Lion King, a fabled, original cartoon of Disney. Their very first original cartoon. Lies...
I'm surprised someone else hasn't written about this on theotaku, I was looking and I found nothing. Why? Lion King is a practical remake of Jungle Emperor what some may know as Kimba the White Lion. When I first saw Kimba, I was far too young to remember the whole story, but I remember Kimba and his pals and a few bits of scenery here and there. I remember years later that Lion King came out on vhs. I remember watching it and liking Lion King.
Lion King is superb and a wonderful animation and I still like it, but I am furious at Disney. They claim not to have known of Kimba, Osamu Tezuka's story made into anime. Kimba was the first colored anime to come out.
I ask this: How can Disney not have known of Kimba when it was they themselves who taught the Japanese to color in the anime Kimba? How could Disney not have known when Walt Disney had met and befriended Osamu Tezuka? Curious, curious...
I find this an insult to anime, our intelligence, and even more so both Simba and Kimba. They deny again and again.
A very old animation reel of Lion king shows two lion cubs, one of them white. It's even included in their DVD. They showed us images of Mufasa coming/speaking out of the clouds to Simba. Kimba's father does the same thing.
The similarity between the rock and the images of the cranes and a few characters makes me angry. How could they deny this?
The answer:
They don't own the rights to Kimba the white lion. They were trying to make this before the battle of who owned what came out. In fact that's partially the reason Sailor Moon is not shown on American channels. People are fussing over the rights to it.
Originally no one in America owned Kimba. Soon it became a big fuss. Disney should not have gone through with it, but they did anyways. Hypocritical much? They yell and screech like banshees when someone bases something off of them without crediting, but they do it as well.
Still it is hard to deny the similarities of scenes and characters when the cast themselves have mentioned Kimba and were slightly confused that it was not a remake of Kimba. That was was the original voice of Simba thought. A remake of Kimba. And he was right.
I like Lion King, I like Jungle Emperor. I like anime. I like Osamu Tezuka. Without him would be without anime. It's just a slap in the face to the poor man without mentioning his anime or his name. Yes, he's dead as is Walt Disney (who might have been ashamed, if he were alive), but does that excuse the Disney's behavior for practically stealing?
And don't think anime companies and the Japanese don't know. They do, but they can do hardly a thing about it. In fact there are quite a few essays written from them, but unfortunately it IS in Japanese and rather hard to read for English-only people.
I only write this because it is an insult to Walt Disney, an insult to anime, an insult to Tezuka, and a blatant disregard of fans everywhere. Money wins over reasons now. Our world has come down the big bucks of companies of what Disney has become.
For far more organized and well-written articles are sites such as:
http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm
http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/y-asada/leo2.html
and a lovely little transcript where Roy Disney even mentions Kimba (and yet they deny any previous knowledge of Kimba at all. Curious...Curious...):
http://www.kimbawlion.com/transcript.htm
Of course there are still some hard core fans of The Lion King or Disney in general who don't believe it is obvious theft.
If you need to look at certain scenes then go to youtube and insert " Simba Kimba" into the search. There is quite a few to look through and even your eyes won't be able to deny it.
