Madhavi Sunder, a professor at Georgetown Law who wrote about the Kimba/ Lion King controversy in her 2012 book From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice, says that had Tezuka’s company, Tezuka Productions, pursued legal action against Disney in the wake of Lion King‘s release, the case would have been “very strong.” Courtesy of Alli MacKay, “Kimba & The Lion King - How Similar Are They?“ Walt Disney Pictures Tezuka Productions (Oddly, the similarity between the names Simba and Kimba most likely is coincidental, since “simba” is the Swahili word for lion.) But it was the images - The Lion King and Kimba feature several scenes and shots that appear to mirror one another - that critics felt was the strongest evidence of Disney artists having borrowed from Tezuka.Īn early piece of concept art for The Lion King, one of several that appears to show Simba as a white lion. There are even early pieces of concept art for The Lion King that depict Simba as a white lion. Both Simba and Kimba have, among their small circle of advisors, a wise, sagelike mandrill and a bird - Lion King‘s Zazu is a hornbill, Kimba‘s Pauly is a parrot. 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. Now, that’s a little hard to believe since Allers lived in Japan and worked in an animation studio in the 80s – a time when Tezuka’s works were pretty widely known, especially in the animation world.'Lion King' Prequel in the Works with Director Barry Jenkins
The Lion King co-director Rob Minkoff said he, and other co-director Roger Allers, were not familiar with the Kimba series and only heard about it when promoting the movie in Japan. “I mean, the artists working on the film, if they grew up in the ’60s, they probably saw Kimba,” explained the animator. “I mean, I watched Kimba when I was a kid in the ’60s, and I think in the recesses of my memory, we’re aware of it but I don’t think anybody consciously thought, ‘Let’s rip off Kimba.” In an interview with HuffPost Entertainment, former Disney animator Tom Sito said there was no inspiration from Kimba when creating The Lion King.
An animated series aired in 1965 and was broadcasted until 1967.Įven though there are screenplay differences between The Lion King and Kimba, many of the scenes are almost too similar. Kimba the White Lion was created by Japanese cartoonist Osamu Tezuka and was first published in 1950 as a series of manga.
The Lion King was Disney’s first animated film that was an entirely original story, unlike The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast – or so people thought.