[Meeting…] Kajika

A few months ago we met Paifu and José Rodríguez two ghost children protagonists of the manga Cowa! created by the famous author Akira Toriyama at a time in which he sought to distance himself from the long shadow of his star work, dragon ball.

This time I am going to talk about another character by the same author, created for a short story released a year later than Cowa! and that, once again, shows that Toriyama is not an author who seeks to go beyond his own limits. established.

KAJIKA THE FOX BOY

The protagonist of this new story is Kajika, a fox boy who travels the world saving the people and animals he encounters. He is accompanied on his adventure by Guigui, who turns out to be the soul of a fox and responsible for Kajika's appearance, since his status as a fox child is the result of a curse.

Apparently Kajika was an excessively naughty and cruel child of the Kawa race, to the point that he killed animals for fun (which was quite easy for him since his race is much stronger than a normal human). One of the victims of the cruel child was a fox, which He cursed him, turning him into a half-fox and limiting his strength. natural. After this, Kajika was expelled from his village and began a new life accompanied by the soul of the fox, which guided him along the path of goodness, since Kajika's curse would disappear if the boy saved 1000 lives, thus forcing him to do good. After a (presumably difficult) first few months of living together, they both became great friends, since they only had each other.

DO GOOD AND DON'T LOOK AT WHOM

Expelled from his village and with the mission of saving 1,000 lives, Kajika decided to undertake a long journey across the world looking for people and animals in trouble and hunting bandits in order to obtain the money necessary to survive.

Due to the natural strength that members of Kajika's race possess, the boy is able to jump, run and hit in a superhuman manner, while also possessing other strange abilities such as extracting evil from a person or "shooting" a wave of powerful wind with his hands, which hits and blows away his rivals, leaving them unconscious.

As I said before, the fox curse limits Kajika's real strength, however it also gives him hearing and smell equivalent to that of a fox, which makes his life easier when searching for people who are hiding or hiding himself in case of being chased.

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

Due to his need to save lives, this (now kind) boy He will get into a lot of trouble to save strangers., this being the way in which she will meet some of her friends, such as Haya, a clever thief who has stolen the last dragon egg that exists from a local gangster called Gibachi, who has sent his thugs after her in order to recover it.

The fact that this character is quite naive will cause him to be easily deceived, even by the people he saves, one of the best examples being the aforementioned thief, who will get rid of the burden of the dragon egg, which will become in the hands of Kajika, after telling him a lie that only he (and 90% of Shonen heroes that exist) can believe.

Kajika, like the good protagonist that he is, will fearlessly accept his new mission to save the egg, so he will have to travel the distance from the desert where he is located to the island that was the habitat of the missing dragons. Along the way this hero will have the opportunity to meet other interesting characters, such as Donko, a guy who, despite being very fast and skilled in repairing vehicles, stands out for being a great trickster, providing help to good and bad guys alike (in exchange for money) or Isaza, a mercenary as strong as he is arrogant, belonging to the same race as Kajika, who is sent to recover the egg, which will cause an inevitable confrontation between both characters.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Kajika is a kind, naive and very strong character, something that could be said is the standard definition of the Shonen manga hero and it leads us directly to think of Son Goku, with whom he shares something more than the tail of an animal.

It is a little sad that his curious story and his mission to save 1000 people to break the curse, ends up leading to a version that has fallen into disrepair dragon ball, which is not necessarily bad, but it does demonstrate a lack of freshness in Toriyama's ideas and deprives this character of shining with its own light.

However, because Kajika's story is not excessively long, it does not suffer the asphyxiation and deterioration that Son Goku's story did. Although it is worth clarifying that, as happened with Cowa!, the end of Kajika It is quite open and leaves the door open to continue his adventures, in case Toriyama considers it necessary (something unlikely today).

In short, if you liked the character or are fans of Toriyama, take a look at the manga, which was published in a single volume years ago and apparently va a ser relanzado dentro de unos meses en formato Kanzenban, en el cual se han editado casi todas las obras de Akira Toriyama estos últimos años.