighter shade of fur ranging from his muzzle to his belly) wolf and one of Grizzle's henchmen. He aspires and hopes to become the next, and new, leader of the gang after Grizzle someday. He, Grizzle and the other two, gang wolves conspire and want to overthrow Akela so that they can take over the pack. Sargah is always effortlessly impressed and very gullible so it doesn't take much to convince him of something, and because of this, he isn't the brightest to catch on to what's really up right away. Plus his son, Kim, is just as naïve as himself. As a result, Grizzle takes advantage of this and just strings him along like a marionette. Sargah and the other lupines in the gang often squabble with one another.
  • Kim: A dark grey and beige wolf, and Sargah's son. Evidently a true chip off the old block, he gets his gullibility from his father and they share the same naiveté, and this becomes proof positive when Lala gives him information on the status or condition of Akela's vulnerability, due to the wolf elder's supposedly ailing health (at least at the time). This is part of Luri's plan to get Grizzle and his gang into a battle. Kim is too busy being head over heals captivated by and infatuated with Lala, and because of this he lets that cloud his better judgment. Kim then informs his father and the other gang wolves, and Sargah sees Lala about this as he receives the same info from her. Sargah and the three other wolves then begin their plans to execute Akela's downfall.
  • Louis: A monkey largely covered with white fur (except for his face, hands and feet), the leader of the other monkeys and the principal lackey/tipster to Shere Khan. Louis and the other monkeys constantly wreak havoc in the jungle and heckle the denizens. He and the other monkeys formed a link and carried Mowgli across the jungle to a temple, where the boy learns about it having once been occupied by humans and how they showed their negative side, and qualities, when it came to greed for treasure, as they searched for it in the edifice.
  • Maki: An orange, female wolf and Akru's mate. Maki is a great singer and, at one point, she's seen giving singing lessons to Akru. She is a minor character and appears late in the series.
  • Buldeo: An evil lying man from the village and another baddie in the series who always tells tall tales about his encounters with the jungle animals. After one story involving the tiger Shere Khan that he tells the other villagers, Mowgli begs to differ and refutes it when he sets out, and attempts to have the final showdown with Shere Khan. After Mowgli slays Shere Khan and returns to the village with the tiger skin, Buldeo convinces the other villagers that Mowgli is a sorcerer. Especially after Buldeo and some other men, and boys, observe his ability to call his animal friends seemingly through the will of magic and they turn against Mowgli (except for his newfound, human friends). Later, when the village is attacked by the animals, Buldeo tries so shoot Bagheera, Sura and Akru. Mowgli then grabs Buldeo's rifle. Buldeo pleads: "Please don't hurt me!" Mowgli then breaks the rifle scaring Buldeo out of the jungle forever. xploit him.
  • Abdullah: A villager who bands with Buldeo, Riswan and several others to hunt down the jungle animals. Later, they kidnap Mowgli's adoptive, human family and take siege of the village. Abdullah was last seen fleeing from the village when the animals came and destroyed the villagers' homes.
  • Riswan: Buldeo's friend and another man from the village who'd later cross paths with Mowgli the second time. He convinces Mowgli to let bygones be bygones for what he tried to pull on him earlier and invite him to have some food and a drink, without any need to heed cautious suspicion. But it turns out to be a trick, as Riswan laced Mowgli's drink with sleeping powder and Riswan, and two other men plan to sell Mowgli to a circus. His name is Gallo in the German version, but it's uncertain whether it's the same in the Japanese version as well.

Differences with the literature[]

While much of the show is literately-accurate, there are some altered cases of the portrayals:

  • Baby Mowgli is found by Kaa and Baloo rather than the wolves.
  • Tabaqui is a hyena rather than a jackal (though he is called the latter by the other characters anyway).
  • While Bagheera was seen hunting a buffalo, he doesn't present one to the wolves to bribe them into raising Mowgli.
  • Mowgli never used a boomerang made of tree-bark in the literature.
  • Characters like Kichi, Sandah and many others are completely exclusive to the anime.
  • Mowgli's wolf-father is named Alexander, but in the literature he isn't given a name at all.
  • Raksha, Mowgli's wolf mother, is named Luri instead.
  • Grey Brother is named Akru here, and he has a biological brother named Sura.
  • Shere Khan's crippled right-leg is sustained by Alexander rather than from birth.
  • Baloo slapped Mowgli across the face instead of spank him for naughty behavior.
  • No cobras are encountered in the temple the monkey-troop took Mowgli to, likewise Kaa doesn't appear here either (or anywhere in the episodes set here for that matter).
    • In a related note, while cobras do appear in the show itself, none of them are incarnated as Nag or Nagaina. A domesticated cobra was seen fighting Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but even that cobra's name and gender are unidentified.
    • Similarly, whether or not Kaa keeps his hypnosis powers here is unknown.
  • Bagheera doesn't break out of captivity himself, rather he is set free willfully for his safety.
  • On Hathi's story about Fear, Thaa is a cow when the version on the book was a he member.
  • Rhinoceroses were featured, though none were mentioned in the book.
  • One of the villainous wolves, Grizzle, dies by being stabbed in the neck by Mowgli with a cone-shaped rock rather than be scared off by Mowgli with a flaming tree-branch.
    • Similarly, Akela does not leave the pack after Grizzle's downfall, and Shere Khan doesn't bargain for Mowgli's life.
  • Mowgli and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi never came face-to-face in the literature.
  • Meshua has a father and daughter with her instead of just a husband and later a baby boy.
    • In a related note, her husband is named Nil/Sanjay and doesn't seem to care about any of the problems Mowgli causes or going poor, whereas in the literature, he's never named, later starts to hate Mowgli and also values his property greatly.
    • Also, while Meshua does get widowed, she never gains an infantile son.
  • Buldeo has a grandson named Ganshum, who's just as bad as he is.
  • Bagheera doesn't take Mowgli's adopted human-family's place in the shed they were imprisoned in to ambush Buldeo and the other villagers, so when Buldeo and company pay a visit, they find the building completely empty rather than Bagheera lying-in-wait.
  • Shere Khan is killed by a knife to the chest rather than a buffalo-stampede.
    • Similarly, Tabaqui is killed by a wolf named Grey Brother in the literature, but here he is gored by a buffalo, and it is uncertain if he does die.
  • Mowgli never dances or sings on Shere Khan's skin on Council-Rock.
  • The wolves, Bagheera, and Baloo help in Mowgli and Hathi's assault on the village; when the book had no mention of them doing so.
  • The dhole-army is foretold by a wolf named Won-tolla in the books, but here it is foretold by Chil (and there's no wolf named Won-tolla).
  • Akela doesn't take part in battling the dhole-army and as a result wasn't mortally wounded by dholes at all, rather he engages (and gets beaten up by) a gang of jackals.
  • Mowgli is never portrayed as an adult, getting a job as a forest-ranger, marrying and bearing a son (though Mowgli might have reached his early teens in the latest episodes, and Jumeirah may be intended to be Mowgli's future wife).

Gallery[]

Notes

External links[]

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