Kenya Boy is a film that left me at a complete loss for words.
First of all, it's a bad film. There's really no way to polish that turd. It fails on nearly every level. The writing is bad, the production is bad, it feels like literal propaganda at times...but the thing that makes this so unique even among bad films is just how bizarre and unusual it is in its badness.
Let's start with the production. This film came out in spring of 1984, and one might be inclined to give its production a pass because "it's old." However, when we consider that Hayao Miyazaki's legendary Nausica of the Valley of the Wind also came out in spring of 1984, we can see that no, there's definitely a standard this film should've met. Instead, what we get is a film that at times appears half-finished. Action scenes will occasionally jump into black-and-white, as if the characters have suddenly found themselves transported into the music video for Take on Me. Anything regarding water is particularly bad, as it and everyone in it are often left uncolored even when everything else in the frame is.
What's more, the animation is plagued with all sorts of gaffes and continuity errors. Clothes come on and off underwater. The landscape shakes during a zoom shot, as if the cells weren't properly pinned down. And in one scene, there are characters who are just flat-out outlines.
That particular scene is absolutely filled with issues. At one point, the protagonist and his attackers end up switching skin colors.
This appears to be purely an animation error until we see a scene of two of these attackers looking shocked, then ducking behind their shields, reemerging as they once were, which means that the filmmakers decided to either cover up an error by drawing attention to it and making it look intentional, or just flat-out meant to make the mistake in the first place. Either way, it's the most bizarre choice possible.
The end effect of all of this is that the animation has this surreal, almost SHAFT-ian look to it, and some of it is even clearly intentional! However, it's impossible to tell how much of it was someone's artistic vision and how much was just a lack of time, resources, and talent that kept it from reaching a certain bar of technical competence.
The other aspects of the production are less visibly bad, but bad nonetheless. The voice acting is flat, the music selection is limited and songs will often continue to play once they're no longer appropriate for the scene, and the camera work and framing are often shoddy.
With that out of the way, let's move on to the story. The only way I can think of describing what the hell Kenya Boy is about is by attempting to recap it.
Wataru is a boy visiting Kenya with his father in the 1940s, seemingly for business. However, a rhino attack ends up separating the two. Wataru ends up meeting a chieftain named Zega who has fallen ill. Zega kills a panther who was ambushing them and then asks Wataru to bring him water to save his life. He also notes that, as Wataru is Japanese, he must be very brave. Many different characters throughout this movie will end up echoing this sentiment.
This is where the movie begins taking its truly strange turns, as in the process of retrieving the water, Wataru encounters and fights a giant frog.
As Wataru launches a rescue mission under the cover of night, Kate goes to the hut where Zega is kept captive, putting a damp cloth over his burned eyes and thanking him and Wataru for foiling the ceremony, because she doesn't actually want people sacrificed to her. Wataru enters the hut, but is quickly discovered. He escapes with Kate, leaving Zega, the man he initially came to save, behind (for whatever reason).
The next day, Zega is forced to fight to the death against lions, and reveals that he is no longer blind. Wataru comes back to save him again, and the two escape on Dahna. Wataru's father arrives just in time to see his son ride off on a giant purple snake and also to end up getting chased by the pursuing tribesmen. He is rescued by--and I am not making this up--a Nazi named Von Goering.
After their escape, Kate and Wataru go swimming, at which point Kate is kidnapped while underwater by a cult that dresses like lizards.
In escaping, they are also taken in by the Nazi and his cronies, allowing for Wataru to finally reunite with his father. However, the Nazi locks them up to use as a bargaining chip to get a scientist to create an atomic bomb for him. The scientist agrees, but as our heroes escape, he locks himself in a room with the Nazi, revealing he's already completed an atom bomb and will use it to blow the two of them up. I am unsure how exactly he built an atomic bomb with such limited range, but apparently he has.
Wataru, his father, Zega, and Kate all flee. Then the atomic bomb goes off, and then there are dinosaurs. This may be a metaphor for...something, but then again, we also see Dahna fighting a T-rex, so it's incredibly unclear what the hell is happening through this entire extended sequence.
After this, the dinosaurs just kind of turn into skeletons and disintegrate, and our heroes find themselves by a train station. Kate, Wataru, and his father all get on the train and head off to end their trip in Africa. And that's where the movie ends.
The story of this film is the most bizarre, confusing thing, especially when combined with the limited and often surreal animation. It's primarily a straightforward, grounded story about a boy and his father getting separated in the wilderness, but it's peppered with so many odd elements that don't seem to make sense within the world. What's more, the characters will often make bizarre, confusing decisions. Why did Wataru and his father wander around the wilderness for 3 years instead of trying to reach the nearest population center to meet up or at least organize some sort of search mission? Why did Wataru leave Zega behind after he went to the village specifically to rescue him? Then there's the fact that none of the plots seem to organically lead into each other or be connected in any way. The tribesmen who worship Kate have nothing to do with the lizard cultists, who have nothing to do with the Nazis. They're all only barely linked by Wataru's search for his father.
However, I would be remiss if I didn't at least attempt to give credit where credit is due, so let's look at the positives of this film. I have to point out that, despite all its issues, it is surprisingly reserved in terms of how it treats race, and apart from everyone's constant proclamations that the Japanese are brave and strong, feels less and less like a propaganda film as it goes along. I mean, it's still not actually good at either of those things, but the film isn't as offensive as you would assume a 1984 film called "Kenya Boy" would be. And as I mentioned earlier, it does attempt to experiment with its animation, even if it ultimately doesn't work and often looks more like an animation mishap.
Ultimately, this is a film that would be torturous to watch alone. Not only is it as bafflingly bad as it is, it's also not a particularly short film and feels longer than it is due to slow pacing and segmented storytelling structure. However, as a "Bad Movie Night" film to watch with other people, it's absolutely fantastic, as it's not only bad, but bizarre. Watching Kenya Boy is definitely an experience, but what sort of experience it is depends on whether or not it's a shared one. Due to how fun it can be while watched with others, and for its attempts to do something somewhat creative, Kenya Boy earns at least a few points from me. 3/10.
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