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Scar’s henchmen include three spotted hyenas. Claw’s henchmen include two spotted hyenas. In Kimba, the main villain is an evil lion named Claw who has a black mane and a scar in place of his left eye. In The Lion King, the main villain is an evil lion named Scar who has a black mane and a scar over his left eye. However, Japanese and American fans of Tezuka’s character seized upon several similarities between the two works that, if they are simply coincidental, would rank high among all-time coincidences. Both are coming-of-age stories centering on an African lion cub, and both cubs’ fathers are murdered in the first act, but Kimba includes several human characters in addition to animals, and focuses on the conflicts between encroaching civilization and nature. The plots of The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion share certain, very broad elements. 11, 1966, and it aired in syndication throughout the ’70s and into the ’80s. According to a history of Kimba by anime historians Robin Leyden and Fred Patten, in 1964 NBC asked Tezuka if he had other ideas for shows that would appeal to English-speaking audiences, and he suggested a cartoon based on Jungle Emperor. While it first began airing in Japan in 1965, Kimba was actually commissioned by NBC, which had established a relationship with Tezuka after purchasing the U.S. Tezuka’s Jungle Emperor,” Yasue Kuwahara, a professor at Northern Kentucky University and director of popular culture studies, says Tezuka “was regarded as not only the forefather of Japanese comics but one of the great men of Japan.” He is often referred to as the “Walt Disney of Japan” due to the universal appeal of his stories and characters (though in recent years that honorific has been more often applied to Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, who was himself heavily influenced by Tezuka). In her 1997 essay “Japanese Culture and Popular Consciousness: Disney’s The Lion King vs. It’s hard to overstate how popular the works of Tezuka - who died in 1989, around the same time Disney started work on The Lion King - were in Japan during his lifetime. So that we can agree, isn’t a rip-off.'Lion King' Prequel in the Works with Director Barry Jenkins But, 'Simba' is, in fact, Swahili for ‘lion’. While anyone who begins to see the resemblances will jump to the conclusion that the rhyming names are intentional. There is, however, one strange coincidence. Disney’s animators definitely knew of Kimba. Moreover, Osamu Tezuka was a highly revered name in the animation industry so there’s no way they missed the title. This claim is quite a stretch considering how heavily the studio relied on research. And then there’s the scene of Simba’s father, Mufasa appearing to him on a cloud that is also a sequence in the anime.īack when plagiarism was being discussed, Disney denied having any knowledge of what Kimba the White Lion is. Even the Kimba’s uncle looks very similar to Scar. Both lion cubs have animal sidekicks, both lose their fathers who are the king of their pride which becomes a major turning point of the tale. Both The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion are coming of age stories. Here are some visual refrences of the similarities:Īpart from these scenes, the plot is a spitting image of the manga. The manga’s creator Osamu Tezuka even commented on the sharp similarities back in July 13, 1994. It was almost three decades ahead of Disney’s The Lion King and it’s plain to see how it preceeds the action of the Disney hit.
#Kimba the white lion 1965 series
Now, Kimba the White Lion is a manga adapted series that aired between 1965 to 1967. And this is after the hoards of cash the makers raked in after the classic animated film released back in 1994. Walt Disney Studios has managed to milk a cool 543.6 million dollars in its opening week of the recent The Lion King live-action remake. SEE ALSO: How 'The Lion King' Cast Members Describe Meeting Beyoncé, Ranked By Pure Joy That’s how long viewers have known that the emotional tale of the lion prince being left to fend for himself in the wild after his father was betrayed and killed bears a heavy resemblance to a story hailing from a completely different culture. And when we say years ago, we mean 25 years ago. Years ago, news of Disney’s classic animated film The Lion King being a copy of Japanese anime series Kimba the White Lion broke. It has been happening for years with some licensed and some unlicensed scenes and plotlines making their way to the western big screens. Every now and then the Japanese manga/anime fandom spots similarities that are too close to be coincidental. Instances of Hollywood films taking huge chunks of anime references and making it their own aren’t rare.