Did Disney borrow The Lion King from a Japanese TV show?
Despite a mixed reaction from critics, Disney’s live-action remake of The Lion King could take the crown this summer and end up being one of the most successful films of 2019.
Most audiences don’t seem to mind that Jon Favreau’s version is almost an exact replica of the original, but fans might feel differently if they knew how much The Lion King also resembles another story that Disney hasn't credited.
Years before The Lion King first roared into theatres, Kimba the White Lion was a popular Japanese anime that ran from 1965 to 1967. Based on a manga written by Osamu Tezuka, the show followed a young lion cub who grew up with other misfits in the jungle, determined to become an honourable leader like his late father. Along the way, Kimba would face off against an evil lion called Claw with a wise baboon and a comical bird by his side.
Oh, and then there’s that name, Kimba. Sound familiar?
We should stress that the principal plot of Kimba… differs from The Lion King. Kimba travels at sea, learns to swim with fish, is guided by butterflies and has lots of human encounters.
But.
Thematically, The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion share a surprising number of parallels and the two stories even look similar. Images of a lion standing atop something that looks like Pride Rock appeared first in Kimba the White Lion and both stories feature scenes where the lead’s parent appears in the sky after death.
While most of the Western world remained unaware of these striking similarities, The Simpsons proved themselves to be ahead of the game yet again when they parodied the controversy back in 1995. At the end of the season six episode 'Round Springfield', a lion appears in the clouds alongside Bleeding Gums Murphy and says “You must avenge my death, Kimba… I mean, Simba!”
Despite this high-profile acknowledgement of the controversy, Kimba creators Mushi Production never filed legal action against Disney. However, when The Lion King was first released in Japan, around 200 professionals in the field did sign a letter urging Disney to acknowledge Kimba’s impact on the blockbuster film.
Disney did no such thing and in the years that followed, almost everyone involved denied any connection between the two stories. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times soon after The Lion King was released, co-director Rob Minkoff said he wasn’t familiar with Kimba at all, explaining that it’s "not unusual to have characters like a baboon, a bird or hyenas" in an African story like this.
More recently, animator Tom Sito told HuffPost Entertainment that “there is absolutely no inspiration from Kimba” in The Lion King, explaining that the filmmakers weren’t made aware of any comparisons between the two until they were already deep into the production process: “One of the animators found a Manga comic book of Kimba’s with a setup that kind of looked like Pride Rock, and I remember he was like showing it to us, and I was like, ‘Wow, that is really close to ours, yeah’.”
While it might be hard for some to believe that Disney genuinely had no knowledge that Kimba existed – Simba actor Matthew Broderick even thought he was playing Kimba at first – the president of Osamu Tezuka’s production company Tezuka Productions felt that any similarities between the stories were impossible to avoid due to the subject matter. After all, any story about lions set in the African Savannah is bound to feature similar animals and even some of the same plot points too.
It’s also important to note that the two projects are different in a number of ways. For example, Kimba can stand on two feet, fighting using his fists, and while humans play an integral role in Tezuka’s anime, they’re nowhere to be seen in The Lion King.
Whether the parallels shared between Simba and Kimba are coincidental or not, it should come as no surprise that classic animated stories like this share at least some kind of deeper connection. It’s the circle of life, after all.
The Lion King is out in UK and US cinemas on July 19
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