CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

I've heard the Disney's Lion King was:

"Disney feature film, which was an unabashed in-your-face direct rip-off of the classic anime movie Jungle Emperor (i.e. Kimba the White Lion) by legendary Japanese anime sensei Osuma Tezuka."

I got this from a fairly reliable source, but I was wondering if anyone else had some info on its validity. Thanks.

Nothing? Comments?

i HAVE seen a picture of the lion in that manga/anime thing, and it looked REMARKABLY similar to simba...

I believe there is a book that is supposed to reveal the skeletons the Disney company has in it's closet such as the Kimba/Lion King scenario and other things. My friend used it for a report back in high school. I can't remember the title right now but I'll go look for it.

EDIT: Found the title. The book's called Disney: The Mouse Betrayed. Don't know how reliable the book is (it only had a three-star rating on Amazon). If you really want to look into this topic, just go to Yahoo and put "disney and kimba" in the search engine. You'll get tons of results with people who put scenes of Kimba and Lion King next to each other for comparison.

News flash - Disney has borrowed heavily for all of it's animated movies. Beauty and the Beast? Snow White? You all know these aren't original stories. The question is how heavily did they borrow from Kimba? There is a striking similarity between Kimba and Simba, but they are both lion cubs. How different should they look?

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the Jungle Emperor story line, so I don't know the answer.

There are some things that could suggest that The Lion King was inspired by Kimba. Many of the names are similar except for one or two letters, and the very basic of plots is the same - a young lion must learn how to someday be king.

However, as termyt pointed out, Disney uses a lot of traditional/classic stories to base their movies from. Granted, classic fairy tales belong to no one - they are part of global folklore and everyone understands this. Kimba is a very old show - it was on in the US when most of the animators were kids. Maybe the animators were treating their childhood cartoon much like they would a fairy tale : let's take something old and modernize it.

There's a very similar arguement over Disney's Atlantis and Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water. I've seen both and I can see some striking similarities. Did Disney borrow from Nadia? I think you'll find they did. Did Disney rip off Nadia completely. Not at all - there's enough original elements in Atlantis to make it a stand-alone production.

Many sub-genres are all going to resemble each other to a certain extent. Treasure hunter stories, for example. You can bet your sock that there's a traitor in the group. You can bet your other sock that there's going to be traps to go through to get the treasure. It's the same for lion cub and Atlantean princess stories.

http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm

Clickie that link and be surprised. (Safe page. I don't know about the rest of the site but this particular page is fine.)

I'm surprised Disney didn't get the mice sued out of them...

The things termyt and Gypsy say are very true. But sometimes I wonder when I see those screenshots. Plus, have you ever read about some the things that are said about what's hidden in Disney films? I know you can make something out of nothing, but still...

Wow. If you trust that link above, then the Lion King is definitely a rip off. I guess I'll have to watch Jungle Emperor to tell for myself.

The big secret alot of folks don't talk about is that Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney, is a conniving and amoral CEO. The Disney of today is a far cry from the Disney Walt founded. Roy Disney himself has called the company's image today as soulless and rapacious. Just look at the new Desperate Housewives show on the Disney owned ABC network. This is a family company? Did I mention Gay Days at Disney World?

Honestly, none of us should be surprised. As for the Disney Mouse Betrayed book, not sure how accurate it is. I have read it myself, not all of it though, but I've also read other manuscripts on current Disney management and there are similarities.

The message? Don't be fooled by the squeaky clean mouse ears. Running the mouse house today are a bunch of money hungry egomaniancs.

it just makes me sad thinking how much Disney has deviated from the original idea... and i have some family friends who accidentally went to Disneyworld during Gay Pride week, thought they were just getting a really good price on tickets...

personally, i think the Atlantis cartoon is taken from the original Stargate movie...

I remember watching Kimba! It is very similar, but I didnt make the connection. How could Disney get away with this? Oh and, by the way, Lion King is like my favortite animated movie.

i never saw Kimba. is it good? I thought it was copied off by LionKing but i guess it is reverse! lol

To be honest, even if Lion King ripped off Jungle Emperor, I still can't help but love the Lion King. I have never seen JE, and from my point of view Lion King looks like the better film for sure. I don't support the fact that Disney ripped off JE, and I'm not a Disney supporter in general, but I love the Lion King. It's my 2nd favorite movie ever, and I plan to post a review soon. I think Lion King is a great film in its own right even though alot of it had already been done.

I only got to see a few seconds of it in the 80's/90's as a kid before Dad changed the channel. It was interesting and I always wanted to see it again, but I don't think I can afford the price tag on that DVD set - $170! Ouch!

Woah, I just saw a video with 4 Kimba episodes from the video store. The plot had holes you could drive a truck through (a LARGE truck), but it was really cute. XDDD (Check out my avatar! XD)

Anyway, yes, it had several things that reminded me of the Lion King, and of course it came first, so The Lion King could have been ripped off from it.

I dont know much about the matter, but I htink it is a bit fishy.
Disny is a machine now, not a family friendly orginization.

I've never seen JE, but in any case I thought the story was a take-off of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Not that I've seen that either.

I've never seen JE, but in any case I thought the story was a take-off of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Not that I've seen that either.

I had never thought of that befor, but there are some good similaritys...

of cource if it was faithful to hamlet, simba would have to kill polonius. Nara (if thats that girl lions name) would have to go insane and die. And Laertes would have to kill Simba... Man! That would so Sw33t!

Scribs wrote:I had never thought of that befor, but there are some good similaritys...

of cource if it was faithful to hamlet, simba would have to kill polonius. Nara (if thats that girl lions name) would have to go insane and die. And Laertes would have to kill Simba... Man! That would so Sw33t!

That would be.

Or perhaps I mixed up Hamlet with Macbeth, but I'm pretty sure it was Hamlet.

SirThinks2Much wrote:Or perhaps I mixed up Hamlet with Macbeth, but I'm pretty sure it was Hamlet.

Hamlet is the one where the father's ghost comes back, so I'm pretty sure you were thinking of Hamlet.

Good grief, you guys were gravedigging! This thing died in December!

Old topic eh? Well here's my thought on it:

I TOTALLY looked at Lion in a different way when I found out about Kimba. Pretty depressing really... plus I over-watched Lion King anyway :/ But with Disney's "rip off" ideas with Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, etc. I think of those more as classical stories made by some annonymous person (since there's been sooo many remakes of these classic stories) so it's simply disney making their version on it. With Kimba... well, it's a more modern movie when copyright laws DO exist and everything... then again, I think Kimba was based on some classical lion story anyways, so it could just be Disney making their version of the classic story. Still, to have so much in common with Tezuka's...

o.o
I don't really care. I love The Lion King.