Shotaro Ishinomori’s Ryu the Cave Boy (原始少年リュウ) is a rather old tv anime series which aired from 1971-72. It is about a loincloth wearing feral prehistoric boy trying to find his birth mother while meeting two major friends (Ran and her brother Don) along the way. Finally, with their help, he has succeeded in finding his birth mother Esta near the end. Disappointingly, even with its merits, it’s just a rather average YA adventure in the vein of Johnny Weissmuller’s (in name only) Tarzan films. But unlike the Weissmuller Tarzan films, the show does have a clear backstory; Ryu was a baby being fostered by a bereaved Apewoman. It has a dvd release and a Blu Ray release which are available on Amazon Japan.

Ryu the Cave Boy’s manga tie in, created by the late Shotaro Ishinomori himself, is both a much more ambitious story and a classic that holds up in terms of how resonant and starkly mature it still is today. Like the show, it also ran at the same time.

The manga’s backstory has been expanded to include Esta being a shipwrecked Atlantean scientist whose sick husband passed away before her son was born. Its ending is also far different from the anime’s, in which Ryu reunites with Esta herself in the land of Atlantis, just before a tsunami flooded it.

More fun facts; Ryu himself is also an ardent hunter like Kipling’s original Mowgli. His girlfriend Ran is choosier than in the anime, being similar to Jane Parker in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films that inspired it. Don is also a bigger goofball overall, unlike in the show where he’s just a young tag along kid.

Here’s the intro! https://youtu.be/v0OEa9K2cT4?si=WzKbRar3U6yQCCtx

Nice! Thanks for sharing this with us.

Also, link without the extra parameter: https://youtu.be/v0OEa9K2cT4

Thanks for the posting - I don't know much about anime so it helps to find out about titles to look for.

Karsten