Kimba the Lion King
If you're old enough, or watched enough obscure cartoons from long, long ago, you may remember a so-so character called Kimba, a young white lion who got himself into typical jungle adventures. Had Disney heard of Kimba before creating Simba?
Kimba the Lion King!
Now hold on, you're saying: Bob's off his rocker (and probably off his meds, too).
The Lion King's name isn't Kimba. It's Simba!
Folks, bar the doors and blow out the candles. There's something you need to know about the Lion King. It has nothing to do with the Circle of Life. It has to do with Disney helping itself to the intellectual property of a Japanese company called Tezuka Productions.
Decades ago, Tezuka produced an animated TV series called Kimba the White Lion. It wasn't a blockbuster. If you're not a cartoon geek, you probably never heard of it. But most of the Disney animators are cartoon geeks, and likely had heard of Kimba, saw the shows, and used the white lion as inspiration for Simba. Even if Disney swears otherwise.
There's nothing wrong with that!
No one has a lock on using lions in cartoons. But Disney adhered so closely to the original, right down to virtually copying animation frames, that it makes one's mouth drop to think that people as talented as those who work for Disney would need to resort to this:
I think what happened was simple.
Disney wanted the rights to Kimba. Disney couldn't get the rights to Kimba. Rather than shelve the project, and perhaps feeling wrathful over their inability to close the deal, Disney decided to make their own lion movie, with just enough differences from the Kimba film to protect them from a slam-dunk lawsuit, but just enough similarities to really stick it to those Kimba bastards.
The Lion King is a far, far better movie than Kimba the White Lion, even taking into account the relatively primitive animation techniques of the 1960s, when Kimba was made.
And if it weren't for The Lion King, who'd be talking about Kimba?
I have no problem that Disney forged on to make The Lion King after they were unable to secure the rights to Kimba. In fact, I'm glad they did, because The Lion King is one of my favorite Disney films!
But I can't get over the similarities between some of the frames. It's almost as if Disney, like Robert Conrad in those old commercials, put a battery on its shoulder and dared the Kimba folks to knock it off. Come on... I dare ya!
That's arrogant, and it's wrong. Back in 1994, however, Disney may have assumed that word wouldn't get around, since there wasn't much of an Internet to get the word around.
Now, after so many years, the issue is too old to be a scandal. It's a forgotten bit of Disney lore.
Unless you happen to be the folks behind KimbaWLion.com, who live, eat, and breathe Kimba, and who have documented the Simba situation in detail worthy of a trial lawyer.
Hakuna matata!