YMS: Kimba the White Lion

Kimba the White Lion is one of the most bizarre and insane things I have ever watched and I only started watching it because I'm working on a big review of The Lion King 2019 many people have asked me about my thoughts on the controversy between Kimba and the Lion King and I figured it would be appropriate to include a little Kimba segue in the review what I didn't know at the time was just how much I would eventually want to say about it boy was I ever naive so here's a separate video for the Kimba controversy that would be way too long to fit into the Lion King video Kimba the White Lion was created by Osamu Tezuka it started as a manga in the year 1950 titled jungle Emperor Tezuka is basically the Walt Disney of Japan and his works have heavily inspired the manga and anime that we see today Tezuka himself was largely inspired by Disney films like Bambi and Dumbo and that inspiration wound up leading to the design of large and expressive eyes in his works that are now commonplace in anime today Tezuka was very open about where his inspirations came from and how it influenced his works and this is partially why the Lion King controversy picked up so much steam Tezuka actually passed away in early 1989 five years before the Lion King was actually released so although he was never able to comment on the controversy at all those who took it upon themselves to speak for him were upset that Disney never even so much as credited him as an inspiration and of course they should right I mean it's pretty obvious that Kimba the White Lion was used as a blueprint for the production of The Lion King and if that's not true then that would mean that all of these popular YouTube videos on the subject were misleading people into believing an exaggerated version of what the actual controversy is well after thoroughly watching through and researching Kimba I can definitively say that you have been lied to you have been manipulated to such a degree that there are going to be people in this comment section white knighting for Kimba who haven't even watched it and it absolutely baffles me that there are so many people out there that will passionately defend an opinion that is not even their own I'm sure many of you are currently thinking wait a minute I've seen these other comparison videos on YouTube from people who have watched Kimba and they looked exactly the same let's look at one of the most popular videos on the subject titled Kimba 1966 versus Simba 1994 versus Simba 2019 as you can see there are a lot of similar shots here to the average viewer clicking on this video this is a pretty open-and-shut case even if all of these shots were taken from random points in the Kimba movie to make it more cohesively form-fitting towards the narrative happening in the Lion King there are still far too many similarities to call it a coincidence right well you might want to reconsider that thought because if you believe that then you are inadvertently admitting that you believe that Kimba the White Lion ripped off The Lion King with this incredibly misleading and dishonest video failed to mention is that nearly every single shot from the Kimba footage being shown here is from the 1997 Kimba film released three years after the Lion King now some of you may be thinking Adam what if these shots are just based off of similar looking shots from earlier in the Kimba series pre-1994 well joke's on you cuz I did my research and it's not there I even went through the manga which supposedly this film is based on the second half of and yeah it's not there either it was mostly just blackface you have been lied to now this whole controversy is pretty common knowledge at this point Evil Disney sees a popular and successful story from Japan about animated lions and decides that they can just rip the whole thing off and sell it to Americans and no one will ever notice because Disney's evil and don't get me wrong I hate Disney 2 and there are definitely mistakes that they made in terms of addressing this controversy but the level at which the Kimba crowd grasps at straws to support this conspiracy theory is just unfathomable now there are obviously other comparisons between pre-1994 Kimba and The Lion King that are at the very least understandable and don't worry I will get to those but I do not understand for the life of me why the Kimba crowd feels the need to support their arguments with comparisons that go well beyond the realm of reason another popular video on the subject sitting at over 3 million views is from a Kimba fan channel within this video they compare footage in production images from both the Lion King and Kimba and wouldn't you know at a heavy amount of the Kimba footage being used is from the 1997 jungle léo movie three years after the Lion King they even use shots from a Kimba short film from the year 2000 whether or not the original intent of this video was to make people believe an exaggerated version of the controversy its presentation and even video description wind up making that inevitable and this is exactly why people should avoid having strong opinions on subjects that they haven't done their own research on every time I have a conversation with someone about the Kimba controversy it seems as though they believe that Kimba is a single film from the 1960s but to some people the Lion King came across as an obvious ripoff of the Japanese film Kimba the White Lion this movie which is based off a manga series by Osamu Tezuka first aired in 1965 decades before the Lion King hit the big screen and although yes there is a 1966 film that doesn't even come close to covering the scope of just how much Kimba there is there's the 52 episode series from 1965 and after the 1966 film there's another 26 episode TV series the same year there's a 52 episode series from 1989 there's a 1991 straight-to-video film with no dialogue there's the 1997 film there's the short film from the year 2000 and finally there's a 2009 made-for-tv movie now when you lie by omission and package this controversy in a way where it seems like you're comparing one 90-minute film to another 90-minute film filling up a video with seven minutes worth of similar-looking shots gives people the impression that it's a pretty open-and-shut case unfortunately what the vast majority of people don't realize is that we're comparing a 90-minute film to well over 3,000 minutes of kimba footage and the similarities that do exist between The Lion King and pre-1994 Kimba are so incredibly selective it is an unfair comparison to say the least there is so much blatant misinformation about this controversy and it only thrives because people are stupid and don't do their own fucking research a viral Twitter thread with 20,000 retweets claims that Disney was in talks with Tezuka to adapt the Lion King before he died and then they just took the idea and ran with that is not true there is zero evidence for that claim why are you saying it I am not joking try and find a single source for this it doesn't exist now I'm gonna go through each of the comparison arguments between kimba and The Lion King that exists but first I feel like I should make my stance on this clear what I am presenting to you is an anti absolutist perspective meaning I believe that it is very likely that individuals who worked on the Lion King had in fact seen Kimba before and I also believe that it is entirely possible that individuals who worked on the Lion King were inspired by Kimba what I am arguing against is the common belief that it is impossible for Disney not to have ripped off Kimba the general consensus seems to be that there are far too many similarities to consider this a coincidence but as I'm about to show you each of these similarities can legitimately be explained away let's start out with the main character's names sure Kimba rhymes with Simba but the copying goes way beyond that I mean just the name is similar Kimba Simba mmm suspicious a lion cub named Kimba just like Simba already just by seeing those two names I'm a bit weirded out about this situation I wasn't able to find a copy of the movie to watch but this is all the stuff that I've heard from various sources we mean come on Simba and Kimba what are the odds of that there are quite a few people who believe that it is impossible for Disney to have independently come up with the name Simba because Kimba already exists and it sounds very similar but what you did not bother to research is that Simba means lion in Swahili Kimba is only known as Kimba in the American adaptation of the anime they wanted to change his name from Leo for whatever reason and were originally going to call him Simba but decided that that name isn't as marketable Xhaka heard the name Simba and was told by me that it's a swahili name but leaving who says both fairly here's the problem if we if you tell me that that is a generic name so named you here anytime in Africa it's not a name we can protect if you want to merchandise the character we can't just say simple anybody can come in concept they're alliance in the to the name Simba would exist regardless of whether or not Kimba was a thing and this is supported by the fact that all of the other characters names in the Lion King follow the exact same motif Mufasa means King Nala means gift Rafiki means friend Pumbaa means slow-witted and so on to act as though the name Simba is out of the ordinary here is delusional there was a Nazi fighter pilot that had a pet lion named Simba so this is clearly not something that Kimba the White Lion invented there's even a documentary from 1928 called Simba the king of beasts Kimba Simba suspicious now when I say that comparing a 90-minute film to over 3,000 minutes worth of Kimba is unfair here's what I mean many in the Kimba crowd include comparisons like there being a comic relief warthog sidekick character as if you're not allowed to use African animals in a story that takes place in Africa but what these people don't tell you is that this warthog is not a main character at all this warthog only exists in one episode in the original series and they are nothing like Pumbaa at all gargoyle G warthog is a child who has mommy issues and he's sad because he thinks his warts are ugly and his mom thinks that he's a coward he spends a significant amount of the episode trying to get with this other warthog girl that he thinks is pretty but that girl's mom doesn't like him because she thinks warts are ugly what are you doing with that ugly boy how many times have I told you don't play with boys with wart when he's first introduced it seems like he's got this weird pain fetish and it's really confusing trying to understand exactly what they were going for here if you just can't keep from fighting please don't hit each other why don't you eat me instead huh [Music] excuse me but you should hurt your baby and he deserves a good spanking because he's nothing I'd like to share his spanking so he won't feel so bad right with you boy so in the middle of the episode the animals decide that they're going to give a medal for the animal of the Year competition that they just made up at a fucking nowhere so Gargoyle G warthog decides to attack some mean baboons in order to prove that he's brave so he can get the medal so at the end of the episode they give him the middle and then the girl's mom starts liking him and then everything's okay and it's all wrapped up and then we never see this fucking character again and here's what's really important to understand about this series is that aside from a few exceptions each episode has its own contained conflict that is resolved by the end of it it's constantly changing ideas and introducing new characters so when people make comparisons between the themes of Kimba and The Lion King they're mostly just picking from random points in the show the themes of this show are all over the place and changed from episode to episode don't man I'm all by the way yet not there's an episode where they learn agriculture and make a farm but then a bunch of insects come and ruin it and so they're like okay what do we do now and Kimba takes his dead dad's body and runs around with it to inspire everybody and then they manage to trap all of the insects in a cave [Music] that father just the memory of you inspires everyone with courage there's another episode where they have a Wild West showdown there's an episode where Kimba goes to the World Fair in France there's an episode where a giant snake hypnotizes everybody so Kimba inspires everybody with a flashback about a time where he helped save a cat that's not fair I agree Kimba go ahead and help that poor little pussy there's another episode where he has to fight a flying tiger tell me what happened to Jodi's mother and besides how come you have wings that's a stupid question why does anyone bat wing there's an episode where he goes to a lion convention and he gets bullied because of the color of his fur oh just a white pussycat like your father you have no right you're calling names just because he was white hmm get this kid out of here so then his human friend gives him a history lesson he's like yo don't be upset you're actually a superior race or something Kimba your fur is white because you come from a long line of great leaders hope I can be like my ancestors as well as look like them yes canvas if we're gonna talk about themes I would argue that one of the most consistent themes of this show would be colonialism you know kind of like a let's civilize the savages sort of thing back to civilization away from these dangerous animals but I want to stay here uncle so I can help the animals become civilized too Kimba spends a lot of time trying to get the animals around him to become civilized do you take care of the future Kimba turn the jungle into a civilized world just as our Father tried to do it isn't easy but I know you'll keep trying they build a school and a hospital and the post office and the restaurant they even built a fucking amusement park it shows what can be done when we work together for the most part it's just Kimba and the animals I guess but there are other parts of the show where the message they're trying to send gets a lot more transparent Africa is changing the continent is coming of age the people must say goodbye to Devils masks and voodoo drums that was all part of the past on the dark continent now a new light of understanding is shattering that darkness this kind of shit is happening all throughout the show and in terms of themes this is much more consistent throughout than any one of the themes that the Lion King supposedly ripped off in the manga he even winds up wearing pants so that he can become more civilized like humans another hugely consistent kimba theme would be environmentalism and this theme is consistent across every version of Kimba a gigantic chunk of the show deals with humans as part of the central conflict you got poachers and mad scientist's trying to play God and people trying to build dams and stuff throughout the show Kimba makes sure that everyone is eating vegetarian so that they don't have to eat each other basically he has this philosophy where every living creature in the jungle should be getting along and nobody should be fighting each other even for food they taught me how important it is for everyone to live together without fighting no puns on you go go go but so did you schedule a can I come on you got in there and this is a pretty consistent theme throughout the entire series that is in direct conflict with one of the biggest themes from The Lion King don't we yes Simba but let me explain when we die our bodies become the grass and the Antelope eat the grass and so we are all connected in the great circle of life the circle of life is such a major theme in the Lion King that it is literally the opening theme song of the film [Music] these are completely opposing ideas about life and purpose and conflicts and this theme is not just non-existent in Kimba it is contradictory in the Lion King they basically had racial segregation where the land was separated between species you can't do anything to me we are and yet one of the common arguments from the Kimba crowd is that Kimba being vegetarian somehow equates to Simba when he started eating bugs first of all eating insects is not vegetarian and second Simba did this because he moved to a new area and this is what his friends were eating there was no moral opposition to eating meat he was doing it to fit in with his peers who saved him nope and even if there was antelope in this new area what did you expect a lion cub would be able to hunt one on his own there's an episode where kimba's human friend Roger who just lives with them his uncle shows up and he warns them that the elephants are about to be exterminated because people are fed up with the elephants they just want him dead have they changed the rules of the game yes destroy so he shows up to warn the elephants but they just bully him a bunch because all of the elephants in this show are just massive dicks for no reason except this one baby elephant I guess who's just absolutely terrifying [Music] glad to find at least one elephant who isn't mean like Packers so Kimba spies on the park commissioner and confirms his suspicions we have tanks plus motor guns and a helicopter I can assure you that our hunting party will see to it that every single elephant in the park is destroyed so Kimba goes back to the elephants and then he just gets bullied some more you're mean I mean it Packer Dermot now I understand why the humans want to exterminate you he tries to warn them quite a few times but they just won't stop bullying him eventually he gives up and just decides to warn peewee the baby elephant instead so he gets them to hide in but that's apparently closed at night so then they just start destroying the elephants with fucking tanks and helicopters so they drive the entire herd into a canyon so they can trap them and detonate explosives and have the canyon collapse in on top of them what the fuck they're all dead I'm sorry elephants I tried to save you who would have thought that Kimba would have an episode about elephant genocide what exactly is the theme in this episode why couldn't all the elephants be nice like peewee then they wouldn't have had to be exterminated see well over three thousand minutes worth of Kimba has about as much consistency as the Simpsons and just like The Simpsons has exhausted every single potential scenario for an animated sitcom Kimba the White Lion has thoroughly exhausted every single potential scenario for animated lion characters in Africa when there's well over 3000 minutes worth of Kimba there really isn't all that much that the Lion King could have done that Kimba hasn't already done before season 6 episode 7 of South Park titled Simpsons already did it does a great job at explaining just how unfair this type of criticism is it's an episode that was clearly made because Matt Stone and Trey Parker were fed up with this type of complaint every idea has been done butters even before the Simpson criticizing an animated comedy series for doing something that The Simpsons has already done is not that much different than criticizing someone for using a word that's in the dictionary and remember that we're talking about specific ideas images and themes from random points in the show if the argument we're that South Park as a whole offered essentially the same experience as The Simpsons then this would be an entirely different conversation the reason why I bring this up as an example is because the comparisons between Kimba and The Lion King are the exact same caliber of surface-level and reductive comparisons as the ones between South Park and the Simpsons see similarities that exist between these two properties are infinitely outweighed by their diff princes and this is unfortunately something that these manipulative and dishonest comparison videos fail to communicate so at this point we have to ask ourselves if the mere concept of animated lions being king of the jungle is off-limits well once again as it turns out this is not something that Kimba invented the idea of lions being king of the jungle goes as far back as Aesop's fables in ancient greece it's not some wildly unique thing that the lion king wouldn't have come up with had Kimba not existed there are so many of these comparisons that give me the impression that people don't know what common tropes are believe it or not one of the common comparisons being made is that the main character has a love interest as if that's a unique thing at all that is exclusive to Kimba what these people don't tell you is that these characters and their relationships are nothing alike Simba and Nala were childhood buddies that were disgusted by the possibility of them ever being romantically interested in each other [Music] and it was only once they were older and had been separated from each other for so long that they started to fall in love in Kimba the White Lion the dynamic is not the same at all the character Kitty was pretty much immediately established as a romantic interest from the moment she entered the story I better go now you're hurt you're spending a couple of days with me until your wound is better I don't want to be any trouble Kimber wouldn't your parents burn the character Kitty wanted to be with Kimba despite her uncle not approving my uncle's going to have to change and you fan no matter what you're a real pal it was more of a Romeo and Juliet type scenario if they weren't childhood friends that grew up with each other she's literally from another part of the jungle and just shows up for the explicit purpose of being the main characters love interest and I am not kidding when I say that these are common criticisms from the kimba crowd nearly every article that talks about this controversy sources a book from Fred patent called watching anime reading manga 25 years of essays and reviews and within this book can be found many of the insane comparison criticisms that I mentioned in this video including Simba having a love interest I'm sorry but that was already on the checklist of Disney animated films well before Kimba ever existed and I shit you not this is included in the section where he lists points of similarity which seem to go beyond reasonable coincidence how on earth is that a legitimate comparison it legitimately feels as though these people just don't know what common tropes are now Fred Patton actually has a lot of credibility when it comes to being an anime and manga fan he was a founding member of North America's first anime fan club he is widely considered to be one of the founding members of the furry fandom and wrote and edited many furry books he played a gigantic role in popularizing Japanese animation in the United States this guy was basically like one of the oldest totaku's he's actually got quite the legacy and I want to make it clear that my criticisms are not with him as a person I just really disagree with his take on Kimba and the Lion King one thing that needs to be understood is that books are written by human beings and human beings are filled to the brim with their own personal biases there's no denying that the guy clearly loved Kimba but perhaps maybe the most prominent published source for these claims shouldn't be from a guy who was literally friends with Tezuka you don't think that might influence his opinion on the matter just a bit the Kimba versus Simba chapter of his book starts out by saying that the lion Kings popularity is generally attributed to the strength of its characters and story the maturing of a lion Prince Simba from an insecure cub to a strong ruler of all the animals of the jungle he then goes on to say that this is not the first time that this story has appeared in animation and that Kimba the White Lion is the story of a maturing lion Prince Kimba from an idealistic but often naive cub with self-doubts to a confident leader of all the animals of the jungle now I would argue that there are many other reasons why the Lion King was successful but for the most part this is a fair summary but this comparison to Kimba only works if you ignore what the vast majority of the show actually is Kimba didn't run away from his responsibilities and there was no arc of him taking his rightful place as king he was literally just ruling shit from the moment he started existing all of this shit where he's ruling over the animals trying to get them to be more civilized and eating vegetarian is him as a child you can't just take random moments from the series where Kimba happens to lose confidence and pretend it's anything close to resembling a character arc they don't add anything to his character they are literally just incidental conflicts within contained episodes in the episode previous to one where Kimba would lose confidence as part of the plot Kimba is no different than the episode after it is unreasonable to compare pivotal ideas that are necessary for a characters arc to random unimportant padding that doesn't change anything about the show and although you could argue that there's more development to this character in the manga it is still not the same thing at all the only way to compare the journey of these two characters as though they're anything similar is to reduce the entire experience down to single sentences like yeah if you ignore the entire experience of both of these properties than they sound pretty similar but these single sentences are not what the actual experiences of these two properties are now I'm definitely not done going through each of these claims here but there's something I want to talk about before I go further when I talk about taking an anti obsolete esta pista over si I'm sure that there will still be plenty of people who will not be persuaded and I think after a certain point it might just boil down to a difference in philosophy I am a very pro art and creativity person and because of that I am against placing restrictions on art and creativity there are plenty of instances of people creating similar works that were completely independent from one another it is a thing that happens in art especially when the vast majority of art follows very common formulas and tropes I cannot tell you how for us straighted I get when people are so quick to accuse others of plagiarism especially when the original works supposedly being copied is not a very original thing at all the vast majority of popular songs are in 4/4 time signature the vast majority of popular songs are going to utilize chord progressions that sound pleasant to the ear you can't just play random chords and hope that it sounds universally appealing there is a logical equation to what makes sense and what doesn't and I can fully understand the perspective of an artist that sees a much more successful song that has similarities to their own there's going to be a part of their brain that feels as though they are owed the success of that more popular song but that feeling shouldn't trump the reality that coincidence does exist in 1946 Warner Brothers released a cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny playing Hungarian Rhapsody number 2 on the piano while there was a mouse inside it five months later MGM released a cartoon featuring Tom the cat playing Hungarian Rhapsody number two on the piano while Jerry the mouse was incited although not entirely similar both of these cartoons have basically the exact same concept and play the exact same song [Music] which prompted both studios to accuse each other of plagiarism now Rhapsody rabbit had an earlier release date and MPAA approval number while the cat concerto had a more advanced production number which was consistent with other shorts released around the same time meaning both of these films were already in production before either of them were released so what exactly are the odds of this type of coincidence even happening from first glance it would appear as though the only reasonable conclusion would have to be plagiarism right well if you think about it it's actually not as unlikely as it seems when you start to break down the concept of these two films you start to realize that it's not all that wildly unique or original it was definitely not unheard of to use classical and other public domain music as the foundation for animation concepts anyone familiar with Looney Tunes would already know this and although MGM didn't do this as frequently as Warner Brothers there are still examples of them doing this as early as 1932 this type of concept existed well before either of these two films and if someone were to decide that the energetic tone of Hungarian Rhapsody number two would lend itself well to animation it is entirely reasonable that they would then decide to have a character playing a piano since it is a song on the piano and since it's also incredibly common for animated shorts to feature anthropomorphic animal characters it is entirely reasonable that they would then decide to use a mouse for the conflict now in terms of the actual gags that appear in these shorts the majority of them are different but what makes this particular controversy interesting is that you can reasonably argue that they're both offering more or less the same experience which is not something you can say for The Lion King and Kimba I want to be clear that I am NOT suggesting that ripping off other people's ideas doesn't exist and even with the examples I've presented it's still entirely possible that these were the result of plagiarism rather than coincidence but when I mention difference in philosophy what I mean is that I am not comfortable jumping to conclusions about copyright infringement if it can be reasonably assumed that the two properties in question could have been created independently from each other and especially if we're talking about images concepts and themes that were never really all that unique in the first place the formulas and tropes that already exist within art make these types of coincidences a lot more likely than you would think even if you think there's a one in a thousand chance of something like this happening well guess what there's at least millions of intellectual properties out there to me it seems statistically inevitable and considering that we only ever hear about these coincidences when one of the properties in question is massively successful it is likely happening a lot more often than we realize there are very logical reasons why the Lion King is the way it is and these reasons exist completely independently of Kimba something that really irks me about this controversy is that the Kimba crowd likes to claim ownership over ideas that existed well before Kimba the creators of the Lion King were very open about taking inspiration from Shakespeare's Hamlet which by the way is public domain and yet despite that they still pretend as though the Lion King must have ripped off Kimba for these same concepts the idea of royalty and a king who was murdered and his son who tries to claim his rightful place in the throne as I've already mentioned Kimba never really had to reclaim his place as king and on top of that Claude didn't kill his father and he's not even related to him he is literally just some random asshole lion and any article claiming otherwise clearly hasn't watched Kimba it is so incredibly clear that these ideas fit so much more closely between The Lion King and Hamlet than they do with Kimba so how on earth can you claim that Kimba is responsible for these ideas appearing in the Lion King even the concept of the main character seeing his dead father as an apparition was from Hamlet Hamlet also runs through trees in the dark before this happens in the very last thing the King says before he disappears is also remarkably similar to The Lion King [Music] father so since the Lion King very clearly used Hamlet as an inspiration for this and the criticism from the Kimba crowd should be limited to just purely visual aesthetics right well even if they were to agree on that as it turns out the criticism still wouldn't hold much weight at all but the Kimba crowd doesn't tell you is that there are dozens of examples throughout these series of characters being hallucinate admirers Kimba sees his dead mom in the water and then the stars he also sees his mom in a music box Kimba sees his dad in a moon at one point he just shows up right over top of him there's another point where Kim but just tf's into his dad for a second we see his dad in the snow and the lightning and sometimes just right in front of him there are quite a few of these and they're not even limited to just Kimba and his parents fucking Roger hallucinate at his uncle in the clouds you got kimba's friends speedy hallucinating Kimba is a bubble you got a mountain goat hallucinating Kimba and the moon he got Kimba hallucinating his friends just running around in the forest he got some boy hallucinating Kimba in the clouds he got Kitty hallucinating her mom in purgatory or some shit you got Kimba hallucinating the woolly mammoth character given just how many different ways they've shown characters hallucinating other characters how on earth was the Lion King supposed to be able to replicate the dead father apparition from Hamlet without doing something that looks similar to what Kimba has already done now Mufasa tells his son to look at the stars because the great kings of the past will watch down on him but he winds up showing up in the clouds rather than a constellation but even if he did show up as a constellation that is not something that Kimba invented do you not know what constellations are now granted there is one image out of the dozens of hallucinations from Kimba showing his dead appearing in the clouds this is from the 1991 symphonic poem Kimba film with no dialogue basically it's a straight-to-video summary of the very early events of Kimba and this is the last shot of the film where he's swimming back to the jungle right after escaping the boat his father doesn't communicate to him and there's no implication that you're supposed to take this image literally it is a visual aesthetic choice to end the film on and it's actually a reference to the last page of the manga now The Lion King was already well into production before this 1991 straight-to-video film came out in Japan but the manga obviously existed well before this unsurprisingly there are many that used this panel as evidence that the Lion King ripped off Kimba but what they don't tell you is that this cloud is not kimba's dead at all the cloud is literally kimba and the line cut below is kimba's sun this is at the very end of the manga once Kimba has already grown up in spoilers Kimba dies once again this is a visual aesthetic choice to end the manga on and it's not meant to be taken literally this is not from a scene where a lion shows up in the clouds to communicate with their son they also referenced this panel at the end of the sequel series in 1966 but in this series they changed the story from the manga so that Kimba doesn't die at the end so yeah this lion isn't really supposed to be anyone and it's just a visual aesthetic choice to end the series on regardless of which instance of this image you compare to the Lion King there is a completely different context to this image and the Lion King was in no way trying to replicate it visually or otherwise the creators of the Lion King floated around many different ideas before deciding to have his father show up in the clouds and somehow these concept images alone are used as evidence that they're ripping off Kimba I'm sorry but do you not understand how films are made a big studio production like this is bound to go through several different concepts for how they want to communicate their ideas it is a collaborative effort where people bounce ideas off of each other before deciding on the best one I mean just look at what Zazu used to look like one of the most popular concept images criticized by the Kimba crowd is one of a white lion cub first of all Kimba did not invent white lions and second how does it make any sense to stretch your accusations of plagiarism to concepts that didn't even appear in the film if having a white lion as one of the many different potential design concepts is somehow evidence that Disney was ripping off Kimba from the very beginning then why does that logic not also apply in the other direction who is the black lion cubs supposed to be there's concept images of scar without even having a scar initially his character was supposed to be king of the baboons I was handed this treatment it was sort of a war between lions and Bab moons Rafiki was a cheetah the character of scar was actually the leader of the baboons so a very different tale so according to your own logic would that not therefore mean that the hyenas are not ripoffs because that's certainly not something the Kimba crowd is claiming seems to me like you're just picking and choosing every single possible similarity that fits your agenda now the hyenas and scar and some other characters are ones that I've still yet to properly address in this video but since apparently pretty much nobody outside of Japan has actually seen Kimba I feel it's important to first give you an idea of what each of these shows are actually like the biggest problem with having strong opinions on this controversy without actually having seen Kimba is that your mind fills in whatever it wants to when you have two similar looking images side-by-side and you're familiar only with the context of one of them your brain automatically assumes that there is a similar context to the one you're unfamiliar with when shown an image of fried rock next to Kimba characters standing on the edge of a cliff your brain assumes that there must have been some sort of Pride Rock equivalency in Kimba in reality the Kimba characters did not live on a Pride Rock equivalency Kimba basically just had a height in the jungle made out of spiky vines where he lived with his dead dad's body in the sequel series he lived inside of a tree and in the 89 series he lived in a crashed airplane there is no recurring cliff location that one could say is similar to Pride Rock and any shot of the characters on the edge of a cliff is purely incidental for aesthetic purposes his name is speckle Rick's he is the king of the ancient and honorable order of spotted lions when dealing with a show where the terrains are limited to those found in Africa of course you're going to have characters looking out at the scenery from the edge of a cliff at certain points in the show these moments usually took place at the end of an episode to give a sense of scale and closure [Music] when shown images of a fight scene taking place on a cliff and a similar looking fight scene from Kimba your brain assumes that the Kimba footage must have a similar context towards what's happening in the Lion King in reality Kimba had a wide variety of characters fighting on or falling off cliffs all throughout each of these series [Applause] the only ones you see being compared are the ones that just happen to look like the Lion King but in Kimba cliffs were constantly used as a source of conflict [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] given just how many different scenarios and characters have been used for cliff conflicts and Kimba then how on earth could The Lion King possibly have had a fight scene on a cliff that didn't look like something from Kimba and I shit you not the selectively edited cliff scenes from Kimba are no more significant to the show than literally any other moment do you not notice how the Kimba footage is from several different episodes to cover a single scene from The Lion King the reason this lion turns blue all of a sudden is because it's a completely different character and neither of these characters are Klaw they're just random lions that show up in one episode each in the sequel series to fulfill their specific conflicts within their contained episodes and they are never seen again the Kimba crowd is constantly comparing important pivotal moments from The Lion King to random unimportant moments plucked from the well over 3,000 minutes worth of Kimba that if removed would change absolutely nothing about the show this is truly a Kimba Didit type scenario if the Lion King instead ended with Simba drowning scar well guess what Kimba did that too they also wouldn't be able to end the fight scene with an avalanche or a rockslide no storms of any kind no waterfalls pretty much any common idea for conflict has been covered in this show and if your comparisons are going to include random one-off characters that don't even matter then what could they possibly have done I've talked quite a bit about the first series already as that is the one that is the most frequently compared to the Lion King but here's a little summary before I talk about the other series basically Caesar or Punja protects the jungle and saves animals and shit and the hunters decide that they can't catch him but they could probably catch his wife because she's a girl come on my friend and you shall see I shall get her and he shall follow when she calls so they kidnap her and set a trap for him and despite knowing full well that it's a trap he just rushes in trying to save her and he gets shot and dies Christ Noreen perhaps when you have our child it will be a boy you can call it Kimba then as they're transporting her and other animals on a boat she gives birth to Kimba two months later the animals find out that there's going to be a storm so she tells Kimba that he has to be brave like his father and leave and go to the jungle so Kimba jumps off the ship and then a storm happens and then I guess everybody in the ship dies then some fish teach them how to swim so he can swim back to the jungle and then right in episode two he's just in the jungle and everybody's like hey it's the son of Caesar great yay you can be the king I guess and that's pretty much the summary of the entire show because everything after that point is just random new conflicts with barely any consistency oh no the humans are trying to hunt everyone oh no there's a giant spider oh no I'm being bullied because I'm white conflict resolution conflict resolution and so on let me cast that pollen it got a few consistent aspects to this show include things like how he just hangs around his dead dad's body for no reason it is so unintentionally morbid and I don't understand for the life of me why it's such an important aspect to this show it's just very weird and fucked up there's an episode where kimba's friends wear his dad's dead body to try and trick Kimba into thinking that his dad's ghost is encouraging him all right my boy killing is always wrong there's the episode where he uses his dad's dead body to inspire others to fight the insects how come you come up with better ideas than I do maybe it's because I have a special inspiration right father sometimes the episode will just be goin on like normal and then it'll just cut to kimba using his dad's dead body as a fucking chair sometimes he'll hide inside his ass near the end of the series he meets his long-lost sister who's very proud of him for taking such good care of their father's hide so she convinces Kimba to go to the shrine where entire generations of their grandfathers hides are we certainly have lots of grandfather's like this has apparently been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years and now they need to move the hides to a safer place because the natives aren't there to protect them anymore so they're just carrying around a bunch of dead relatives and then the okapi show up and help them and it's really really weird still at some point in their journey some black leopards decide that they want to be bullies and just massively fuck things up for everybody and everybody almost fucking drowns trying to save these hides so after saving his sister's life she wakes up and everyone's like yeah thanks to Kimba telling us to save our friends instead of saving the hides were all okay yay why did you say you grandfather's hi oh Kimba you were bad what a fucking psycho sorry for saving your fucking life this whole dead dad's body shit is just so weird and fucked up and it is a much more consistent aspect to this show than the vast majority of comparisons from the Kimba crowd now this first show was made with the help of NBC because they wanted something they could localize and once it was over Tezuka created another show independently from NBC so we wouldn't have as many restrictions one of these restrictions was the amount of violence that could be shown NBC also wanted Kimba to stay a lion cub the entire series and never grow up so with NBC out of the picture Tezuka was able to create a sequel series with Kimba as an adult or I guess just leo because that's what he was known by in Japan now pay attention because you might get really confused otherwise this right here is not Kimba Kimba is now older and calls himself Leo this repurposed character design is kimba's son Rooney this is Leo / Kimba this is Rooney all right let's move on now even though the show is from 1966 it didn't get localized into English until the 1980s for the Christian Broadcasting Network a network founded by Pat Robertson you know those who are homosexual will die out because they don't reproduce anyway since this wasn't localized into English until the 80s the theme song wound up sounding like this [Music] and it really did not seem like they gave a shit when it came to the dub I just wanna be friends with you Christopher Christopher Sookie existed I know this seems like a YouTube parody but this is actually the official dub for the show I am not kidding Leo's voice is incredibly unnerving and caught me off guard every single time he opened his mouth I understand the way you feel and I know you want to fight samba but perhaps you'll have to fight him alone without me I was pleased to hear that my children could help you rigged and now I'm pleased to see you helping my children thank you very much many of the characters sound absolutely irritating and to make matters worse the DVDs are the worst quality I've ever seen all of the video is way too fucking dark and all of the audio sounds like ear rape listen get back in your legs at first I thought I accidentally purchased a bootleg but every single DVD of this show I found sounds like this I wound up having to find this show on YouTube just to make it watchable and yeah it's the same dub just better quality [Music] the cover art for these DVDs certainly make them look like bootlegs but I still have to assume that they're an official release because a a bootleg version would probably still be better quality than this and be why would anyone produce and distribute bootleg versions of a show that basically no one wants to buy there's not really that much of a market for this it really just seems like Palm Beach entertainment didn't give a single fuck also the DVDs have some footage that's not found in these youtube uploads like little episode introductions after each opening credits as for the better quality YouTube uploads I have no fucking idea where they got their footage from it is very confusing and I do not understand why the DVDs look and sound this shitty but I'm glad I found something because now I can experience these amazing vocal performances the way they were meant to be heard and avalanche Rudie Rudie five-year climb on my back come on hurry oh you bit me oh you bit my toe oh my poor toe that's not fair I didn't try and hurt you you know did I you all right now you're probably wondering why it took so long for this show to get an English dub and it's probably the same reason why the original manga never got in English release slack face lots and lots of blackface you'll be out of your mind Bob how could you expect us to work if we don't need the price for meters too hot already mr. bossman I'll be sorry one eye another way just forget it dude stop Oh Janelle oh boy Oh with NBC no longer in the picture telling Jessica what to do that this is apparently what he wanted to be doing the whole time lousy Robert is time don't we and it's a 20 years for a company like the Christian Broadcasting Network to show up and be like yeah yeah this is fine he said all they got is a two inch long that's the boss then bring me something to drink oh now I am in no way implying that kimba fans are all massive racists and you can always say that this is a product of its time like many American cartoons but I do find it quite amusing because so many people paint this controversy as an evil racist Americans versus poor little Japanese artists sort of thing I'm sorry but if racial politics is one of the deciding factors in terms of how you feel about this controversy then you might not want to support Kimba you might accidentally look a lot more racist defending this over the Lion King this is what Tezuka wanted the entire time if we're gonna talk about differences between Kimba and the Lion King I think it's worth mentioning that the Lion King was very much a love letter to Africa it was one of the very first big studio animated films to really embrace the culture and include it as part of its soundtrack visuals and themes Hakuna Matata hakuna matata it means no worries is very important to have a large flavor of real African effects and sounds and indeed lyrics switch and lever brought [Music] despite kimba taking place in Africa I think it's pretty safe to say that it wasn't really much of a love letter and most certainly not towards Africans anyway oh yeah and in case you're wondering black people were not the only race for this show to make offensive caricatures of oh but good anyway Leo has two children in this show Rooney Andrew key and the character of Leo is just constantly such a huge asshole in this show you have no right to strike an animal like that [Music] you kill Amy she literally just abuses his children for no reason daddy didn't mean to hurt you sweetheart in the episode where his children are born he spends a while trying to make them stronger who need I think I'm singing about it too much mom you didn't try you gave up only you didn't even try and even his wife is like hey they were just born not that long ago maybe you should hold off on this for a bit daddy's me but Leo just ignores her advice and decides to be really extreme about it so he runs around with his son for like a day and then just ditches him in the middle of fucking nowhere so Rooney has to find his way home by himself and he really just winds up being traumatized [Music] during this long and perilous journey he almost dies several times and then only after he's about to be fuckin gutted does his dad show up they sure are son [Music] yeah I was watching you from a distance and probably could have helped at any moment but I wanted you to be within a millisecond of losing your fucking life before I jumped in scary that long journey was without you because I watched him every step okay I'm sure this child will grow up to be perfectly normal and well-adjusted without any psychological scars speaking of scars claw isn't even in this entire series but that doesn't stop the kimba crowd from using this show to make these comparisons now the themes and morality of the first show were already all over the fucking place but in this series they somehow managed to be even more inconsistent remember when you use force to solve a problem it shows others that you've run out of good ideas there's an episode where he comes across a blind tribesman whose main goal is to get revenge on a leopard named Lubar and the moment he's introduced we see him absolutely destroying about a dozen leopards with fucking grenades so yeah being blind apparently isn't affecting his ability to fight much so Leo goes to the leopard place to warn Lubar that he's gonna get fucked up oh I know the coward you mean are you calling this man a coward no I'm wrong I call him a blind whimpering coward so Leo's like yeah I've seen him kill a bunch of your friends with fucking grenades maybe you should get out of here you think it would be wise that I should run when I have my children to protect me what so Lubar tells Leo that he's got 20 other leopards to help defend him against this guy that wants to kill him and Leo's all the sudden offended about it those odds would make it murder Luba not a fight you forced me to take the man's side against you the guy's trying to kill him you just saw him murder a dozen other leopards with grenades at what point do you consider it to be not a fair fight anymore is he not allowed to defend himself so Leo runs back to this guy to tell him that he's going to join his cause and in the middle of their conversation he just kills another leopard so the tribesman is like yo won't the other animals hate you for joining my side why don't you let me worry about that I have a hatred myself I hate unfair odds come on you were strange lion mate Oh first of all it seems like he's got this under control and second what kind of twisted ass-backwards morality is this anyway if there was one hunter trying to destroy everything in your jungle would you just join his side I mean it's just one hunter and I don't like unfair odds so I guess I have to what is your fucking problem leo might I remind you that this character's journey is being called way too similar to Simba's yeah remember how Simba started out as a kind and caring vegetarian child and then grow up to be basically Hitler anyway Leo and the blind tribesmen are just chillin by the fire talking about how they're gonna kill Lou bar and then Lou bar shows up and drops some boulders on them [Music] and then they eat the tribesman zarm and run away and then the tribesman asks leo to cauterize the wound [Music] so the next morning they make it to lubbers area and they try to fuck him up but the Leopards are using ropes and tie them up Leo manages to get the tribesmen free and he responds by immediately doing this and then of course he just kills Lubar I've won at last are you fucking happy Leo did you learn anything from this both of them fought to the end and in the end all they were fighting over was a past hatred that was already dead you fucking participated you asshole don't pretend like you're taking the moral high ground here what is your deal Leo another thing about this show that I should probably mention is that they still do the weird dead dad's body thing why don't you both say good morning to your grandfather hi good morning grandfather you still got it and now his son can just play with it I guess there's an episode where it gets stolen and they have to go on a journey to get it back grandfather [Music] and just like the first series it is still really fucking creepy I think grandfather's probably had enough excitement for one day what do you think oh it stopped raining oh yeah they're also still doing that whole vegetarian thing in the words of the immortal Rooney did you ever try hunting an excellent salad anyway this show obviously isn't very much like The Lion King at all and the few visual comparisons being made are pretty fucking selective and dishonest all in all this show was incredibly exhausting and the only entertaining aspects were some hilarious out-of-context moments here and there there's no radio in my mouth but you're welcome to look if you wish [Music] yes but I don't think he's dangerous despite when since in 1989 we got the new adventures of Kimba and this was basically a modernised retelling of the original 1965 series and although there were many of the same plots characters and beats this one still managed to be kind of its own thing out of all of the Kimba series this one felt like it had the most continuity there were actually overarching storylines that carried over from one episode into the next and that's not consistent the entire show as many of the episodes are pretty contained but it felt like a much better presentation in terms of storytelling overall now just like the original series this one took place over 52 episodes however this didn't get an English release until 1998 four years after the Lion King and even the English release only got 13 out of the 52 episodes there are some who speculate that this is because it was a poor quality dub but to me it doesn't really stick out as being worse than any other English dub of a Japanese cartoon I don't know how I could have been so stupid I thought you liked me and all that right in the hold on a sec sounds just fine to me or maybe my expectations have just been significantly lowered after hearing the sequel series dub oh you bit me oh you bit my toe oh my poor toe that's not fair I will say that the Japanese version is still clearly better than the English dub the English version wound up redoubling the score using synthesized instruments and there's also a few characters in the show that sound way too similar to each other this is maladies private cliff and you are a trespasser I would like to talk to malady myself no one ever talks to my grandfather and the original Japanese theme song is actually pretty catchy [Music] in the English version the opening theme song kind of sucks and there's several points where there's a crazy man yelling kimba's name [Applause] [Music] anyway despite this not even coming to North America until four years after the Lion King the Kimba crowd still uses this show in their comparisons as evidence that the Lion King ripped off Kimba you see one of the Lion King directors Roger Allers was actually in Japan in the 1980s working on a film called Little Nemo adventures in Slumberland in the book titled from goods to a good life intellectual property in global justice Georgetown University Law Professor Madhavi sooner writes that Roger Allers was in Japan at the exact same time as this remake series was airing on Japanese television ladies and gentlemen we got him but if you actually do your research you'll find that he left Japan by 1985 four years before this show was aired anywhere he was already back in Los Angeles working on Oliver & Company and the Little Mermaid and the rescuers down under and the prince and the pauper now this does not mean that it is literally impossible for some random person at Disney to have watched this show in Japan but the way the Kimba crowd treats Roger Allers as a smoking gun in their criticisms is just plain dishonest in this very same 50 fucking dollars for the Kindle edition book she makes several absolutely insane points that make me question whether or not she's actually seen either of these two properties these points include statements like the basic story plot and setting are the same in both stories the lion cub doubts his ability to lead his people and his father comes to him as a vision in the moon to embolden him first of all Mufasa did not show up in a moon second Simba was not a cub when this happened and third Kimba was already confidently ruling shit from the moment he was born the setting of the film and the television series is similar a rocky terrain not the more common desert habitat that Lions roam what are you talking about the setting of The Lion King was pretty varied throughout the film but it mostly took place in a Savannah type location and although you could find rocky terrain in specific episodes of Kimba the actual setting was the jungle hence the original Japanese title jungle Emperor now unsurprisingly these sources found in the footnotes section of this book are equally as insane as the content of the book itself I shit you not the sources for the Kimba section of this book include fucking YouTube videos made with Windows Movie Maker from 2008 one of these YouTube videos includes hilarious statements like scar himself looks like foreign week and with very female moves and this is legitimately listed as a source in this law professors book a source that can't even get its own facts right this YouTube video incorrectly attributes footage as being from the 1989 series when it's actually from the 1966 sequel show but fuck it I guess if somebody said something on the internet then it must be true someone would do that just go on the internet and tell lies when talking about the original manga the corresponding footnote seems to reference the 1997 Kimba film even though the 97 film was mentioned nowhere in this book did you just Google search jungle Emperor and then accidentally credit the wrong one without realising that the publication date contradicts everything you're saying it really does not seem like she actually watched Kimba and many of the points being made here just seemed like strategically rewarded points from Fred Patton's book which is kind of ironic if you think about it and at least she does credit Fred Patton's book as a source in the footnotes but that kind of makes this even more embarrassing when you read that one of her points against The Lion King is the Kimba Simba name similarity because that point was already debunked within the very same Fred Patton book that she listed as a source what is going on and I should point out that the way she phrased this section makes it so that she can absolve herself of any ownership of these claims she's just reporting on what other people have said and it doesn't matter if any of these claims are true or not I guess but what is the point of including these here as though they're just as legitimate as anything else said in this book and also there are several points being made here that I can't find backed up by anywhere else anyway not even within the very sources being listed I have yet to find a single other person that claims that MUFON showed up in a moon perhaps this low res image in this shitty YouTube video she sourced is what confused her it kind of looks like a moon here I guess so if you haven't seen the Lion King then this might be really confusing this is the only reasonable explanation right unless she conveniently decided not to specify that she was actually talking about concept art that didn't even make it into the final product every single article that claims that Roger Allers was in Japan at the same time that this remake series was airing just leads back to this book which is why I even bought it in the first place while he was in Japan in the 80s in this remake series aired within the last three months of the 80s so it must have been the same time I guess after doing more research I came across a TED talk she gave on the controversy and she says a lot of the same things here too to begin with the plots of the stories are the same the names of course of the lion leading lion cubs are the same Simba and camera if she says the moon thing here I'm gonna be so happy there are numerous instances of nearly identical cinematic and artistic expression even to the point where both Simba and kimba's fathers come to them as a vision in the Moon free I was right I called it a later and literally said I literally fucking submission image in this shitty YouTube videos this is why she believes that kinda looks like a moon here I guess oh no regardless of who to blame for the information presented in this book there is just simply a lot of misinformation here this is once again proof that being a published author doesn't mean that you have any idea what you're talking about now even though there are a few visual similarities here and there that's really not all that out of the ordinary when you're dealing with well over 3,000 minutes worth of kimba footage once again the difference is far outweigh the similarities and once again these are entirely different experiences that have nothing to do with each other I don't really have that much to say about this series because it's not nearly as embarrassing as some other kimba titles it is refreshingly competent in comparison even if there are you funny moments here and there like when Kimba sinks a ship by shooting logs at it in the water or when this woman tries to put out a gigantic forest fire with a tiny ass fire extinguisher or when Kimba almost drowns and his girlfriend tries to save him and she sucks so bad that she only manages to do so by accidentally smashing her head into a rock and knocking herself out and now Kimba has to save her oh no it's a show that I could imagine myself as a kid actually enjoying to some degree like if it was on TV when I was younger I would probably watch it also compared to the other Kimba titles this show is surprisingly violent so yeah I should also mention that they do the whole dead dad's body thing again apparently it is so important to the core experience of Kimba that it shows up in every series and despite how improved the presentation of this show is compared to the other series it still manages to be as creepy as ever Connolly de Lima Mata tigress eye shadow amore Otsuka tomatillos [Music] anyway let's move on to the next kimba thing I don't really have much to say about the 1991 symphonic poem film because just like the 1966 film it is basically just a summary of events from the first series there isn't really anything within these two films that I didn't already cover so yeah let's move on in 1993 we got a re-release of the original 1965 series it's the same footage just shortened down and with a completely new Canadian dub so that's why he was picking on me the other day I'm sorry it's okay it doesn't matter what everybody else says I'm me now there isn't really anything new to mention about this series when it comes to the Lion King controversy but I figured I'd mention it because it is interesting that it exists and it was kind of amusing to see how they would rewrite some of the more inappropriate lines from the original series she was a lion you have no right to calling names just because he was white I am a lion now apologize for calling my father inferior Kimba your fur is white because you come from a long line of great leaders hope I can be like my ancestors as well as look like them yes Kimba and drop Alice had strength and wisdom that he passed down from generation to generation with strength and wisdom he and his descendants were able to make those around them safe and happy Kimba you're like this too in 1997 we got the jungle Emperor Leo film basically this is a feature-length adaptation based on the second half of the manga it includes several storylines from the sequel series TV show and overall the presentation is much better than the other Kimba titles I've covered both the animation and music are pretty great however the story structure is kind of all over the place it kind of just jumps between several different plots and ideas without really fully committing to any of them overall it feels like a movie that had trouble deciding what it wanted to be there are several scenes in this movie that just feel really out of place if it just committed to one storyline that I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more still it's not absolutely terrible all things considered even if there is the odd moment that comes off as unintentionally hilarious last m-mine all the power delicious just like the manga Kimbo winds up dying at the end and we get that symbolic cloud shot to end the film on once again it is a completely different context than what takes place in the Lion King but I've already explained that this is my dying wish you must eat my flesh and clothe yourself with my fur now as I've already mentioned there are countless examples of people comparing this footage to the Lion King despite it coming out three years after and the overwhelming amount of visuals being compared are ones that did not exist until this film now even though this film is a retelling of the second half of the manga the images you see here are not recreations of images in the manga they are exclusive to this 1997 film so it doesn't make any sense to include these shots as evidence that the Lion King ripped off Kimba if you truly believe in the argument you're making why on earth would you feel the need to use illegitimate examples to back up your claims by doing so you are only making your claims look less legitimate and it seems like almost every single YouTube video and published article uses footage from the 97 movie this is the 1997 movie what are you doing this is the night this is why are you why are you even putting that there this is that this is the 19 yeah this is from 19 why does why does why do all the Kimba people keep keep putting the 1997 movie in here why do they keep doing that what are you doing you don't know what you're talking about now there's a good chunk of people using the 97 movie in their comparisons who have just never seen Kimba and they don't know what the fuck they're talking about but there are also Kimba fans who still consider this to be a legitimate comparison despite the film coming out three years after the Lion King it is fairly common knowledge among the Kimba crowd that this film actually started production in the 80s and due to a variety of factors including budgetary issues and tezuka's death this film went through sort of a development hell now I took this information at face value and had no reason to question it by just like many other claims from the Kimba crowd when I actually tried to look into it I couldn't find any evidence it's not found on either the English or the Japanese wiki for the film it's not found on any articles covering the subject and in the 2004 book from Fred Paton who is arguably the most well researched on the subject he doesn't even mention it despite mentioning the film itself if this film started production in the 80s and went through development hell for ten years why would he not mention that in his book he even mentions many fans considering the choice of imagery for this film being too similar to The Lion King as being deliberately provocative that right there would be the point to mention oh by the way this film actually started production in the 80s so it doesn't really matter anyway but that is not found anywhere in this book every single mention of this claim just points back to the Kimba crowd saying it without actually providing a source Saten himself mentions that one of tezuka's last business decisions was to authorize the 1989 remake series which makes sense because he died in 1989 but when talking about the 1997 film there is no mention of Tezuka having being involved at all I am seriously starting to doubt that this film was in production in the 1980s like the Kimba crowd is claiming if you look at other anime films released the same year if it comes clear that a 10 year long production is pretty out of the ordinary Miyazaki started writing Princess Mononoke less than three years before its release and perfect blue didn't even have a budget until two years before it got finished if this film was in production in the 80s and tezuka's death wound up postponing it by ten years and why was the 89 remake series seemingly not affected at all the only mention of this film being in production in the 80s is from the 2003 anime works DVD release of this film it is on this disc that they show the film's trailer and at the very end you can see copyright 1987 Tezuka productions and to be perfectly honest with you after thoroughly researching this I genuinely believe that this was a typo oh what a difference a single number can make if this number was not meant to represent the release date of the film but instead the release date of the trailer or initial date of the film's production it would be the only train on this entire disk that decided to do so on this same disk we see the trailer for Virtua Fighter and it's copyrights are listed as 1995 for its initial airing and 2000 for its DVD release another trailer on this disc is for Fortune Quest which lists its copyright as 1997 once again the actual date of its release another trailer on this disk is for magic knight rayearth and the copyright year is for its DVD release now before some of you jumped to conclusions I should mention that not even the kimba crowd is claiming that this film was released in 1987 and at the end of the film itself we can see that anime works is not claiming this either so with this one number on the trailer on this specific 2003 DVD release of this film being the only mention of the 1980s in association with this film anywhere I think it's pretty fucking safe to say that this was just a typo according to the Japanese wiki for the film the production company shochiku didn't even contact Tezuka productions until about three or four years before the film's release and this is backed up by two different literary sources meaning that the absolute earliest this film would have started production would be 1993 and it's entirely possible that the production for this film didn't even start until much later than that and with so much of the imagery from this film in particular seeming intentionally provocative that would actually make a lot of sense you don't have to look very far at all to find evidence of Kimba associated production and distribution companies intentionally Fanning the flames of this controversy to promote the sale of their own products and who can even blame them when they believe that the entire success of The Lion King is something that they are rightfully owed could it be possible that the new similarity is found within this film word unintentionally as a response to the Lion King based on everything else I've seen it honestly would not surprise me at all to be perfectly honest with you it seems as though this film was only even made to capitalize on the success of the Lion King after doing even more research I found an article from the editor-at-large at Anime News Network and he claims that the film didn't start production until 1994 which is the same year that the Lion King release now even if by some miracle all of this information was incorrect or even if there was a full trailer for this film before the Lion King even started their storyboards it still would not even cover all of the shots that the Kimba crowd uses from this film in their comparison videos this would just be more vaguely similar shots to add to the pile from the well over 3,000 minutes worth of Kimba and that's really not all that unlikely when we're comparing decade's worth of Kimba footage to a single 90-minute animated film about lions in Africa and if this information is true and the production likely didn't even start until after the Lion King was released then by your own logic you should therefore believe that Kimba also ripped off The Lion King right so in this film premiered at a North American Film Festival Disney supposedly sent a cease and desist letter which is not the same thing as a lawsuit regardless of what a certain viral twitter thread might say regardless this is a dick move on Disney's part and I do not agree with it much like I would also not agree with legal action against Disney from Tezuka productions this poorly thought-out dispute doesn't really hold any weight towards the legitimacy of this controversy in one way or the other but it's often mentioned by those who cover this controversy so I figured I'd make it clear that I do not agree with Disney on this one like I said I am very Pro art and creativity and Disney as a company has been consistently restrictive on their copyrights they are largely responsible for copyrights being extended to the ridiculous lengths that they are today there are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make against them as a company and this is one of them even if it now seems likely that this film was only even made to capitalize off of the Lion King success as for the accusation that the Lion King ripped off Kimba however I disagree I disagree Gary anyway that's all I have to say about this particular film I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people are so insistent to use footage from this film in their arguments against The Lion King but whatever I guess let's move on to the next Kimba thing in the year 2000 a Kimba short film was created to be shown exclusively at the Kyoto Tezuka Museum there's really not all that much to it and it just feels like more of the same Kimba thing with a different animation style once again with this releasing well after the Lion King it should not be included in these comparisons I guess that doesn't stop some people for some reason and finally in 2009 we have jungle Emperor Leo the brave can change the future I haven't seen anyone used this film in their comparisons even though technically it would be just as legitimate as using the previous two regardless I've already talked about all the other Kimba shit anyway so I might as well give you an idea of what this one's like this particular film feels like it's probably the biggest departure from what Kimba actually is it seems needlessly modernised at points in pretty cliched it kind of starts to lose its identity in a way at points it just felt like I was watching Digimon or something they also try really hard to be cute for most of the movie which makes for a really jarring tonal shift in the film's third act basically human beings have destroyed the environment because they don't give a shit so then they build an island called the neo jungle so the animals can hang out there instead and rather than the animals being able to talk like the other Kimba properties in this one this little boy is basically just dr. Dolittle anyway this Panther named toto is kind of a dick and the humans are like man we gotta get rid of them but he's just way too fucking powerful and nothing they do works which is weird because they already captured all of these animals to bring to the neo jungle but Toto is just too strong there's nothing they can do so they release a bunch of carnivorous locusts just to kill this one Panther and these things really hate birds too I guess and only after they release these killing machines do they realize that the boss man's son is out there but I guess it doesn't matter because kimba's dad manages to destroy the mother locust and none of the other locusts work without that one it just happened to work out I guess and now this finger dart addicted bossman just decides that he wants to kill all of the animals and replace them with clones and I do not understand his motivation whatsoever no Commission what you doing this is such a move cause you do a nice touch your addiction you know one of us [Music] it's kind of a dumb movie all I know is that it's very very important to please quietly in the hall apparently just one sign didn't do the trick Kimba spends a lot of the movie just being a little bitch who can't jump over this stupid cliff gap but then his dad dies trying to save Toto for no reason and then he leads all the animals to fight the humans so that they don't get exterminated apparently you can just go through an entrance to get under the island where the humans are hanging out kinda makes their carnivorous locusts play and seem a bit more stupid doesn't it not to mention the excessive methods they're using to exterminate the animals now anyway they all fight a bunch and there's this one guy with a taser stick and they push them in the pool and they're like yay we got him and then the thing that Kimba needs to get to is across a gap and now he has to jump you get it it's this reincorporation of that stupid fucking jump he's been trying to do the whole movie but he couldn't because he was scared and just as he's about to muster up some courage the bald man shows back up and hits the bird and then falls off the building and dies he literally just showed back up to hit the bird and then fell and died it was really funny so yeah obviously Kimba makes the jump and saves the day and some bullshit happens and things blow up Toto saves the main characters and decides he's just gonna stay behind and die and then they walk through a tunnel and everything's happy the end so now that you have an idea of what these movies and shows actually are I think it's time to address the rest of these similarity controversies with that context in mind let's start out by going over the rest of these character similarities one of the most common criticisms against the Lion King is that it's cast of characters seems to mirror characters found in Kimba every animal character in Kimba the White Lion has an analogue in the Lion King but after actually having watched the show it becomes pretty clear that these character comparisons only work if you strip away everything that the character actually is let's start with Polly and Zazu if you've only seen videos from the Kimba crowd and haven't actually watched the show you'd probably assume that Polly is kind of like a head servant majordomo type character like Zazu well as it turns out that not true like sure he's in the main cast of characters and he's also a bird but beyond those two incredibly reductive similarities these are not the same characters at all Halle cracker is literally just a dumb comic relief bird who gets angry all the time he is not a character with any assigned royal duties he is just a friend of Kimba what defines Zazu as a character is that he has a strong sense of responsibility and tradition and order he fulfills his role as a royal assistant and tries his best to avoid conflict at every turn whereas Polly is just a dumb bird with anger problems without any exaggeration the most defining character trait of Polly is that he's angry and wants to fight all the time and if you don't believe me just watch this [Music] [Music] what would your mother or father say to this Kimba [Music] [Music] your relatives and then there's a toughy bird that appears and it's its roar this function dramatically it is ver key the same thing yeah this is totally Zazu guys sorry but you're not allowed to have a bird character in an animated lion movie because Kimba already did that doesn't matter that they're not the same species and they act nothing alike sorry Kimba invented birds and to make things worse he looks a hell of a lot more similar to this Disney character from 1942 this comparison is honestly pretty fucking ridiculous another common comparison is between Rafiki and Dan'l and although their character traits are definitely more alike than Polly and Zuzu's they are still incredibly different now just like Polly Dan'l is a friend of kimba's his main character trait is that he is old and because he's seen as an older figure in kimba's life there are moments in the series where he does make suggestions to Kimba but although the Kimba crowd pretends as though this therefore makes him a wise and virtuous old sage the reality is that he's just a stereotypical cranky old man what do you mean will I be able to do it I'm an elder in this jungle and a very determined baboon come on down from there get off that Rockford phones it takes you with it come down here no I'm too old and you know it Oh be quiet you big mouth Rafiki is essentially a crazy witch doctor character who is intrinsically connected with the spirit of nature and when he gives advice to Simba it's not because he's a cranky old man who just happens to be his friend he uses his wisdom in connection with nature to discover that Simba's alive and he actively travels to find him so that he can bring back balance to nature he is incredibly wacky and charismatic and the unfathomable wisdom of this character is absolutely essential to Simba's Ark based on what we see in this film he is a character that knows more than any other character whereas Dan'l baboon is basically just crazy old grandpa Joe Biden for kids you just as brightened dishes towels white kids he is not a vessel of infinite wisdom and there are parts in the show where he's just plain wrong those men took your mother and father away from you you have to pay them back you know what would happen if I took revenge on those men don't you down mhmmm there'd never be any peace in the jungle because somebody would always be taking revenge on somebody else not only has he given terrible advice but there are episodes where Kimba actively has to stop him from doing things that are irrational and regardless of how rational this character is he is still not really defined as being a wise and virtuous old sage like the Kimba crowd is claiming the reason why Kimba looks up to him at points in the show is because he's an older figure in kimba's life there are points in the show where Kimba refers to him as an uncle Uncle Dan I apologize and because of this he does sometimes serve a similar purpose in the show but he's mostly just an old kook that is often used as a comedic punching bag I should also mention that these visual comparisons with both characters holding a stick are pretty fucking bullshit rafiki's staff was not only essential to the story but it was a part of the characters design he carried it around with him everywhere because it is a part of his character his stick that daniel baboon is holding however is one that he just picks up to help him in a fight daniel baboon is seen holding a stick for a total of twenty seconds in the entire series it is just something they gave him to hit other characters with because realistically he's the only animal that could pick up a weapon does anyone seriously believe that the Lion King creator saw the 20 seconds over the course of the entire series of Dan'l baboon holding a stick in thought oh a baboon holding a stick that's perfect let's include that as part of rafiki's character really once again these are not the same characters at all and the only way you can pretend that's the case is if you strip away everything about them another incredibly common comparison is between scar and claw now this particular criticism is at the very least understandable after all they are both villain characters with darker fur and a wound on their left eye they also both want to be king although it is pretty standard for villains to want ultimate control and power now once again their personalities are nothing alike but before we get into that I want to break down the individual aspects that do make them similar now if you remember the section where I talked about Rhapsody rabbit and the cat concerto these similarities between those two films were essentially logical progressions based on previously existing common ideas and tropes if you start out with the idea that Hungarian Rhapsody number 2 is a song that would work well with animation then it's entirely reasonable that you would therefore decide to have an animated character playing the piano if you start out with the base concept of an animated film about lions in Africa then it's entirely reasonable that you would therefore decide to have a lion villain character it is not an act of random chance that both of these villains are darker colored than the main characters there are countless examples of darkness symbolizing evil in a wide variety of media why do you think the bad parts of the pride land are the dark shadowy plays see villain character having darker colored fur is a logical progression that exists independently of Kimba and having a villain with a facial deformity is also a massive trope now Claude didn't actually have a scar over his eye until the 1989 series and as I've already mentioned it is incredibly unlikely that this particular series if any influenced the Lion King in the original series claw is depicted as having one eye closed and it's implied that the eye is missing and the same is also true for the manga regardless it is still a facial deformity on the characters left eye facial deformities on villain characters is a common logical choice in media as evidenced by there being several other villain characters from Kimba with facial deformities it is really not all that different of a choice than having a villain being darker colored it's a very common way to let people know that the character is a villain the reason why Al Capone was known as Scarface is because he had several scars on his face there were also dueling scars on many top Nazi figures and so naturally these aesthetic associations wound up being replicated in media these similarities between the character designs here are logical progressions based on common ideas and tropes and the only real coincidence here is that their facial deformity happens to be on the same side of their face which is really just a 50/50 chance anyway having a villain with a dumb simple self descriptive name like scar or claw is also a massive trope have you never heard of Captain Hook the character of dr. evil from Austin Powers is a parody of the exact same common ideas mentioned here his name is stupid and self descriptive he wants to rule over the world and he's also got a scar on his face he is not a parody of Klaw he is a parody of incredibly common pre-existing ideas and tropes now these are pretty much the extent of these similarities between these two characters and they're all pretty surface level comparisons at the very most you could say that these two characters personalities are similar because they the main character and also want power which I'm sure I don't even have to explain is a very basic incredibly common idea for villains there's a reason why scar is one of Disney's most iconic villains and to put it simply if he was the same character as Claude then he wouldn't be a very memorable villain at all what makes up the character of scar is his personality throughout the film he is constantly being humorously sarcastic well forgive me for not leaping for joy in bad back you know the mannerisms and physicality of this character have so much personality that you can pick up on from watching him and the way he communicates gives off an almost playful vibe to this evil character oh I shall practice my curtsy and above all else scar himself looks like foreign week and with very female moves claw is seriously nothing more than your standard cliched boring run-of-the-mill villain character to be a king he's not related to Kimba and he's just some evil lion who happens to be evil not to mention he is canonically an actual pedophile in this show are you talking to me oh I really don't understand what's going on stay classy Japan he just shows up every once in a while to piss off Kimba cuz he doesn't like that he's in charge and I am not kidding when I say once in a while because although he is a recurring character he is really not all that present or essential to any of these shows the vast majority of the manga has nothing to do with him in the 65 series he appears in nine out of 52 episodes in episode 14 he shows up for about 30 seconds near the beginning of the episode and then the entire plot happens without him and in the episodes where he is actually a part of the plot he's basically just doing random shit to piss off Kimba like in episode 26 where his plan is to get all the other animals to start eating meat again so they'll distrust Kimba because they'll realize how good meat is and they'll be like you were lying to us Kimba I insist that you take one bite take one bite or I will take one bite of you even in this episode where he's actually a part of the plot he's still barely in it in the 1966 film that his self described as a summary of the events in the 65 series he literally does not show up in this film at all the DVD of this film states that they summarized the show by using episodes 1 & 41 while interweaving scenes from all of these other episodes and despite Klaw appearing in four of the episodes that they took scenes from he is so unimportant to the actual events in the show that they didn't even include a single frame of him they took scenes from nearly half of the episodes he was in and he still wasn't in the movie it is really dishonest to pretend as though he fulfilled the same role in the story as scar from The Lion King he is clearly not all that important of a character if you can have a summary of events without even including him in the 1966 sequel series he is also not in the entire show which is funny considering the scar comparisons that people use this show to make he actually shows up for a tiny bit in the opening credits of the terrible English dub but that's only because they decided to use nothing but footage from the first show in the opening credits for no reason in the 1989 remake series he appears in a whopping 13 out of 52 episodes in this series Claude does things that scar would never do like sacrifice himself for the main character once again his character is just a stereotypical boring villain although I will admit that the voice acting in the English dub sounds a lot more similar to scar than the original show where was I you got a problem look at this face not very pretty am i right but it's still not really an argument because the English dub didn't even get created until 1998 four years after the Lion King in the original Japanese dub the character sounds indistinguishable from any other run-of-the-mill anime villain in the post Lion King English dub there are points where it genuinely sounds as though he's trying to do a British Jeremy Irons scar impression it's been real slush if you'll pardon the expression mmm suspicious in the 1991 symphonic poem film Klaw is once again not in the movie although in this film it makes the most sense because it ends before he would actually show up in the story anyway in the 1997 jungle Emperor Leo film he is also not in the entire movie in the 2000 short film yes he actually exists here and finally in the 2009 movie he is nowhere if you had only heard about Klaw from the Kimba crowd and had never watched any Kimba he would probably assume that Klaw is a lot more important of a character than he actually is in reality you could completely remove him from all of these properties and it would not change much at all which is not something you can say about scar and The Lion King the comparisons being made between these characters are so unbelievably stretched that even in Fred Patton's book he winds up having to combine several different characters just to help support his argument even he knows that scar acts nothing like claws so he has to say that scar is a combination of claw and Cassius Cassius is one of Klaus several henchmen and once again he is just a stereotypical villain but I guess Patton threw him in there because he's comparatively more suave our plan is working so far now what we have to do is find a way to frame Kimba so that none of the animals will trust him anymore and you can step in yeah that's good your ideas the one event I've got one more job for you and you will do it because it is very important for me understand gypsy this isn't even the only time that patent combines different characters to make his arguments he also mentions that Timon and Pumbaa are supposed to be poly and Bucky even though he's already claiming that poly is supposed to be Zazu what now the comparisons between these characters are not commonly used in video comparisons because they are so obviously visually different but I think what he's trying to say here is that the dynamic between the characters is similar Bucky is clearly the larger and more dopey one of the two and Polly is the smaller yet more socially dominant of the two if you summarize things to this reductive of a degree then yeah I guess they're kind of similar but those are really the extent of these characters similarities Bucky is a dopey character that's it there are plenty of dopey characters in media and it is not uncommon for them to have a socially dominant companion and since you are now claiming that Timon is too similar to Polly while also claiming that Zazu is too similar to Polly are you therefore implying that Timon is similar to Zazu what about their characters is similar other than the fact that they're small how does anyone read this and take it seriously these are listed as similarities which seem to go beyond reasonable coincidence how can you present these as legitimate criticisms when you have to mix and match several different characters just to make your argument it's like throwing two different books into a paper shredder and then complaining when you can reconstruct some similar words and sentences this is not logical are we seriously supposed to believe that Disney watched Kimba and decided to mix and match these characters only including these basic similarities as though that in of itself would be a foolproof formula for success hey remember how there was a warthog in episode 18 of the original 65 series of Kimba clearly that specific character in this one episode was what made Kimba successful let's do that and even though we're using Kimba as a blueprint to make our film successful let's just make the warthogs nothing alike remember this one shot of the warthogs but let's put that in our film and it will be a guaranteed success it's a great thing we have Kimba to steal from because no other piece of media and history has ever done a comedic butt shot it is just so wildly unique and original and clearly that is the reason why Kimba was successful does this not sound ridiculous and let's not forget that there is an entire wealth of characters in Kimba so no matter which African species they decided to include in the Lion King there would have been some character of the same species somewhere within Kimba that they would have been accused of ripping off especially considering that the current criticisms include characters that were featured in one episode out of the well over 3,000 minutes worth of Kimba anyway the last character comparison to mention would be the hyenas in both properties they are essentially the henchmen sidekicks of the main villain now just like Klaw they aren't found in every series in the 66 film they exist without Klaw in the 1966 sequel series they appear in one shot in episode 21 as kind of a visual cameo appearance which is funny because the opening credits of the English dub implies otherwise in the 1989 series they are nowhere to be found and this is the series that has the most appearances of Klaw but now Klaw has a vulture sidekick instead of the hyenas santa's akka himself signed off on this series so I guess they weren't all that important to the Kimba experience and just like Klaw they also do not exist in the 1991 symphonic poem film or the 1997 jungle Emperor Leo movie they also do not exist in the 2000 short film or the 2009 made-for-tv movie the majority of their appearances are found within the 1965 Kimba the White Lion series and the vast majority of episodes in this series also do not include them in the episodes where they do exist they are more or less a team rocket type duo they mostly just show up to ruin whatever random project Kimba happens to be working on and quite often when they show up they do a little song and dance introduction this song goes on for like a minute and a half and it's incredibly annoying every single time now once again these characters similarities are limited to the utmost basic descriptions err hyenas and their villain sidekick characters that's about it even if we weren't comparing two characters to three characters their personalities and dynamic are not the same Tom and Tabb are basically like comedic greaser types hyenas in the Lion King aren't exactly super well developed characters either but at least they've got personality there are some who have complained that these characters are negative depictions of blacks and Latinos which is an understandable perspective to have but the reason you can't say the same thing about Tom and tab is because aside from them being sidekick villain hyenas they're completely different characters there isn't all that much to their characters at all and they're mostly just annoying now out of all of the animals in Africa what are the odds that the Lion King would use hyenas for their villain sidekicks once again this is a logical progression based on previously existing common ideas human beings are constantly attributing different psychological or behavioral associations to different animal species many people use the word Pig to describe someone being what inist they're sly as a fox blind as a bat quiet as a mouse and so on so when your species are limited to those found in Africa and you're deciding which species to use as your villain characters it is entirely reasonable that they would therefore decide to use the species most commonly associated with maniacal laughter it is an incredibly common Association and they very clearly utilized this in the film that is a perfectly logical reason that exists entirely independently of Kimba and even if that weren't the case hyenas and lions are natural enemies in real life seems like a pretty obvious logical choice that would not require kimba's existence to make so yeah to summarize most of these character comparisons are complete bullshit and even the understandable comparisons are ones that just point back to common tropes anyway these characters are not copy pasted versions of characters from Kimba and the fact that some of them are the same species is kind of fucking inevitable especially when compared to well over 3,000 minutes of Kimba Lion King producer Don Hahn mentions that there's a limited palette of things you can do in Africa in a 1994 interview with Los Angeles Times co-director Rob Minkoff states that whenever a story is based in Africa it's not unusual to have characters like a baboon a bird or hyenas in this very same article the fucking president of Tezuka productions stated that him and his staff came to the conclusion that you cannot avoid having these similarities as long as you use animals as characters and try to draw images out of them not even Tezuka Productions thinks that these are legitimate comparisons so why are people making these arguments on their behalf alright so now with these character comparisons out of the way let's go through the rest of these similarities which seem to go beyond reasonable coincidence see next similarity I haven't yet mentioned would be the stampede scene a stampede is a key event in the hero's life my god if you read this without having watched the show it almost seems like a stampede is a key event in kimba's life but in reality it's just another incidental flavor of the week episode conflict that if removed would change nothing about the show now I probably don't need to explain that the Stampede and The Lion King is absolutely necessary for the sequence of events in the film and Kimba this takes place in episode 39 of the 1965 series and the stampede of antelopes is not something that takes place because a villain character orchestrated it as a trap it happens for quite literally no reason 20 years ago a larger doing why they came together where they were headed for no one ever knew it's a good thing the Lion King happened to use wildebeest instead of antelope or else we'd never hear the end of it so Bucky decides to catch up with them to convince them to stop ruining their crops even though they were well past the crops already and when Kimba catches up to him he sees that he's hanging on to a tree with his sidekick friend close by yeah guys this is totally the same thing Disney totally watched this one scene in this one episode of Kimba and thought oh there are things called stampedes I didn't know that before watching this show if we take this scene and change everything about it except there being a character hanging from a tree then our movie is bound to be successful after all everyone knows that it is this imagery that is responsible for kimba's success everything else about this we can change but the hanging from a tree part is just so genius that we have to steal it for our movie seriously it's just another random conflict to throw into the show that can be quickly resolved by Kimba to call this a key event in kimba's life is just bullshit it's clearly not that much of a key event if it's not in the 1966 film a film that is supposed to be a summary of events of the series it's not even in the manga quit comparing necessary pivotal scenes to random bullshit it's so stupid another comparison left to mention is that lightning starts a fire and rain puts it out as if that's a unique idea at all it's a good thing the people over at Disney watched episode 48 of Kimba the White Lion how else would they possibly have come up with such a unique idea there are countless pieces of media in existence where lightning starts a fire and Kimba certainly did not invent the idea of showing rain putting it out if there's a fire in a film about animated lions in Africa the logical progression would be to show rain putting out that fire they are animal characters in nature were you expecting Simba to grab a fire extinguisher or what even if we ignore the fact that this is something that happens in nature the way it's being described here completely ignores the gigantic differences between these two examples in the Lion King it was mostly used as an aesthetic choice to match the tone of the events taking place in episode 48 of Kimba the fire was the episode's antagonist hence the episode title the Red Menace basically lightning starts a fire and it burns all the grass and so the elephant's don't have any food to eat so they go to a different part of the jungle to get some food and the elephants they're like no we're not sharing it and so then Kimba tries to steal it and then the elephant's find out and they get really mad and then they capture him and try to actually murder him but then the fire catches up to them and the elephants run away and it looks like kimba's done for but then miraculously some rain puts out the fire in this area and after the rain stops we see that the fire managed to survive so the rain didn't actually put it out because it's still going so Kimba decides that the best way to stop the Red Menace is to build a wall the walls of stone and clay protected us from the Red Menace why not make a wall like that around our jungle is this supposed to be a political metaphor it's the only way to stop the red minute so they actually build a wall in the physics don't make any sense and this is how they defeat the Red Menace just goes to prove you gotta fight fire with power yep I guess took the madness out of the Red Menace all right didn't we so yeah I guess you could say that the rain almost put the fire out either way it is pretty ridiculous to suggest that the fire in the Lion King only existed because of episode 48 in Kimba there's nothing about these examples that are similar aside from this somewhat inaccurate and incredibly misleading summary if here's a good one during a fight in the midst of the big fire in the Lion King scar scoops a pot full of hot coals into Simba's eyes in episode 2 of Kimba during a fight in the hot desert Kimba kicks burning sand into claws eyes come on first of all notice how the characters are swapped second notice how he kicks it instead of scooping it up and third pay attention to just how manipulatively this is phrased yeah there's no fire or coals or anything here but it's in the hot desert with burning sand seriously whether or not you believe the sand was burning the show clearly didn't make any reference to it at no point does claw up here to be burnt like Simba he just looks mildly inconvenience the original Japanese dub never implies burning sand either [Music] whether or not you want to argue that the sand was in fact burning it didn't have any relevance to the scene it would be entirely incidental and have nothing to do with what happened so why on earth would anyone use this type of phrasing unless they're intentionally exaggerating the similarities I am NOT saying that that is for sure what's happening here but when I read shit like this it sure as hell seems like it and that's the last of the comparisons in this book that I haven't already covered just a lot of selective and unfair comparisons that don't make any sense when you actually think about it the only thing really left to cover would be the statements from Matthew Broderick and Roy Disney in a 1994 press junket interview recorded by Matt Levitz of the Matt and Greg used to interview movie stars podcast Matthew Broderick says this no I didn't know what they wanted you know in fact I kept going around the city telling everybody I'm playing Kimba I'm Kimba which is you know there was Kimba the White Lion was this series when I was a little kid some Japanese cartoon so I thought I was you know that that Australian white lion that runs along and I kept telling everybody you know and Kimba the White Lion is his name and this is somehow treated as a smoking gun from the Kimba crowd I'm not sure if you know this but Matthew Broderick did not write The Lion King he is an actor who played the role of Simba you know I never I didn't know what they meant for casting me or what they were after really all this proves is that he's seen Kimba before although apparently not with perfect memory anyway because I'm not sure why he called Kimba Australian an Australian white lion that runs along if you think this means anything then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how movies are made if you want to argue that this means Disney's full of shit for when they said no one working on the Lion King had ever heard of Kimba then I agree with you that's a pretty ridiculous claim and I don't think Disney was smart by saying that either way this means literally nothing the other quote that the Kimba crowd loves to use as a smoking gun is from Roy Disney in a 1993 memo responding to someone asking about motherly figures in future Disney films he says wait until you see next summer's The Lion King and kimba's mother she is quite lovely and apparently this proves the entire conspiracy but what people don't understand is that Roy Disney did not write The Lion King and although the idea to make the Lion King came out of a meeting between himself Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Schneider it was Jeffrey Katzenberg who came up with the idea the fundamental idea happened with Jeffrey Katzenberg they were in Europe on a press junket for Oliver and company and Jeffrey started talking about his life the kernel of that idea is something that actually originated with me and was reflective of something that happened to me earlier in my life the story itself came out of a you know an experience of something that had happened to me the moment in time that for each of us in our lives in which we go from being a child to being an adult from that point on the entire writing process was managed by several other completely different people through a bunch of early writers in the film Linda Woolverton who repeated the beast was one of them the first day I remember coming in having read the script and there was about 20 minutes of story real done and I said so what's the deal how much of this movie is we need to keep and you said none of it it honestly just seems like either this was a typo or he accidentally got the names confused and if he had heard of Kimba before it's really not all that crazy of a mistake considering how similar the characters names are I mean just the name is similar Kimba Simba mmm suspicious this does not prove that Kimba was used as a blueprint for the Lion King especially considering just how wildly different these two properties are it's pretty obvious to me that there are some people who worked on the Lion King that were aware of Kimba and when Disney tried to claim otherwise it seemed as though they were only doing so because they were met with accusations of plagiarism it's important to understand that Disney is a soulless corporation and when you get a quote from a spokesperson for a soulless corporation it's likely going to be something that was approved by their lawyers and lawyers for soulless corporations aren't going to allow even a shred of a sentence that could be interpreted as admission of guilt when it comes to the actual human beings who worked on the Lion King however their responses are a lot more reasonable in nuanced when co-director Roger Allers was asked if anyone on production was familiar with Kimba he said of course it's possible Charlie Fink who is credited as pitching the Lion King as Bambi in Africa to Jeffrey Katzenberg was also asked about this and he says that if other people knew about it they didn't talk to him about it the idea that nobody who worked on the Lion King had ever seen or heard of Kimba is pretty ridiculous which is why the same Disney spokesperson wound up revising their statement four days after it was made there are definitely a few people that worked on the Lion King that came forward after the controversy saying that they had heard of or seen Kimba but not only is this just a few people out of the over 700 credits on IMDB but every single one of them still insists that Kimba had no influence on The Lion King and especially considering all that I've covered in this video I don't see any reason to accuse them all of lying is it still possible that there were individuals who worked on the Lion King that were either consciously or subconsciously inspired by Kimba of course that's entirely possible and I would never claim otherwise but if Kimbo were used as a blueprint for the Lion King like the Kimba crowd is claiming then why would not a single person who worked on it say this especially when they're so open about being inspired by Hamlet and Bambi before I came aboard it was described as Bambi in Africa with Hamlet thrown in so BAM lit there were days when we went more down the Hamlet path than other days we'd all decided that there needed to be a to be or not to be seeing the Shakespearean angle of course the Hamlet angle good thing kids talk about we took in all of that regardless of whether or not you believe that Kimba inspired the Lion King the fact remains that none of these incredibly exaggerated similarities are responsible for the Lion King success anyway The Lion King was successful because it was the perfect collaboration of talented artists working together the characters and their animation and their dialogue and the soundtrack and score and the overall tone and experiencies are the elements that came together to make the Lion King a successful film if the Lion King was more similar to Kimba than it would have been less successful otherwise these millions of people who were aware of Kimba would have actually watched the show there's no denying that these two properties are massively different experiences so if their goal was to steal from the success of Kimba then why would they change everything about it seems kind of counterintuitive if that was supposedly their plan the whole time anyway that about covers this entire controversy and with so much misinformation on this subject this video felt pretty necessary to make hopefully now people will understand what the controversy actually is and the people making exaggerated claims like The Lion King ripping off the whole story of Kimba will not be taken seriously I should mention that since starting this review and publicly streaming my editing process the Hollywood Reporter has mysteriously changed their articles header image suspicious from the articles creation in july 2019 all the way through April 2020 their header image was one that compared the Lion King to the 1997 jungle Emperor Leo movie as of a few weeks ago they have replaced it with this image which is extra hilarious because this is still a promotional image from the 1997 jungle Emperor Leo film why so obviously there are going to be people out there who believe that these vague summaries and visual similarities are evidence enough to support their conspiracy theory and to those people I'd like to show you this while editing this review I came across a comic from the 1940s known as Simba king of beasts so I decided to go through them and see if there were any similarities between Kimba and this pre Kimba comic unsurprisingly there were quite a few first we got the name I mean just the name is similar Kimba Simba mmm suspicious Simba is also the king of the jungle and he's also challenged for the throne by a rival lion named slit ah there are so many similarities between Kimba in this pre Kimba comic book that I decided to make my own Kimba crowd style video [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] and on top of all that there is an issue of this pre kimba comic book where Simba is a white lion who move aside Tezuka it's time to finally acknowledge the original white lion I want to make it clear that I am NOT claiming that Kimba the White Lion ripped off Simba king of beasts after all there is a limited palette of things you can do in Africa and you cannot avoid having these similarities as long as you use animals as characters and try to draw images out of them do you get it now do you finally understand how stupid this is it's pretty clear that when it comes to basic visual comparisons you can do that with pretty much anything and be more similar the base concepts for the stories are the more similarities you're going to find most importantly the similarities that exist are not responsible for the success of the Lion King The Lion King was successful because of the collaborative efforts of talented people one of the reasons why the long King worked was that it was a good collaboration together we made something that not one of us could have done on our own there was a great mixture of people in the room that we could bounce off of each other and write together and create together in some ways it's kind of an accident it was just no we putting we're making this stew and everyone put in a little bit here we'll take that out and it just turns out to be a great meal some music the animation the performances these are the elements that contributed to the Lion King success not having some of the same species from Kimba and certainly not lightening starting a fire and rain putting it out the entire tone and emotional experience is so radically different and if the Lion King had provided these same experiences Kimba then it would not have been successful at the end of the day I think the most important takeaway from this is to not believe everything you hear on the internet don't trust anyone everyone dumb and perhaps if you come across something that appears to be persuasive maybe just have a more nuanced approach later ISM is a pretty serious accusation and it's not fair to all the people that worked on the Lion King that so many people believe that they stole someone else's work and believe it or not it's also not fair to Tezuka and his legacy it's kind of in Soul thing that the first thing you see on his IMDB page is just bullshit about The Lion King you're not maybe gonna list his accomplishments or something he is known as the father of manga and anime what is this bullshit on top of all that even Tezuka's own son doesn't agree with this controversy in a 2003 book titled the geniuses son Mikoto Tezuka states that the controversy did not start in Japan but in America and that there were a lot of people who inflated the issue because they were upset with Disney's business practices he also says that he refuses to participate in Disney bashing and that he does not want to see his father's works being turned into someone else's weapon and finally he states that these are two different stories with different themes and if the Lion King was about a white lion that spoke with humans then he might not be able to pardon the similarities so yeah if you're gonna make a big stink about the Lion King and Kimba you should not be pretending it's for the sake of Tezuka and his family what good does it do to push this controversy when neither Tezuka nor Tezuka's son nor even Tezuka production supports you on this and if you're a fan of Kimba then what good does it do to have it only be known as that thing that the Lion King ripped off now I'm obviously not a fan of Kimba but there are things to appreciate about it it was the very first animated show in Japan to be aired in color there's some really nice-looking animation here and there and much of the music in this show is uh nayana Klee great 100% of the music used in this review was from Kimba if you really love this show then talk about what makes it great because I don't think many people will bother checking it out if they believe it's just a worse version of a movie they already love it's important to understand that personal biases will influence the way that people view media you could easily say that I have a bias towards The Lion King so I haven't looked at that which are you wearing a scar shirt and shorts again and if so follow up have you changed clothes in the last seven days because that's what you were wearing last week maybe but despite that bias I still went into this controversy with an open mind there's a very high likelihood you could consider it plagiarism for sure I don't think it's gonna make me love the Lion King any less but I do think that based on what I've heard it's very likely that it could be considered plagiarism it was only once I actually watched the show that I realized how stupid this controversy is if you watch this video and you're now upset that you ever took this controversy seriously that's fine but try to remember that the only person you should be upset with is yourself a majority of people spreading this misinformation we're also just people who hadn't watched the show Kimba the White Lion it's entire story is exactly like The Lion King personally I've actually never watched Kimba and even the people that did watch the show were mostly just influenced by their own personal biases and general misunderstanding about how art works I genuinely believe that the stupidity surrounding this controversy was caused by ignorance rather than malicious intent so don't go harassing anybody over this because honestly that would be just as unproductive as this controversy itself I think the most productive way to channel your anger would be through memes so hopefully I'll catch you on the Kimba means subreddit created by one of my Watchers it's pretty funny so far and I see a lot of potential anyway I hope you found this video to be informative and entertaining because it took a lot out of me and now that I'm done with this I can finally get back to working on my Lion King 2019 review and tear that piece of garbage to shreds hey hey everyone well that certainly wasn't very much fun at all that was kind of fucking stupid and I didn't enjoy spending so much time on this I forgot to charge my camera battery so we're gonna do this for my webcam at the end instead he isn't the better looking camera forgot to charge the battery oopsy anyway you're probably wondering what all these names it's mirrored display but all these names are doing here they're people that support me on patreon if you want your name to be there then go check out my patreon patreon.com slash YMS it's only a dollar a month and your you'll see your name there and you'll support cool stuff like this because currently right now despite spending a good 5 months on this fucking stupid video I'm worried about it getting D monetized you know there's there's some things in there like the that racist shit in this in the sequel series that YouTube might decide is not appropriate for advertisers and it's completely arbitrary and they're never consistent on it so you can never really tell so that kind of sucks even though I'm obviously being critical of the the racism in that show anyway thank you so much my and we're supporting supporting this stupid bullshit I also don't do ad breaks in the middle of the video or its sponsors and stuff like that because I just feel like it it it ruins the flow of the video I don't I don't like the video that way so if you want to support me patreon there's like a PayPal link in the description too if you want to donate just one time so instead of advertising like a privy PN or some shit I'm advertising my own PayPal and patreon I guess also yeah t-shirts six out of ten I'm gonna had a new design to it and buy new I mean it's just gonna say YMS because that that's the design I have currently right now and I realize that I should probably just have like a really basic one I thought you know the six out of ten thing is kind of like a funny meme so I'd rather have that as a shirt but I got some comments from some people saying things like hey Adam I really want to support you but I'm not conventionally attractive enough to wear a six out of ten shirt and not have it be a point of ridicule so yeah I didn't think about that oopsie I guess the YMS shirts are good then these larger projects obviously take a long time to make and you can see the the journey of the editing and the discovering of the crazy bullshit of this review by going to the YMS highlights channel it is not run by me but I approve of it it's it's a good channel there's some funny memes on there basically I stream a lot of my editing on Twitch and that channel that shows the the not boring parts because most of editing is kind of boring probably but there's a couple things on stream where it's not boring and so that channel has the not boring stuff I also want to shout out Kalyan a-and my my movie for helping translate the Japanese parts that I needed translated this was kind of a weird project involved a lot of work and I got some help in a few places thank you sabor spark Thank You shinobi o3 just for providing sources and information on some some things that I didn't find before thank you my subreddit and twitch chat for helping out on a few things that somebody posted in the subreddit about that Simba king of beasts comic and that that was a pretty good thing to add to the review so yeah thank you so much so now that this gigantic piece of garbage is out of the way now I'm going to spend a couple weeks working on the music video for my album it's already filmed I just need to edit it in the editing process for this particular project there's a little tedious there's a lot of editing involved in this video and yeah the album the album's gonna should be out in like a couple months I think basically near the tail end of this process like everything's already like recorded in everything it's been it's been mixed I'm just basically going back and forth between the person mastering and then saying okay make this adjustment here make this adjustment here blah blah blah and then waiting for them to get back to me so like I'm in the waiting situation too I'm basically literally just waiting for files to get back to me so that I can suggest more changes etc etc and because you know they I'm not the only project that they're working on they'll usually have dates booked with other projects and I can't book a date for my project until I know that there's changes that I want to make and I can't do that until I have the files back but yeah I mean like the album should be out in probably a couple months the album art work is done and I'll probably be posting that somewhere too it was made by the very talented Lovisa Morin and yeah I'm hyped for it and it's finally coming and yeah be anyway couple weeks on album stuff I'm gonna spend a couple weeks doing that and then straight back to my Lion King review which is pretty much half done in terms of like the work that actually goes into it so a lot of the work in these larger YMS review projects is going through a lot of footage a lot of interview footage a lot of clips from YouTube and promotional material commentaries and stuff like that and then organizing them based on what I want to say about it what's funny what what supports the points that I'm making etc so I've already done all that and that was what was finished before I decided that that Kimba needed to be its own video so the Lion King YMS we're not starting from scratch there's a there's a good amount of work done on it so it shouldn't take as long as the Kimba review I don't expect it to be as lengthy as the Kimba review I couldn't imagine that I would have two and a half hours worth of shit to say about the Lion King 2019 it might be over an hour probably probably over an hour but I I'd be very surprised if it was over two hours anyway and right after the Lion King YMS then I'll be finishing up the Synecdoche New York series so part 6 and then you know I'm not gonna there's not gonna be a parts of it I'm gonna do part six until it's done because I've completely abandoned making videos in parts anyway you know I'd rather just have everything all out as one thing which I mean there's already five parts of synecdoche anyway so I can't like go back in time and do that but yeah if if part six is 40 minutes it won't be part six and seven it'll still just be part six the final part yeah I think you know the videos I enjoy them better when they're all in one part so yeah even though when I used to make these larger projects in 15-minute segments 20 minute segments yeah it would get out more frequently but it's the same amount of material within the same amount of time it's just all in one part so you're getting a much longer video rather than more frequent smaller videos I think that it flows better as one larger video anyway so yeah that's pretty much all I have to say there's more shit coming I didn't forget about synecdoche calm down like very clearly said at the beginning of part 5 that I was intentionally spacing them out for thematic purposes I very intentionally specifically said that anyway thank you for watching and yeah don't don't go don't go making people's days worse just because everybody's a fucking idiot about this kimba's shit just make some memes I feel like that's the most productive thing to do if you're angry about about this whole fucking stupid Kimbo Spira see it makes them means go to the kimba meme subreddit that's that's a productive thing to do anyway thank you all for watching I'm gonna get some rest because this was absolutely fucking ridiculous so thank you love you guys peace you

Channel: YourMovieSucksDOTorg

Views: 2,133,820

Rating: 4.9236951 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: G5B1mIfQuo4

Length: 147min 9sec (8829 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BruisedElbow]

I really love the Kimba falling off a cliff montage

[u/Cloakington]

As much as this is an amazing deconstruction of the plagiarism controversy I'm now totally in love with the batshit insanity of original Kimba.

"Why couldn't all the elephants be nice like PeeWee? Then they wouldn't have had to be EXTERMINATED"

[u/esotericGames]

For those who haven't been following he's been working on this for months. This is like his opus. There are hours and hours of just highlights from editing streams for this video on the channel "YMS Highlights".

For example 3 months ago the "YMS Highlights" channel posted "YMS Highlights - Kimba the White Lion (Part 2)" which itself is 1h37m long. So that should give you some perspective at the scope of what he did with this video.

[u/nihongopower]

I love how YMS clearly watched all 3000 minutes of the original Kimba cartoon and bought all the reference books etc; that level obsession about a topic is what makes the internet beautiful

[u/ItsInTheFrackingShip]

I see a lot of people asking for a tldr and while I do think Adam’s video is well worth the watch here are the points I find most significant...

• Most people believe Kimba to be a single film but it’s actually several films and anime series that total over 50 hours of content. Making it far more likely that common imagery and situations between the two could be found when looking for it.

• Simba is Swahili for Lion and all the LK’s characters are named in a similar fashion making the similar names logical.

• Of the Kimba scenes shown in all those side by side shot comparison videos, nearly all the most convincing ones are from the 97 movie which came out after the Lion King.

• Many of the similarities listed between the two only seem similar because they are phrased in reductive and/or dishonest ways. Others are incredibly common tropes in storytelling or logical choices for a story about lions in Africa.

• The common talking point of every character in LK having a Kimba equivalent is also represented very dishonestly. The characters have almost nothing in common other then being the same animals and have very different personalities. The exception being Claw and Scar but many of these similarities are common villain tropes.

Any of these points in isolation may not be enough to convince you but when laid out as throughly as Adam does in his video it really becomes clear how calling the LK a total rip-off of Kimba is an incredibly unfair way of viewing art. It’s not unreasonable to believe that some of the hundreds of people who created the LK had also seen Kimba and maybe even drew some inspiration but that’s very different then the common narrative around these two stories. If your skeptical about any of these claims I really would encourage people to eventually watch this video. It is incredibly thorough and explains it far better then I can in a tldr but I hope this gives a small glimpse into what the video covers. Two and half hours is a lot to ask and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t have the time but unfortunately it takes a lot more time and effort to disprove misinformation then spread it.

[u/CakeBoss16]

I was that asshole who would mention Kimba whenever anyone mention the lion king. I really am a redditor.

[u/thehypocrisyofreddit]

After watching YMS's video, you will learn that Kimba was a self-centered asshole

[u/38211141255]

I would advise everyone to at least watch the first 30 minutes and realize how much you've been lied to. The rest is just adding nails to the coffin.

[u/oh_contraire]

Now, instead of being that guy that says, “did you know the lion king is a rip off of Kimba?” I can be the guy who says to that guy, “actually it’s not...”

Thanks reddit