I was reading about Dungeon Meshi and Kuro, the “kobold”.
Kobolds are usually depicted as canine humanoids in Japanese media compared to the more reptilian humanoids that kobolds are depicted as in western media[4] such as Dungeons and Dragons. The reason for this is credited as either a mistranslation of the first Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual[5] or because of the lack of reference art in said Monster Manual, but a picture of a jackalwere being present on the opposite page[6], which was then used as reference art for the anime, The Record of the Lodoss War. That anime is credited for solidifying the trope of canine kobolds in Japanese media.
From https://delicious-in-dungeon.fandom.com/wiki/Kobolds#cite_note-5
And the supporting youtube video https://m.youtube.com/shorts/rUntTZ6spOc
Bonus fact: piglike orcs.
Quest For Glory(not really D&D, but old) had them as a Grey, Pot-bellied, lanky, human-heightish, short-eared magical Goblinoid(holy shit: Endermen?). I never encountered any refference to them in western literature with either dog features or lizard tails or scales until some of the more recent Forgotten Realms books; Their presence always seemed like an after-thought. I mostly read the D&D novels though.
Never occoured to me that any dog-people I saw in anime or manga were kobolds, nor that those came into Japanese media through D&D, but un-like D&D, a lot of them were named characters that did stuff.
Still haven’t seen a depiction of a lizard-Kobold. Sounds more like a Dragon-born’s pet.
Huh, I forgot they called that little guy a kobold in Quest for Glory. I always went in there to steal his shrooms, but only discovered decades later he had an invisible chest in there too that can be revealed with detect magic.
Fun to see someone mention the game out in the wild.